- Date posted
- 31w
How are you supposed to face your fears?
How do I do it? I need help.
How do I do it? I need help.
Suffering a LOT. Believe me, u have to NOT do ur compulsions to make ur brain accept that if u dont do that nothing will happen, but u will suffer of anxiety attacks :( hope u get better!
But like what if it's a topic I cannot have doubt on? Like I need to be sure bc its really important. How am I supposed to face my fears if they are like rocd?
@misereri Its complicated af. An ocd says im going to d13 in 21 days and the compulsion is imposible to realize
What are you struggling with?
I did some posts explaining my situation already, I don't know if you can see them Tho. Let me know so if u can't I'll text it again.
@misereri Is it the post explaining what happened in your relationship?
@nae nae Yes it is. It's my bday today and it's been really awful
@misereri Well, first of all, Happy Birthday! Despite what you're going through and what's happened in the past, you deserve to enjoy this special day. You deserve love, and you deserve happiness. Onto the topic at hand... You acknowledged that you made a mistake and apologized to your boyfriend. It's great that you accepted accountability, but you are also a victim. Correct me if I'm mistaken, but this guy took advantage of you... That's horrible, and I'm sorry you went through that :( The other comment is correct that the first step to minimizing these intrusive thoughts that are causing you to question or doubt the relationship you have/your feelings towards your partner is to practice resisting compulsions. Identify what those compulsions may be and focus on preventing them. Even if it's just by a couple of minutes, that's still progress... When we act on compulsions to relieve anxiety (avoid what's making us anxious, confess, seek reassurance, etc...), we're feeding into the OCD and the intrusive thoughts. It's training our brain that they're "important," and in return, it'll send them more often.
@nae nae How do I identify them?
@misereri Well, what are things you find yourself doing to ease the anxiety? Usually, it'll feel like something you NEED to do. Like the examples I listed above. One could be experiencing a distressing thought and immediately going to confess that thought to someone or asking for reassurance, like, "Does this thought mean I'm a bad person?" or "Do you think I'm a bad person/dislike me?" Something along those lines.
@nae nae Yeah I do like I need to say" no" in my head like I don't even know what I do I get on this app sometimes and post and post or ask chat gpt or reassure myself.
@nae nae I feel that if I don't say no or find an answer to the thoughts then I like them or something.
Everytime I do exposure therapy and even if it ends up good I get more nervous for the next time. How do I get past this I really need some help please. Now I am scared to even move the car after I drove on the main road 2 days ago.
I've been told a lot that in order to get better, we need to tolerate uncertainty, which yea I get that and I'm trying every day more and more to reach that point!! But I've also been told that we need to tolerate uncertainty AND "our worst fears becoming true". Like how does that work, especially with POCD, OCD about a///ault, SA and all of that? Like that is really difficult for me and I don't really understand how I'm supposed to just shrug stuff like that off
Just noticed something that helped me today. I was having the realization a lot of my issues stem from me not taking responsibility for my own life, and also not recognizing my own self-limiting beliefs (SLBs) and automatic negative thoughts (ANTs.) In doing this, I learned that the only way forward is confronting my deepest darkest fears head on and associated irrational/self limiting beliefs- and that for years and years, I have simply retreated and run away. One of my deepest darkest fears (one of my obsessions) is rooted in the understandable fear of the worst of humanity, and the 'what if' I was that (like many of us.) I actually can have compassion for myself because it is perfectly okay to be scared of the worst of people, and if something like that is perpetuated throughout pop culture-media- it would make sense to have associated thoughts about it. The fear is that I am a serial killer or have motives of one. And the OCD has caused me to constantly question my motives and actions to no end (how OCD latches on- makes you look for evidence where there is none.) For the longest time, I have been convinced I am one, and need to hide myself from the world, avoid people more than just because of social anxiety, what my main anxiety was back then. I look for signs everywhere- and the OCD latches on to any perceived (not real) evidence that I am one, that people think I am one. When I decided to confront this fear rather than run away like I have for years, it made me realize it is just a fear- it has nothing to do about who I am as a person, despite how strong the OCD tries to convince you otherwise. It is so sad how strong OCD can be, to make so many of us good intending people be convinced that they are something horrible. Anyway, I hope this can help people realize the best way forward is to confront it head on. It's akin to shining a light on the monster and seeing it for what it is - a goofy thing with fake prosthetics for a movie that isn't a monster after all- a sheep in wolfs clothing. It's just you have been running from it so long, your imagination has gotten so detailed about how horrible it is, hearing its fake growls, instead of turning around and blasting it with a spotlight. This is I guess what ERP is about. For me, one of the struggles with ERP and a specific exposure is that the OCD will jump to a different obsession , which then tells me ERP is a waste because Im not confronting the 'most recent' fear. This is faulty thinking though- because the solution is to confront the fear, not the specific thought. By doing that, you learn to not run away and do all the compulsions in your mind. Tl;dr- long winded post about me realizing how I have actually been avoiding the solutions (ERP) and making up reasons to not confront my fears this whole time. I have been running instead of shining a light on the sheep in wolfs clothing.
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