Soooo maybe a bit TMI, but I just struggled to take a shower because my mind was convincing me either a shark or, and this is just recently, that a ship propeller will just come out of nowhere and kill me! Does anyone else have these wild creative messed up images? It got so bad I had to cut my shower short!
Practice saying “maybe the *insert worst possible scenario* will happen.”
@Anonymous That would literally send me into a panic 🥺
@Rhiannon I know exactly what you mean. https://www.treatmyocd.com/blog/pure-obsessional-ocd#h-what-s-the-best-treatment-for-pure-ocd What’s the best treatment for pure OCD? “Even though pure OCD is not always noticeable from an outside perspective, it is still treated like all other OCD subtypes: with exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy. ERP is an evidence-based form of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) developed specifically for OCD. For pure OCD, a trained ERP therapist will be able to help you identify your mental compulsions and work with you to come up with the best course of treatment for exposure and response prevention. “If you’ve ever tried not thinking about something, you know how difficult it is to control your thoughts. ERP therapy takes the opposite approach—instead of trying to make yourself stop your obsessive thoughts, you welcome them,” says Dr. Farrell. Let’s say that each time you’re driving, you can’t stop seeing mental images of your car running over a pedestrian. This scene starts appearing in your mind every time you drive past a school or busy street downtown. As a way of coping, you’ve started counting to seven in your head each time you see an image like this. This strategy worked at first, but lately it has been less effective. So, as a way to take extra precaution, you’ve decided to count to 49 instead of seven. Dr. Farrell says he may ask someone with these intrusive thoughts to welcome the intrusive image of running over a pedestrian without trying to make it go away. “You might think, ‘Welcome it? No way! That’s terrible. I just want these images to stop,’” he shares. But instead of trying to suppress them, a therapist may ask you to put your full attention on these thoughts. “This teaches your brain a new response to your intrusive thoughts and shows you that they don’t have to keep you from living your life,” Dr. Farrell explains. ERP helps you build tools to distinguish yourself from your OCD thoughts, making it far easier to let them come and go without engaging in compulsions or avoidance. “When I lead collaborative treatment with people who struggle with pure OCD, I find that the tools they develop can last for a lifetime, entirely changing their relationship with uncertainty and anxiety,” Dr. Farrell shares.”
@Anonymous You could try writing a story about the propeller coming out of the shower. Ask ChatGPT to write a worst case scenario with it, and repeat it until it isn’t as distressing. It’s desensitizing yourself to it. Try to accept that thoughts are just thoughts, you can’t control them, and they don’t mean anything. You could also respond “i dont have to figure that out right now” instead of “maybe that will happen” if thats too much right now. Humor also helps.
Not to this extreme. But I start thinking about my large head and how it's going to tangle my hair and sometimes I can't feel my head. I start getting So scared I can't breathe to the point of nausea. And I think I need to get out of here. I've actually had to hold the wall because I got so faint one time. I hate this. I used to take extremely long showers and multiple times a day. Now they are short and much more rare.
@Anonymous Yeah, I can’t take a long shower because of this fear! Or they are long because I literally have to get out of the shower for a bit and try and calm down! It’s crazy to think that our minds can do this to us
@Rhiannon It's been debilitating. I shouldn't be afraid to take a shower.
@Anonymous I know what you mean. It’s a horrible thing
So I've been looking at another OCD forum, and they are recommending the ocd contamination workbook. I didn't know there was such a thing. Here is the link if interested. It has to do with being clean, things being dirty etc. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DFW7LHW7?fbclid=IwY2xjawKImhlleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHjRlLHPuo8Bo-yLKKL_KMYiRNMCcYS6DHLKyDvje8EQyiDiqBj6Nr8BpM0PC_aem_onSPEdXi8DBEySktjmgXng
@SoTiredofOCD Thank you for sharing this ☺️
I’ve had many types of OCD, but I gained control over them over the years, but a new one has started to arise. Do y’all ever have scary thoughts about something you might do? Recently I’ll get extremely uncomfortable no matter where I am because I can’t stop thinking about “what if I screamed really loud in my lecture class tomorrow?” And other stupid stuff like that. Also, this one is kind of funny, but sometimes when I use the bathroom I pause before because I think “what if I’m actually in class right now?” I also cannot control the thoughts about past embarrassing moments. I know everyone does, but I will become visibly uncomfortable and harp on something from years ago. This happens all throughout the day. Also, does anyone else do things that resemble tics when you get these thoughts. Like when they happen I’ll curse under my breath or like jerk my head a little bit. When I’m in public I keep it low key but when I’m alone sometimes I’ll physically get up and pace or something when those thoughts happen. Just curious if anyone has had these experiences
does anyone else get really vivid intrusive thoughts of the person who you are talking to (or close to physically) just randomly striking you violently? i keep getting them when i’m just talking to my dad one on one in the car & i get a flash of intrusive thoughts of him grabbing my hair & shoving my face in the dashboard. it gets me so anxious :’)
Usually my compulsions are always motivated by fear. I feel like a child when I have compulsions. Like for example, my brain convinces me that someone is in my house and I need to open every cabinet and all the shower curtains, and do tons of other crazy things like march instead of walking so that if someone where to shoot at my legs they'd have less of a chance of hitting me. How do I stop it? I am just going about my day and I can see in my head, myself getting attacked or something and so my only option to calm myself down is to do a bunch of random actions that will keep me "safe". Does anyone else experience this? Or convince themselves that they are under Milo Murphys law? That anything bad that can happen to them will, so they need to never do anything that could result in anything bad, and avoid everything? And how do you convince yourself you're not in danger?
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