So recently i had really obsessive thoughts about something and once i got over it i kept bringing back more stuff to make myself feel like a bad person. Why am i doing this? Why do i need to look for something else to burden someone with once they have forgiven me
This is such a classic OCD trick. Once we deal with one theme, it finds a new one. That's just how it works. Strangely, once we accept that this is how it works, it gets easier. Acceptance is the key here, as painful as it might initially seem and feel.
@OCD Helping Hand thank you!!
OCD only wins if you are going to keep doing compulsions. If you get over something, what is there to compulse about? Nothing. So, OCD needs to fabricate more "what if" thoughts or images or urges to get you to do more compulsions. The problem lies not in the item generation, but in the reaction. If you know OCD will just do this, can you accept that and move on, or must you investigate everything that OCD throws at you, just in case? I hope it will be the former, and not the latter. And, if you need help with that, click the therapy button on the app and we would be happy to assist.
OCD can and does change what it focuses on. I've experienced that too where for a period of time I'm obsessed with one thing, and that dies down but OCD latches onto another topic instead. It's not that you are looking for things to focus on... OCD is. That's the underlying issue. Through ERP therapy I have learned how to work with many different types of OCD themes I experience. It's always the same cycle of doubt and uncertainty underneath the topic on the surface.
I have made multiple mistakes in my past that lead me to believe im a bad person. thinking about them often sends me into a panic attack. i cant help but feel i need to be punished. i hate this feeling, what should i do?
So, I know my capacity to get fixated on things. And it's normally something that's relatively remote but, my latest issue is really getting to me and I was wondering if people have any advice. I'm avoiding getting too into specifics, as I don't want this to get reassurance-y but, in essence.. I came to the realisation recently that people who I'd been "friends" (feels like the wrong term now) when I was younger were not very nice people, and normalized a lot of very unpleasant behaviour towards other members of the group. They really normalized it, sold themselves as figures of authority, as older and more responsible and grown-up than others, and looking back, they acted horribly. And coming to this realisation, that I'd been manipulated into just accepting their behaviour has just... broken me. My OCD has latched onto it and I can't stop feeling irreversibly tainted by it. I've talked to others about it, and they've reassured me, told me it's not a big deal and that I hold myself to too high a standard, but none of that sticks. I feel better for a bit, then think 'Maybe when you told them you were skewing it to make yourself look better' or 'Did you leave out a crucial detail'. I keep ruminating over and over, trying to remember exactly how everything played out, trying to figure out if I fed into the behaviour, if I did something bad myself (because y'know, I feel like I was accepting of it at the time, so what does it say about my own values?). I know I need to stop doing all this if I want to improve, but then some part of me keeps saying 'So, you're just going to let yourself off the hook then?' Normally, I can rationalize my own fears to some degree, assure myself something won't happen, but the realness of the situation, and the fact I only came to understand the reality of it because the thought had been bothering me means it feels so much more all-encompassing. I know confessing in itself is a compulsion, but I keep feeling that if I'm not I'm somehow concealing what I 'really am' from others around me, and any positive interactions are me deceiving them in some way. I feel like I can't enjoy anything in life right now, and a good part of me feels I should not enjoy it ever again. If anybody has any advice on it, I'm all ears. Or even hearing if you relate to these feelings, I might appreciate the solidarity at least.
Everyday I wake up, all my mind makes me think of is the stuff I’ve done in the past, like all day I’m in a constant cycle of judging who I used to be and it hurts so so much. I wish I never thought to do those things, I wish I had been more mature than how I was before, it’s really lowering my self worth and I don’t think I’ve ever felt this miserable before, like last summer was the worst because I was dealing with this shit, I about almost ended my life over it, and I thought it would get better, which it did, but it didn’t last but for a while. As soon as it became 2025 I was going through it again, having constant cycles of “I’m a good person” to “I’m the worst person imaginable” and I’m so sick of it because I just want to feel like the good person l like to imagine myself to be, but I can’t because of shit I did in the past that I obsess over. I’ve cried and screamed so much over it and it seems like it will never leave me.
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