I'm trying to study and I have a really difficult time making decisions so when thinking about whether to do old content or new ones my brain just said 'promise on your mum's life to only do old content until Tuesday' and that's really bad because I need to do new content too and now I don't know what to do
I would try to do some new content at least even if your brain fights it, it sounds like OCD’s trying to control you and it’s good to go against that however you can
I started doing this and disobeying the promises until I kept feeling like I was actually making something happen to my mums life, I don't want to do that :( also I keep making accidental promises like as soon as I wake up I have to pray and im always stressing because I have to go and pray and 2 different rooms as well and I accidentally promised to not pray for the rest of the day which I know will be impossible for me so I don't know what to do 😭
@Preena That sounds super stressful. Those promises you keep making sound like they are intrusive thoughts that keep coming to your mind and staying there because they make you anxious. The best way to get rid of them for good is to go against the compulsions attached to them—pray when they make you feel like you shouldn’t, do the content it tells you not to, go against the promises that OCD tells you you have to keep because they’re not yours they are OCD’s. It’s super hard because it hurts so bad to deal with the stress or cause more by going against those thoughts and compulsions especially when they attach those threats and consequences like they did with the feeling that you were endangering your mum. OCD’s not rational though, and its threats aren’t real. The more you go against what those promises tell you to do the more they will lose their power to stress you out and start to disappear.
@120 Thank you for your reply!! At first I found myself 'banning' all materialistic things taste touch, sound etc because in Hinduism they are ignorance/ distractions from God. For some reason my brain convinced me I had to give them up wherever possible to stop something bad happening to my mum out of ignorance 😭😭but then I realised I could overcome it by quickly promising 'on my mum's life to listen to music today's for example and it really worked and allowed me to live. But now I struggle with making promises accidentally 😭 I really didn't want to spend 10 minutes doing compulsions in the other rooms so I promised not to buy in doing so j accidentally promised to not pray all day and now I don't know what to do! Also the promises to God really do feel real and like God is listening. I genuinely feel like it's decreasing my mum's life expectancy 😭😭
@Preena It sounds like you’re dealing with some scrupulosity or religious OCD. Extra prayers and “banning” things to an irrational degree because it feels like they violate religious principles is a sign of that, and are things I’ve experienced with my religious ocd. As for the promises, it sounds like it started as a possible compulsion itself to avoid other compulsions but still ended up reinforcing the ocd cycle. It sounds like now ocd is adapting to use promises themselves as an intrusive thought to trigger other compulsions beyond the original ones. OCD is super annoying because it likes to play God in these scenarios and makes you feel like these obsessions are coming from God when they aren’t. The best way to stop ocd from messing with your faith is to do the opposite of compulsions without justification—the goal is to become comfortable with the things that feel taboo. Listening to music and telling yourself “maybe I am distracting myself from God” could be a good exposure, or disobeying one of the promises and telling yourself “maybe I am decreasing my mum’s life, but I’m doing this anyway.” Over time those will help the thoughts, accidental promises and anxiety stop bothering you and go away. It will hurt a lot to expose yourself to those triggers and the idea that they really are causing harm, but the more you do it the closer you will get to being free from the pain and meddling of OCD.
@120 Thank you, I really appreciate you response! It helped me put things into perspective. I can't believe that my OCD has convinced me anything to do with the 5 senses is ignorance that will cause anything I fear most to happen, it made it so hard to even eat or live. I'm 17 so I can't access ERP yet as I don't want to tell my parents but I think this has rlly helped :) I just feel like god can't tell what is OCD and what are real promises as well because they are based off things I really want to keep like ' don't do compulsions for a day' so I agree to it but I know I can't.
@Preena Yeah it sounds like OCD is messing with you a lot. OCD tries to adapt to stay alive and find new ways to confuse you. ERP is the best way to help, but it’s also good just to be aware that OCD is there. It will use any reasoning or explanation to convince you that its thoughts or promises are something to worry about.
@120 Thank you!! I think your right. I think OCD just took one thing from my religion which I could have control over and make me feel like if I couldn't sacrifice something like music I would be giving into ignorance and causing something bad to happen 😭 this explanation felt so logical to me that I even doubted if it was OCD because I'm not diagnosed yet. It means a lot for you to tell me it is! :) I am doing much better now but I just struggle with the accidental promises
@Preena Also I do think my OCD has adapted a lot. Before I thought I might have it I had common themes like counting and praying over and over again all day, health anxiety and doubting if I'm straight but as soon as I thought I might have it it changed and I don't get any of the 'typical' ocd themes anymore
Often times I find myself spiraling out in the morning about all sorts of things. When I try and catch myself and figure out what I am obsessing over it’s like it goes away. I haven’t moved. I have been sitting frozen on the floor because I can’t go to work because I am behind on work and I hate being late and I hate being messy but I am frequently late and my room is cluttered and full of stuff. I want to be good and move and go to work but I don’t know what is coming today and I hate my job so I know I will get bored and when I have nothing to keep me busy and engaged I like start thinking and taking an inventory of what is going on and then I will feel a sensation and what is the sensation? How did it happen? And I know that I will pick up the bad emotions in the office and get contaminated, I was really worried about things like this as a kid too I cried because I had to touch dirt in kindergarten. I know I am this way and I have been this way for a while but at the same time I think I might just be normal and like I don’t know why I get stuck in thinking like this. Then I begin to doubt that OCD is real because everyone has a brain with wiring and everyone gets stuck in thought sometimes. I feel disabled from whatever this is because I am stuck. I literally cannot move because I don’t know what’s wrong and I know I have to go to work even though I feel like every moment I spend there is making everything worse because other people are so stressed and I get it from them. And I don’t feel ready because I just feel off and something is wrong and I just don’t know what to do because if it’s OCD or not OCD everything anyone knows about me is coming from me and I worry that I am often masking all the thinking I’m doing because thinking all the time is rude and inconsiderate and inconvenient for those around me, but I can’t stop. I just don’t feel right, right now - and I want to know WHY?? Why is everything off all the time? How do I even know that I am not making up the experience of OCD in my head to cover up something really wrong with me and now I am taking on the symptoms of OCD like an actress, because this could be something that I can latch onto as a final hope for explaining why I am stuck. So stuck so deeply and terribly stuck sitting on my floor next to my bed just scrolling to avoid thinking because any time I start thinking I am left with no answers or help or anything just this swirly feeling. I know I am trying, maybe not my best, but as much as I possibly can. I want to be a Special Education Teacher but I have so much so so so much doubt and uncertainty about every decision I make and everything I know that I can’t get there right now. I can’t do anything right now until it feels ok and then I will. It never feels ok. I know I have to be ok not feeling ok about it. I can be unsure and still be ok. I know it’s just my thinking and my body but I just can’t get past this feeling. And then I know that because I can calm myself and be ok even though I spent 2 hours of my life today already feeling stuck and spinning around and around and around in my head - I don’t feel sure about my OCD and I think it’s a bit of a scam made up by people to cultivate pathology around deep human thought because one day I might figure it out and we all think a lot.
My OCD has found new objects that I should be scared or worried about and I have this urge to hide them or throw them away. When I’m trying to watch tv I get really anxious that I’m trying to focus my attention elsewhere other than being in my own head, trying to sort my thoughts out & when I say I don’t want something I feel like I’m in denial. Does anyone else feel like this
Nearly a week since I stopped in the middle of a compulsion and I still feel stressed and tempted to finish it. My throat, ears, head, chest, legs,arms, my body has been hurting since then. And if I finish it will it stop? But what's stopping me is.. I've been trying to trust God to handle it. Idk what to do rn, Ive been trying to set up a schedule for this week but it ended up not working out so I will try again next week, and School work I'm years behind (I'm in yr 10), I don't rlly have any friends either to help me. But anyways I try not to think about school that much since I have alot more to think about. And I don't even have any talent or anything I want to be I just want to be a good person but I'm horrible I just need to do focus on stuff Like getting closer to God. looking after myself. The OCD thoughts which. I can't do any of these tho because the OCD makes me so stressed I just want to hit the OCD in the face but I can't obviously so I do it to myself, And they make me want to do more to myself but I don't because ✝️ And I don't want to. Anyways I can't even do the basic things to look after yourself, and The OCD thoughts keep saying about death all the time, and illness. I don't like hearing it in my head all the time I can't do anything properly. And Those thoughts are active when I try read the Bible. Even when I used an audio bible. And a app where u read 1 verse at a time it's still hard. But basically what do I do My throat keeps feeling weird like burning without the feeling hot ughhshsheh I don't want to go back into that life when I was 12-13 where I was worrying about my health and checking with doctor all the time
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