false memory, please help. I feel so scared

@Starve_The Monster2099 If I start ruminating about it again, then yeah, it will pop up. I will get anxious, panicked, and really compulsive. But it has calmed down significantly. I do not even think about it anymore, except maybe when I am super anxious, and even then, it is not a guarantee. I deal with it by accepting the uncertainty. Maybe I did something really bad, but that one potential mistake does not define me. We all deserve forgiveness. I have accepted that I am likely my own biggest critic, especially with OCD since it makes everything seem so black and white. I call it my own personal SJW extremist. In the end, it just took running away from the rumination to get better. It did calm down a lot, and I never thought it would. This was the one real event that made me depressed for over a week. I barely ate, stayed in bed all the time, and hardly moved. I cried and felt like I did not deserve anything. But forcing myself out of rumination helped. I know this might sound wrong, but you have to run away from the rumination, not the thought itself. The thought is going to hit you with a massive wave of dread, and you are going to want to analyze, check, recheck, rethink, and come up with all possible explanations, but run away from that. If you start ruminating about ruminating, or even just considering compulsions, stop that too. Or at least do your best, because I know it is not that easy. Try to catch yourself. The more you stop yourself, the easier it gets. Talking about this right now is actually making me feel really undeserving, but that feeling does not linger as long as it used to. It does not send me into panic attacks anymore. It took me about a month to finally let go for the most part, it is like I have the edge of my pinky nail holding on instead of my whole body, which is a big improvement. I am really sorry you are going through this. Please try to run away from the compulsions and be careful with the sneaky ones like considering ruminating, considering checking, considering going back to look at something, or asking someone for reassurance. Those are all compulsions too. You end up ruminating about compulsions, which then leads to actually doing them. Compulsions cause compulsions. We all make mistakes, and that is one of the biggest things that has helped me. Any kind of remorse, whether it is justified or just distorted by OCD, shows that we want to grow and change as people. So even if we do not know for sure whether we did something, or if the details in our memory are accurate, we still deserve forgiveness. We are human. And the fact that we feel this much guilt, even if it is caused by distortion, just proves how pure-hearted we are trying to be. That matters.

@issphra 🫶🏻 Wow thank you so much and your right this has been very helpful I had this for about 9 months straight fearing if I'm lying and being paranoid every time and when I read about people lying it triggers me and stuff and since I'm a Christian I'm afraid if I'm lying so tysm for this

@issphra 🫶🏻 Also I have a problem where I'm scared of lying to myself and hiding what actually happened and faking "not knowing" if you get what I mean I looked over this "memory" ik something happened bit like I can't remember it or it's just not there I'm scared if im lying because I'm scared if it's true and there was this one time where I thought it was true but I still had some doubt and it wasn't till I found out that memory's aren't always accurate especially if someone has ocd not to mention my memory is proof that idk what happened did this happen to you fear of faking uncertainty?

@Starve_The Monster2099 Yes, any kind of fear is usually OCD trying to worm its way back in. That is the whole thing with false memory. *What if I am not remembering it right? What if I did not put importance on it back then but should have?* Memories are unreliable. They are not proof of anything. OCD loves to convince you that your distorted memory or lack of memory is proof of something when it really is not. That is why we cannot comb through them for answers. That is a compulsion that will only make it worse because more gaps will form. I once described memories as a feather to someone else on this app. The more you rake through it, the more pieces will fall, and the less it will look like the original feather. 🪶 Fear of faking uncertainty just sounds like meta OCD. *What if I’m just trying to justify or excuse my actions?* You’re not alone in this at all.