- Date posted
- 40w ago
Compulsions
How can i reassure myself (comfort) if i am angry and upset about having compulsed when i am not supposed to either compulse or reassure myself?
How can i reassure myself (comfort) if i am angry and upset about having compulsed when i am not supposed to either compulse or reassure myself?
You kinda have just keep going and try again to not do the compulsions. It takes hard work to stop doing compulsions it will not happen over night. Let it go if you miss up and just try again. With ocd you can be hard on yourself and get mad if you are not make progress fast enough. But just keep trying and you will slowly improve. With ocd you want to fix things right now but sometimes things take time and patience and you have just wait and keep working on it.
I'm not a therapist, but I've questioned myself about this before as well. What made me feel more comforted was simply accepting the fact that I have compulsed. It was me realising that this is the reality and no amount of self-blame and insults will help. When i realised that it's okay to feel angry and upset about it, I felt better and more at peace. Another thing that comforted me (especially with the anxiety that came with performing conpulsions or having obsessions) was accepting uncertainty. Telling myself "maybe so, maybe not. It's okay to be uncertain" helped me :) We're in this together :D💞💞
@cherie/hachi Thank you
@jgumucio No problem! And remember, thoughts are not morals :) You aren't crazy either
@cherie/hachi Needed that; thanks.
I am not looking for reassurance; I am looking for legit answers.
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.
I cannot for the life of me stop ruminating or checking how I feel about thoughts or focusing on thoughts or creating more thoughts. I feel like I’m losing my mind. I want to scream. I try not to ruminate about the thoughts, but trying not to just makes me think about them more. I try not to check, but somehow, I still check. I want to let a thought sit in the background, but the more I try not to focus on it, the more I end up focusing on it. I don’t want the thought to expand because that feels like engaging with it, but I can’t just stop it from expanding. It feels impossible. People keep saying I’m in control of my compulsions, and maybe that’s true for the physical ones. But when it comes to the mental compulsions, I swear I have no control. It feels like I’m missing something that everyone else seems to have, like there’s some tool they’re using that I don’t have. Controlling mental compulsions has never felt possible for me. I’m starting to fear them. And every time someone says I’m in control and can just choose not to do them, I end up beating myself up even more when they happen. Or when I *choose* I guess. I don’t know anymore. If this is my fault, if I’m responsible for this, then what does that make me? I feel like a monster. I am at my wits’ end. How am I supposed to control mental compulsions when it feels like they control me? I freak out when they happen. They don’t bring me relief, they just make me panic. I want it to stop so bad.
When I was a child, before I knew this was OCD, I struggled with constant "magical thinking" compulsions (don't step on the crack or mom's back will actually break, etc). When I later learned this was OCD, it almost immediately solved it. Any time I got a magical thought, I would say to myself "that's just an OCD thought. ignore it." and it just stopped coming! Like seriously it fixed the magical thinking stuff forever. But of course the OCD has resurfaced in other ways. So naturally, I've tried to use the same strategy since I had so much success with it previously. But I wonder sometimes if telling myself "that's just OCD" is almost functioning as a reassurance compulsion? I hate how meta this gets. For example, I have ROCD that comes and goes. So sometimes I'll get a thought like "what if i'm still in love with my ex?" and then I'll tell myself "that's obviously just an ROCD thought" and will feel relief, almost like reassurance. But it comes back. So is telling myself that it's OCD a reassurance compulsion ?? It's just so weird because it worked so perfectly as a kid with the magical thinking thing.
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