- Date posted
- 33w
I feel…
One minute I’m crying over the thoughts the next minute I’m “enjoying” the thoughts
One minute I’m crying over the thoughts the next minute I’m “enjoying” the thoughts
Don’t worry about the thoughts. You don’t need to cry over them, because they don’t mean anything. You don’t need to worry if you feel like you are enjoying them because they don’t mean anything. I’ll copy and paste something I had written on another post… Don’t ever fight the thoughts. This is very important for OCD recovery. ERP therapy trains us to never fight the thoughts. If you try to fight them off, they’re just going to get worse. My therapist explained it like this: Imagine a tree planted by river. The leaves from the tree fall off and float down the river. You watch the leaves fall, but you don’t try to stop them. You just let them float down the river. This is the same with ALL intrusive thoughts. It doesn’t matter if these are bad thoughts about God, violence, sex, attractions, etc. All intrusive thoughts are the SAME. You just let them fall off the tree and float down the river. Here’s another analogy: Imagine a swarm of angry bees around someone’s head. The bees can’t really bite or sting, but they are very annoying as they swarm around the person’s head. They’re not really harmful to the person, but they are disturbing just because they are there. This is the same thing as the intrusive thoughts. They can’t really harm anything, and they don’t have any real power. But they are distracting and disturbing because they are there. If you take a stick and try to fight them off, they’re just going to swarm around even worse and get even stronger. It doesn’t work to try to fight them off with a stick. They will always keep swarming. In the same way, we can’t fight off the intrusive thoughts. It’s impossible. Besides, the thoughts are meaningless, and they can’t hurt us anyway. So don’t try to fight them off. Here’s one more analogy: Imagine your little brother is always saying mean things to you. Sometimes he shout means things; sometimes he whispers mean things; sometimes he shows you ugly pictures that he has drawn. He’s always trying to tease you and always trying to get you upset, and he’s always saying horrible things to you. If you shout at him to stop doing it, he’s just going to do it more. You have to accept that you can’t stop what he says. But if you ignore him and don’t give him any response and don’t get upset , he will eventually get bored and stop trying so hard. It’s the same with the intrusive thoughts. You can’t stop them. But if you get upset every time they come into your head, you are giving them power. You OCD (like a little brother) is going to feed you more of the things that “rile you up.” But if you don’t get upset and don’t care if these things are coming into your brain, then you can go about your life as normal. In this way, you are showing that these thoughts really have no power over you. Your OCD will try to trick you into giving “meaning” to the thoughts by saying maybe you will like them or maybe you will accept them, blah, blah, blah, blah blah blah. Don’t listen to the OCD. Practice strict ERP no matter how you feel and no matter how the OCD tries to tell you the danger you’re in if you start ignoring the thoughts. The truth is the thoughts don’t mean anything, so you can ignore them. You can’t make them go away (like the bees), but you can give them no power by acknowledging that they are meaningless.
@Tea and Honey But the false attraction feels real!
@Beachgirl2024 OCD always tries tell you that this time, it’s real. It’s never real. It’s always false. So just make up your mind that you will entertain NONE of the OCD tricks. It’s ALL just false and OCD.
So recently my mind is trying to make me feel like I accept the thoughts, like I'm ok with for example loving X person. After I get a thought like that and I realize it I get anxious and, like right now, I cry for 1 hour+ on the bathroom floor. I feel exhausted and I want to know if I'm the only one having this.
I was practicing mindfulness for a little bit and then I just started to relax and just kind of take in just the sensations and sounds around me and I just felt good. I almost wanted to cry.
I don’t know if my hormones are extra wild this month or what, but I have been having so many POCD thoughts lately. It feels like I enjoy them in the moment, and then a few seconds later, I get this tiny flicker of *wait I don’t think I actually want to enjoy that.* It’s scaring me a lot. I was watching adult videos for the first time in about a year, since I had been avoiding them because of my OCD. I know they are not good for anyone, but I felt like i could (ironically it felt like a tiny win that my OCD had calmed down enough). But while watching, I had like 3 separate POCD thoughts. And it felt like I liked them. Like genuinely *liked* them. I don’t know if maybe my body was mixing up physical pleasure and mental pleasure, and then my brain inserted those not okay thoughts into the situation, which got tangled up with the pleasure responses I felt mentally and physically. It is all really confusing. I just feel so scared. I know OCD thoughts are supposed to feel real, and that once you get desensitized to the anxiety, they lose their power. But this feels like I am *actually enjoying* the thoughts, and that makes me want to cry. I’m scared that I actually like these thoughts when I’m really aroused :( Please help.
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