- Date posted
- 1y
accept uncertainty
how do you accept uncertainty I find it impossible and so distressing? It’s ruining my life😔
how do you accept uncertainty I find it impossible and so distressing? It’s ruining my life😔
I have found it tremendously helpful to actively try to challenge some of my black-and-white thinking on my themes. I have found that I can’t really “live with the uncertainty” if that means trying to straddle an extremely sharp good-vs-evil or hell-vs-heaven line. That simply doesn’t work. You must try to soften that line, learn and think more deeply about your fears, and try to identify grey areas where you can perhaps find some peace when required. Check out OCD Recovery videos on youtube for helpful advice on this. By the way this is not at all an exercise in abandoning your values or moral judgement, it’s more about trying to see things more clearly, calmly, compassionately.
If it helps, as a starting point, here are some irrational beliefs you might find helpful to try to challenge: - I am my thoughts - This thought/ urge/ bodily reaction means I want this - OCD is not the reason I am obsessing about this - If people knew, they would totally reject me - If people rejected me, my life would be over - Etc. Etc. Etc. If you’re anything like me, you probably have a whole range of these waiting for you back there! I hope this helps!!
I’m really struggling with this too. Something that has been helping me is Matthew Marshal on YouTube. He has some shorts about his ocd that relate to accepting uncertainty. I’ve yet to achieve acceptance for the uncertainty but really striving to hopefully one day be there
I struggle with false memory ocd and accepting uncertainty makes me feel sick
Really bad theme right now is death, I keep thinking about how one day or at any moment my heart will stop my brain will stop & my memories & everything I know will all fade away. It is giving me so much anxiety I’m only 18, but I realize it all happens to us it is bound, we are born to die. I know it’s a silly thing to be scared because it’s not helping the quality of my life worrying about it and even when I do die, I won’t care , if you don’t have a working brain then how can you care 🤷♀️. It is tainting my everyday life currently & honestly making me terribly depressed & it is giving me derealization & making me feel nihilistic, I’ll remind myself it’s okay but then with my ocd i don’t stop thinking and thinking about it and it’s seriously so hard to stay present in the moment because this thought just feels like I can’t scrub it away it’s miserable I struggle with religion, but I do pray to anything that’s out there possibly listening, because it is comforting, it just feels like this whole experience Is pointless & I am afraid of the unknown and what is to possibly happen but I’m subjected to it anyways so why should it matter
Here is what I say to people: I wish I could make it stop. I really do. I also wish I could stop tinnitus. What is tinnitus, you may ask? Well, have you ever gone to a loud concert and after it had a ringing in your ears. Or, in movies when a loud explosion hears, first it is often muffled, and then there is a very loud ringing sound. Well, I have hear that sound for over 30 years. Turns out the medications I took as a kid for allergies and all the antibiotics I was on for Strep had a side effect for some people - tinnitus - that sound that I have heard every decade, year, month, day, hour, and second, for the past 30 years. I have learned to live with it. As I type this, it is REALLY loud, because I am paying attention to it. But, in a few minutes it will fade into the background, and, while I will hear it, I will not pay much attention to it, and therefore I will go on with my night. I will listen to music, practice my story for the MOTH radio hour, and work out. I will clean up the kitchen and load the dishwasher, and I will eventually get ready for bed. I will go to bed hearing that sound, and fall asleep for a few hours until tomorrow morning when I start the day all over again. I cannot make the sound stop. There is nothing to do for it - no surgery or medication. Just learning to live with it, and that is what I have done. It is the thing that I hate the most in my life, and, if granted three wishes, it would be the first thing to change. For now, as I have for 30 years, I will live with it, and I will ask you to live with your noises in your head - the thoughts, the images, and the urges, and we will practice together accepting that things are not always as we want them, but we can handle that. We got this.
I need tips on how to really accept the uncertainty the ocd causes, even if it feels so bad like I might get in trouble for something , do I wanna be okay with that?
Share your thoughts so the Community can respond