- Date posted
- 1y ago
confession ocd question
how did y’all resist confessing things and reduce feeling that nasty deep pitted guilt and shame?
how did y’all resist confessing things and reduce feeling that nasty deep pitted guilt and shame?
Honestly, by sitting with uncertainty. I know this so much easier said than done but reassurance seeking will never be good enough for OCD. I know it’s so scary but this disorder needs 100% in order to survive. Leaning into uncertainty feels so unbearable, but you can do it! Are you seeing a therapist?
@Anon700 *100% certainty
@Anon700 not seeing a therapist quite yet :(
@bobafettea I hope you’re able to use one! Honestly I couldn’t get through this without one and I’m okay saying that. If you decide to proceed on with one, my advice is to just be as transparent as possible! You’ll get the right tools and guidance for recovery. I’m wishing you the best! This disorder is truly debilitating
I know it feels almost impossible, but resisting confession and sitting with the guilt is the best thing you can do. Every time you do it, even though it feels bad, your fear/threat system watches and learns from your actions. You might not feel momentary relief, but eventually doing this will take you out of the ocd cycle.
I just challenged myself to not confess to something for three months
Feel guilty for not giving into compulsions like rumination and confessing? I feel guilt for having an intrusive thought, trying to shrug it off or just giving it a few seconds of thought and moving along. This sounds like improvement but I still struggle with the anxiety and the guilt. The shame. I’ll be okay and then I’ll remember I have OCD and my stomach will drop and I just want to curl up and cry.
So, I know my capacity to get fixated on things. And it's normally something that's relatively remote but, my latest issue is really getting to me and I was wondering if people have any advice. I'm avoiding getting too into specifics, as I don't want this to get reassurance-y but, in essence.. I came to the realisation recently that people who I'd been "friends" (feels like the wrong term now) when I was younger were not very nice people, and normalized a lot of very unpleasant behaviour towards other members of the group. They really normalized it, sold themselves as figures of authority, as older and more responsible and grown-up than others, and looking back, they acted horribly. And coming to this realisation, that I'd been manipulated into just accepting their behaviour has just... broken me. My OCD has latched onto it and I can't stop feeling irreversibly tainted by it. I've talked to others about it, and they've reassured me, told me it's not a big deal and that I hold myself to too high a standard, but none of that sticks. I feel better for a bit, then think 'Maybe when you told them you were skewing it to make yourself look better' or 'Did you leave out a crucial detail'. I keep ruminating over and over, trying to remember exactly how everything played out, trying to figure out if I fed into the behaviour, if I did something bad myself (because y'know, I feel like I was accepting of it at the time, so what does it say about my own values?). I know I need to stop doing all this if I want to improve, but then some part of me keeps saying 'So, you're just going to let yourself off the hook then?' Normally, I can rationalize my own fears to some degree, assure myself something won't happen, but the realness of the situation, and the fact I only came to understand the reality of it because the thought had been bothering me means it feels so much more all-encompassing. I know confessing in itself is a compulsion, but I keep feeling that if I'm not I'm somehow concealing what I 'really am' from others around me, and any positive interactions are me deceiving them in some way. I feel like I can't enjoy anything in life right now, and a good part of me feels I should not enjoy it ever again. If anybody has any advice on it, I'm all ears. Or even hearing if you relate to these feelings, I might appreciate the solidarity at least.
What to do when we feel guilty about our ocd checking and compulsive behaviors?
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