Checking OCD ?

I've been in ERP therapy for a few months now because I have compulsions with checking my cars. One stems from my son being in an accident and totaling his car and then his next car having the same major issues. I would check repeatedly daily and multiple times a week. I down to 1x every other week and soon I will leave it all on my sons capable hands and not ask about it. For my wife's car I have similar compulsion issues. I have gotten better but there is a twist and this is where I need community feedback. Her car burns oil so it does need to be checked for maintenance purposes and oil doing a need to be added time to time. I've gotten down to check and fill once a week and not doing any compulsions and living with the uncertainty. There is a fine line between a compulsion and maintenance and my wife woudnt be doing this herself weekly. How do I manage this a weekly maintenance item and not a compulsion? Stretching to every other week or 1 a month might cause it to be too low on oil.

Zoë_84

Date posted: 40w

As making sure your wife's car doesn't run low on oil is important, I think not check enough could cause damage to the engine, or might lead to it stop working, when she's driving it, right? How about you contact the manufacturer of her car and ask them, how often the oil levels have to get checked? If it depends on how many miles it has been driven, tell your wife to let you know how much she has driven after you checked last. In my car - VW Golf 6 - I have a counter for the kilometers I have driven in total and I have another counter I can reset. If your wife's car is equipped with the same. Reset the counter whenever you fill up the oil and tell your wife to let you know, when she reaches the milage, when an oil check is suggested by the manufacturer.

Jarrod2750

User type: OCD Conqueror

Date posted: 40w

@Zoë_84 Correct on the assumptions. The engine Hyundai has in this car is notorious for burning oil. Most of other people with this engine type (Hyundai and Kia) will check once a week. Because of my compulsions I was checking sometimes multiple times a day, several times a week and I would recheck the levels, whether I screwed the cap on or put the dipstick back. Sometimes this would take 20- 30 minutes of my day each time. With ERP I’m down to once a week and 2 minutes or less if no oil is needed and 5 if I have to add with no rechecking. I still sit with uncertainty all the time but I don’t react. Through ERP we were going towards every other week but bc of the real issues I feel I need the weekly maintenance and it can be okay as long as I don’t make it a compulsion and sit with all the uncertainty. Owning this car doesn’t make ocd easy. Hopefully all of that makes sense

Zoë_84

Date posted: 40w

@Jarrod2750 So, if checking once as week is a sensible thing to do, I think it's okay for you to do so. To not get in to an OCD routine, like checking every Monday at 5 p.m. sharp - which could let to you feeling anxious, if you break the routine-, maybe switching it up a bit would help. Like sometimes have 5, 6, or 7 days between the checks and also checking at different times. Also you could sometimes ask you son to check, so you don't get in to the mindset, that only you are able to do it properly.

Jarrod2750

User type: OCD Conqueror

Date posted: 40w

@Zoë_84 That all makes sense and I like the idea of not having a schedule for the week and making it random in regard to my wife's car. Last month I asked my son to check his car every other week and I never ask him about it and.i told him I wouldn't. The exposure there is the uncertainty of not knowing if he is really doing it or not and sitting with that.

Zoë_84

Date posted: 40w

@Jarrod2750 That's a tough exposure not asking your son, if he checked his car, or not. It's great, that you are able to refrain from doing compulsions.

Cayla Davis

User type: OCD Conqueror

Date posted: 22w

My small OCD win

Hi all, I wanted to share an OCD win that I had this past week. I recognized and stopped a compulsion. I felt the urge to keep going with the physical compulsion of checking on my son before going to sleep to make sure he was still breathing and to pull the blankets down away from his neck, but I knew it was a compulsion and I used my ERP skills and didn't go and check. Even though my intrusive thoughts haven't been too bad the past few months, I still have them and still have my ups and downs. With me continuing with my ERP, I know that is why I am still on the upside of my OCD. Without it, I wouldn't have the skills to get through the bad times. What’s a small win you had last week in your OCD journey?

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

Anonymous

Date posted: 10w

Mental compulsions

So I've been working to address my OCD for about a month now. So far, I haven't been working on it with a therapist and have instead been trying to create my own exposure exercises. The primary obsession I'm working on is the fear that I'm somehow flawed or invalid on a fundamental level. The best way I can describe it it is that its similar to the feeling you get when you have germ OCD and you feel contaminated, except my whole existence and being feels contaminated, so to speak. I've identified a list of triggers, and a list of compulsions (pretty much all mental) that I've noticed myself performing. I started out by doing imaginal exposures and scripts where I'd write out triggering fictional scenarios and read them over and over, combined with mindfulness techniques to focus on my breath and bring myself back to the present when I noticed myself performing compulsions mentally. At first it worked to some extent, but eventually I started to feel like the stories I was writing about this obsession weren't triggering any anxiety anymore or a very low level. So I stopped reading them and focused solely on improving my ability to stay present and identifying compulsions as I perform them, and disengaging. Now, I'm at the point where it seems like my general anxiety levels throughout the day are lower, and the triggers I've identified are producing noticeably less anxiety. But that makes me wonder if somehow I'm just secretly doing mental compulsions without knowing it? Is only a month of rather disorganized and unstructured ERP enough to produce this much improvement? To avoid giving me re-assurance, I'd appreciate if you guys don't directly answer those questions, maybe just provide some possibilities or your own experiences so I can get a better idea of where I'm at. Any info would be appreciated. Thanks!

Be a part of the largest OCD Community

Share your thoughts so the Community can respond

Checking OCD ?

Related posts

Be a part of the largest OCD Community

Be a part of the largest OCD Community