@Mariabae It feels automatic because your anxiety is high and because it’s probably become a habit from doing it so often. That happened to me too, so don’t worry. It’s nothing crazy. Compulsions feel automatic when they turn into habits. The good news is that we can still learn to control them and change our habits.
So, when you catch yourself ruminating on how you used to feel, checking your feelings against past feelings, or doing any of the compulsions I mentioned or even ones you suspect, just do your best to stop. That’s really all you can do. And if you slip up and do the compulsion, don’t beat yourself up over it. Just try to stop the next time.
For example, I used to be terrified of my checking compulsions because they were POCD related. *Someone once told me, There’s no need to fear compulsions. If you catch yourself doing one, just try to stop.* That advice really helped me, so I’m passing it on to you. If you catch yourself doing a compulsion, do your best to stop. It *will* get easier.
I can tell you exactly when you’ll start feeling okay again. It’s soon after you stop doing these compulsions. You’re going to get better anyway, but if you don’t stop, you’ll just delay your progress. Once you stop ruminating, checking, testing, confessing, and all of it, you’ll start to feel better. It takes time though because when you first stop, things might feel worse before they get better. You might experience a spike in anxiety, but that’s normal.
The thing is, the longer you keep doing these compulsions, the longer it’ll take to get better. I know it feels automatic right now, but that’s just because your anxiety is high. The key is to stop when you catch yourself. Sometimes, it’s hard to even realize you’re doing a compulsion, but as soon as you recognize it, just do your best to stop.
Your OCD is throwing thoughts at you like *What if you were just pretending?* because you’re still engaging in compulsions. Compulsions are supposed to help us, right? That’s why we do them. If you’re scared of germs, you obsess over cleanliness, so you wash your hands because it feels logical. But compulsions don’t actually help. Yours, like constantly checking and comparing how you feel, are supposed to give you reassurance, but instead, they make you feel worse. That’s how mine work too.
If you keep engaging in compulsions, you’ll just get more intrusive thoughts like *What if I was just pretending?* And the best way to respond to that, if at all, is *Maybe I was, but I’m still going to choose to try to love him.*
Your brain is trying to convince you that your happiness in the past wasn’t real because that’s what OCD does. It does the same to me. It tells me I had no morals, that I never truly cared about anything. But that’s not true. OCD lies.
The reason you can’t clearly remember things is because you keep going back to check. Memories are delicate, like feathers. The more you comb through them, the more they fall apart. They lose accuracy. The more you revisit them, the blurrier and more confusing they become. And OCD will never give you positive possibilities. It’ll only feed you doubt.
So stop searching for clarity in your memories because all you’re doing is distorting them further. OCD is using that against you. It feels like you’re losing yourself because, in a way, you are. You’re giving in to compulsions, letting OCD have more power over you. But you can take that power back.
If you knew you were happy, leave it at that (even if you didn’t know, leave it be, leave it alone). Don’t entertain the What ifs? *What if I was pretending? What if I didn’t actually love him? What if I was just infatuated?* I’ve been through all of those before, and the only way they stopped was by ignoring them. And I don’t mean blocking them out. I mean letting them be there, maybe freaking out for five minutes, and then choosing to move forward anyway.
Because in the end, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you still want to try to love him. And that, in itself, is a form of love.
