Thoughts are colliding. I'm not sure how to cope.

I'm having a hard time with these thoughts and was wondering if anyone could provide insight. Thank you. One of my intrusive thoughts is "What if you intentionally go and get soap, oil, toothpaste and smear it on your TV," and my compulsion is to check to see if I've smeared anything on my TV. The next intrusive thought is triggered by wearing my CPAP mask, which actually leaks a tiny bit of air. The intrusive thoughts is "Oh no, there is a tiny bit of air leaking and it's going to hurt your eyes," and my compulsion is to readjust my mask. The next thought is a bit tricky, and really tripping me up. The thought is saying "Since your CPAP mask is actually leaking a tiny bit of air, you need to put a tiny bit of soap, oil, toothpaste on your TV. Since your CPAP seal is imperfect, you need to make other things imperfect intentionally. If you don't, you're doing therapy wrong by not making things equally imperfect." This has been really hard to deal with, and it's really making me confused and tired. I'd like to add that I know a tiny bit of air escaping from my CPAP mask isn't a big deal. Would I prefer no leak at all, well yeah. And I know that smearing some soap/toothpaste/oil on my TV wouldn't be the end of the world, but at the same time, I don't want to do that. I don't want to risk damaging my TV.

Anonymous

Date posted: 1y

Don't smear anything on your TV. If you can't resist, just tell yourself you'll do it later, postpone the compulsion at least

rinahello123

Date posted: 1y

Thanks. Yeah, I get the response prevention part, I think the exposure part is really confusing me. Like just sitting with the thought "What if I've smeared soap on the TV" and not checking isn't enough, like I need to make a weird exposure and put soap on the TV. Which I don't think is right. Also the fact that my CPAP is leaking a little bit, feeling like I need to equal the leaking out by putting a little bit of soap on my TV. Ugh, I wish it was just called response prevention therapy and not ERP, because the "E" part is so confusing.

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 1y

Sorry, I meant to say our brains are going to send us all sorts of danger signals. That is why OCD therapy is difficult, because we are making ourselves do things that FEEL like we are going to bring dangerous consequences upon ourselves because we are not following the rules. But it is our job to practice not following the rules until our brains realize that we are not actually in danger.

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 1y

When it feels like you were going to bring dangerous consequences to yourself by not following the “rules,” remember that it is our job to RISK it. This is an important part of therapy.

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 1y

This is classic OCD. You have done a great job identifying thoughts/obsessions. These are the things saying there might be something on the TV, the mask is leaking air, and the mask is imperfect. You were also doing a great job identifying the compulsions, which is to check the TV, adjust the mask, and put something imperfect on the TV. Great! So, for this type of classic OCD, we have to apply ERP. This means two things: 1: You allow the thoughts/obsessions to rattle and spin in your brain however much they want to. You don’t try to fight them off. Just let them be there. 2: You resist doing the compulsions if you possibly can. This is your main job in OCD therapy—to prevent yourself from doing the compulsion. This will cause a spike in anxiety. However, the point of ERP is to expose yourself to these triggers, but resist doing the compulsion, allowing a spike in anxiety – and then you just sit with that anxiety, until it slowly goes down. After you practice not doing the compulsion, and allowing the anxiety to rise, eventually, the anxiety spikes will be less and less high. But remember, you are not trying to fight the thoughts. Our brains are going to send us all sorts of dangerous.

rinahello123

Date posted: 1y

Thank you, this makes sense and is what I want to do. Just let the intrusive thoughts be, whatever they are, and not do the compulsion, like you said. Where I think I'm getting tripped up is feeling the need to do something "extra" for an exposure, like smearing soap on my TV or making my CPAP mask leak more. But, I don't see how doing these "extra" exposures would even help me. In fact, I feel like OCD is telling me to do these weird things for exposure. It's like just sitting with the original intrusive thought and not doing the compulsion isn't enough, and my brain is telling me I'm bad for not doing something extra 😞.

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 1y

@rinahello123 Yes, I think you are exactly right. The idea that you need to to something extra is probably another compulsion. So the best thing to do is to deny yourself from doing anything extra. Tell yourself that you don’t need to do anything extra. Just treat these extra things like another compulsion that you need to stay away from. OCD is so tricky like that!! If we get a handle on one thing, it tries to get us with another route.

JFL

Date posted: 23w

OCD thought struggles

So at night I have these intrusive thoughts that I leave the door wide open. This causes me to fear that someone will walk in the house and harm my family. I also have this back massage device. I fear that if I leave it plugged in on accident a fire will happen. So I went down to make sure that it was not plugged in. The thing is that I never used the massager that day. When I went back up I felt like I opened the front door (an entrance to my house) even though I didn't. I had to get my wife to check the door other wise I would not have slept. When I checked it I became more insecure. This has been reoccurence with me.

Wed_Wheel

Date posted: 21w

My SO OCD

I have just recently realized that I had SO OCD. This began whenever I was watching porn and had an intrusive thought about the guy in the porn. It was more minor at first, it was a majority of what I was thinking about throughout the day but it didn’t feel as distressing at first. If I had downtime to think about it, it would affect me but if I was just going about my day I wouldn’t notice it. I began going through the compulsions of checking myself. This lasted for a while until another obsession occurred. Then it seemed as if my SO OCD took a step back. I would have flare ups but they would seem to pass. Recently, I had a very bad night of constant compulsions and looking at pictures and imagining things to check myself. After that night it was very distressing, it affected me to the point where people around me began to notice and ask me if I was okay. One of the big reasons I was so upset was my girlfriend, we have been together for over 3 years and I want to spend the rest of my life with her. I was thinking “Oh my god, if I am gay I can never be with her.” I would sit and cry about it thinking I would lose her and that might life would change because I was gay. I finally had enough and talked to her and my parents. We did some research and I was so shocked to find out that I had a form of OCD, it was like a weight being lifted off my shoulders just knowing that other people have been where I am and that I’m not gay. However, I may have naively expected the compulsions and obsessive thoughts to go away now that I knew I had an actual problem. But I found that the compulsions and thoughts were still there and I was going to put some effort into getting better. I have researched and now know what to do when experiencing intrusive thoughts, yet I still have been performing the compulsions which is just feeding into the OCD. I find myself having intrusive thoughts and then start performing compulsions to see if they are true. What really bothers me is when I have an intrusive thought that tells me that I do like something. But when I think about it I have no desire to pursue those thoughts. However when I feed into the compulsions they just seem to feed into each other. It is like my OCD ignores all the things that I know I like and goes straight to panic mode. I am also trying to do ERP and am going to start doing my best to get better. Does anyone have any tips for not performing the compulsions no matter how anxious you are feeling and no matter how real the intrusive thoughts seem to feel?

Sexual Orientation OCD

Roseptlss

Date posted: 20w

Persistent Intrusive thoughts about past actions

Hi Everyone! I hope whoever is reading this is having a good day so far :) So for years now I’ve had very bad intrusive thoughts about things that I have done or embarrassing things that I’ve said or have happened and it’s mortifying and debilitating on a daily basis. Specifically these thoughts are mainly things that have occurred from 2018-2020 and some are more simple just as a stupid joke I made or being way too loud on calls while my family was trying to sleep and others being way more complex such as past relationships and how I’ve hurt some of the people I care the most about and when I have acted on intrusive thoughts and these thoughts will appear with no triggers at all I’ll just wake up and already have something I did just nagging me. I don’t want to live like this anymore and I’ve tried working through it with self compassion but sometimes the things I said or did back then it’s very hard to forgive myself for and I’ll reminisce on it for hours on hours, gaslight myself into believing that’s not how it happened and try to change the memory itself, or just suppress it entirely. I know those habits aren’t healthy and truly I want to get better but I don’t know how to overcome some of these thoughts. I have talked to my fiancé about this a few times and even today we talked about it and he fully supports me and is helping me work through it. I might also contact my sister too, I don’t talk to her overly too much but ever since I was little she’s thought I’ve had ocd and was one of the people who made me consider that I might have it (I’m still undiagnosed but I’ll try to when I have the money and time) and I know she could maybe provide some insight. Another thing that is troublesome about the situation is my other family members specifically my mom aren’t the most helpful and can trigger thoughts. To put it in perspective on how her thought process is and some background info she is an ER nurse and has been for 30 years due to this she believes she knows mainly everything there is about mental health and she gets extremely upset when I don’t take her advice or set boundaries. She’ll force me to talk to her about my problems and when I don’t want to she’ll pin me in a corner where I’m forced to and last summer I had a really bad episode and was really overstimulated and I just finished taking a shower and due to the water on me, my hair being wet (my hair is naturally curly and it takes forever to dry and it’s very draining taking care of even with a keratin treatment) and all the intrusive thoughts I was having and she forced me to talk to her and I did open up for the first time about my thoughts and brought up how sometimes I have thoughts of hurting my animals and it makes me physically sick. Her response to this was threatening to call the cops on me saying it was a behavioral thing and I was doing it for attention. I have never hurt any of my animals but later that day my cat came into my room and a few minutes later she comes up just gives me the death stare and after a few seconds just asks me “are you going to go kill snickers?” In the most condescending tone and she’s always like this daily where she’ll force advice onto me or get upset and yell and then reinforce thoughts I’m having. I just want to know first how to stop the thoughts from so frequently and how to heal in an environmental where it keeps reopening wounds despite trying to place boundaries? I’m sorry this is really long I usually do go really in detail about things and it’s just how I’ve always been. If anyone has any questions feel free to ask and I’ll answer them to the best of my ability. I really appreciate the time you took to read this and thank you for your help! 🥰

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Thoughts are colliding. I'm not sure how to cope.

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