It certainly sounds easy. But what they don’t tell us is how excruciatingly difficult it is. How terrifying it feels. How you feel like you need to drive right then and admit yourself because you feel like you’re going crazy. They don’t say how your brain feels like it’s on fire and how all your worst fears feel like they are about to happen.
Some of the therapists at NOCD have ocd and know what we are going through. They will show up on the YouTube show that Dr McGrath ( probably spelled that wrong) hosts as his guests. It does suck though. But we can handle it. We have too. Can’t let that prick OCD win. On the bright side, as you recover you will noticed you can deal with normal everyday things like a champ. Once you see how scary the mind can be , real life things are not as scary 😁. We’ve seen real fear you can’t walk away from or turn off or shut out. My therapist said some of the people that handled the initial Covid outbreak the best were folks who recovered from contamination ocd. They were sitting around fine while watching non ocd people lose their minds.
@I’m Batman You’re right! We can’t let it win. Sometimes it feels like I can’t do it but then I come out on the other side. It’s crazy how it works
@I’m Batman Honestly I think about this all the time. Like when an actually bad situation is happening I am like usually pretty good at handling it. I tell myself it’s because I deal with my own hell in my head all day everyday 😂
@Anonymous Exactly! Once I leaned I could sit at a level 10/10 anxiety that my own brain was putting me through and handle it … sitting behind some asshat in traffic that can’t drive is not as big a deal 😁
Yep. I just did a hard ERP and I’m feeling so full of shame, guilt, anxiety. So tempted to ask for reassurance and pray. But I won’t
@Anonymous I’m proud of you. I was driving home and literally was freaking out. My head was on fire. All I wanted to do was pull over and reassure myself. But I kept driving and just sat through it. It sucked so bad.
@Catlove9 That’s exactly what we are supposed to do!! I wanted to ask for reassurance so bad but didn’t. It was terrible
Has someone who did erp and it worked well I understand the feeling if your anxiety is too high try doing something a little lower o your hierarchy and also realize it’s lies the ocd is lies and ocd is not rational you know it’s lies the only one who doesn’t know is lies is your brain so if you have to sit with the anxiety untill your brain gets the memo it’s ok and safe
@somename What about when you’re just triggered out of no where and the anxiety is high?
@Catlove9 When your not doing erp and your triggered coping mechanisms like breathing listening to music etc but when you do do erp don’t do coping mechanisms then once the erp starts to work you won’t need as many coping mechanism bc the verbal ocd will be less only way out of ocd is through it
@somename I do erp . It does work. Sometimes better than others. The hierarchy is key. At first I would start small and work my way up. Once I got the hang of it I told the therapist I just wanted to go full bore and would hit the hardest things. That’s not for everyone. But the faster you work up that list the more easy it for me. Everyone is different. Don’t get discouraged if it’s not going as fast as you would like. Remember ocd loves to shit on even a small win. But we have to celebrate the small wins too. It all adds up.
@Catlove9 Those are hard but it’s some of the best ERP you can do in my opinion. It’s natural exposure which is a good time to retrain your brain. As time goes on it gets less and less hard , at least for me and most the folks I’ve talked to.
Same here. Trying to expose myself and be casual and calm. Ocd comes in as all kinds of intrusive thoughts feelings images urges sensations but just trust in yourself and keep going
This is what confuses me. They say not to engage and to sit with the uncertainty because engaging makes ocd worse but at the same time they say if you ignore or avoid ocd that will make it worse..so..what do we do then?
@hopefulxmess I said the same thing at first. How do you acknowledge at thought without thinking about it. And now I am thinking about it and oh boy now I’m ruminating and now I just failed. Then ocd is like that bully standing there going Ha Ha . Then in therapy I learned it’s like this. Thoughts are always coming and going. That’s not the issue. The issue is the action you take after to relieve the anxiety that thought caused you. So someone wipes their nose and touches a door knob you need to touch. Now you touch it. Thought comes In “ omg this doorknob is contaminated and I’ve touched it so now I’m contaminated.” Ok that was the intrusive thought. Now we know that thought was there it’s acknowledged … now we don’t sit for the next 3 hours trying to figure out if we are contaminated. We don’t go and feverishly wash our hands or what ever your compulsion you did before to eliminate that anxiety. You are allowing the thought to be there but you are not problem solving for it. You are just allowing it to be.
@I’m Batman Thank you
Thank you for posting. This is exactly how I feel. I feel so bad. I'm asking for anxiety. Not praying or posting on forums. I've been talking into my phones voice recorder. I've been admitting my fear when the anxiety is there. It's one of the hardest things I've ever had to go to through.
@MissBee2440 Same. And it’s made me terrified and exhausted. Like I feel like I could sleep for days. It also makes me feel like I’m losing it.
I’m definitely having an episode right now. A few times I’ve thought about coming onto this app and writing something but then I spiral further and further and I forget about anything except what’s triggering me. Then I think about this app again and intend to write a post… but again I’m spiraling too hard to focus on anything else. But I finally ended up here because I got an email from NOCD. I opened it and read about someone who ‘overcame their OCD.’ It made me spiral harder, because I genuinely don’t understand how someone can control this. How do I stop? How do I silence my brain? I was told to sit with my thoughts and not try to divert them, but if I do that I have an extreme episode so bad that I feel disconnected from myself. I looked at myself in the mirror and it felt like my eyes were seeing someone standing in front of me and not my reflection. It scares me to think that I will be experiencing these episodes forever. I literally just put my phone down twice because I thought my cat was choking to death because he had a hairball (he’s fine) I just feel like I can’t see a way out of this. It’s not curable, and I don’t understand how someone can ‘conquer’ something that feels so out of control Obviously it’s possible, but unfortunately that reassurance doesn’t always break through the most awful thoughts Sometimes there’s nothing that can make me calm down, I just have to ride it out I hope there’s never a day where it’s so out of control that I can’t keep it in at work, and I ruin my own life by having a severe panic attack while I’m there and being fired. If I had the type of episodes at work that I have consistently at home, I would be so humiliated. It scares me. I’m trying so hard to be normal like everyone else. I just want to be happy. I just want to live.
feel like I’ve been stuck in this ROCD cycle for so long that I don’t even know what’s real anymore. Everything feels so heavy and confusing. I keep having thoughts like “I don’t love him,” “I never really did,” “I’m just used to him,” or “I’m staying out of guilt or fear.” They come with a strong emotional pull that makes it feel like I’m finally facing some ‘truth’ — but I don’t even know what that truth is. Even when things are going well with my boyfriend — when he’s loving, caring, affectionate — I still feel disconnected, like I can’t feel love or calmness. And then I feel guilty for not feeling what I think I should feel. I overthink everything: memories, how I used to feel, how I feel now, what I might feel tomorrow. I can’t tell if I’m just scared to lose him or if I’m trying to force something that isn’t there. I’ve read so much about ROCD and I know I’m supposed to sit with the thoughts and let them pass, but sometimes they feel so real that I don’t know how to keep going. Sometimes I even feel numb and that scares me too — like if I don’t react with panic, it must be true. I just want peace. I want clarity. I want to stop analyzing and doubting every moment. Has anyone else felt this way? How do you sit with this and not spiral? Thank you so much for reading. 💔
the anxiety is too much i can't keep still my chest hurts my heads full of thoughts im really struggling and don't know what else to do other than deep breathing and letting the anxiety be present
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