Ive recently been having a lot of intrusive thoughts again and Im scared it’ll make everything catastrophic for me at work since I work a lot with people. Like what if I say something completely inappropriate or cant think fast enough in a high stress situation?
The "What if..." is the enemy of the anxious people. When anxious, I almost never see a 'What if' that is positive. No one has ever come to a session with me and asked, "What if everyone likes me and thinks I am awesome?" It is always worst case scenarios, like saying inappropriate things at work or not thinking fast enough. I hope that you have a therapist to help you get on this right away - there is no need to suffer here. If we can help, we would love to. Hit the therapist button on your app if you need access to an OCD/ERP trained therapist to try to help you.
This is a really common thought, you might be surprised at how many people have similar thoughts/worries. If your OCD symptoms are worse, consider doing a treatment course of ERP to tackle these thoughts.
That's so real. OCD can make us fear if we might say or do something inappropriate when around others. This is really common with OCD. And it sucks to experience. Please know it can get better. You can find relief so you can work and live your life in peace and handle high stress situations with more confidence. ERP therapy has helped me a ton with finding peace from this.
Learn to accept all thoughts and not try to get rid of them. If you are afraid that you might say something at work, try saying that same thing outside of work over and over until it loses meaning. Please contact NOCD and ask your questions. There are also lots of good tips on the Patrick McGrath Wednesday night webinar on the NOCD page on YouTube. Or really any NOCD webinar can be helpful. Go ahead and check out some of the videos. In addition you can contact NOCD for a free 15 minute call to discuss further. They can offer more detail than I can here. https://www.treatmyocd.com/about-us/contact-us
So i’ve been planning to apply for a job that i’ve always wanted to experienced and i’ve been looking at videos regarding that job. I was scrolling on tiktok when i stumbled upon someone on live talking about the job. i had a very bad intrusive thought and my anxious mind told me that in order to be safe, i need to find that exact live and fix the thought. i’ve been scrolling for the past hour and have not been able to find the account. my brain is not linking the job to the intrusive thought. why is this happening 💔
I'm so scared that by thinking about things I can make them happen. I know that's a central thing in OCD but I googled it and a lot of people actually say that if you think about stuff you can make it happen. I've been processing a lot of trauma and having intrusive thoughts about it and I'm so scared that if I think about people who hurt me it will make them contact me and it's making me feel really paranoid and scared and panic and I'm just so scared that I'm somehow conjuring bad people to come into my life and that I'm going to somehow get sucked back into my past or that I am somehow calling people close to me who could hurt me or that something bad is going to happen to me because my thoughts have been so scary and triggering. I'm also feeling really dissociated and I'm worried that these thoughts are actually me starting to have some sort of a psychotic break or something. Please help I'm so scared.
I struggle so bad with intrusive thoughts. They can be so bad that I'll cry because I KNOW that's not how I feel or want to do. (Too embarrassed to say what they're about) I'll constantly try to figure out why I have them, and constantly figure out what they mean, causing me to constantly circle around and around. I had to get on anxeity meds, which helped a little but the thoughts still happen. How do you help yourself with this? How do you know that you're just not some physcopath? 😅
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