Guilt

I’m struggling with this HARD right now. The way I cope with it is just telling myself that whatever I think I might have done isn’t something I was TRYING to do or INTENDED on doing. OCD latches onto the “what if I meant this or that” aspect of your mind and it’s better to think about your values and the fact that whatever bad thing you think you might have done, you weren’t trying to do it or didn’t mean to. I know how hard it is to live like that. I’m still struggling with it right now. But I think there’s just a time where we have to accept that we’ll truly never find a real answer by constantly replaying something in our mind. It’s just an endless loop of nothing but pain and making up more “what if” scenarios. It’s hard to do, but I guess we just have to find a way to truly move on from it and accept it. Trust me, I wish there was more I could say to help. But I hope you know you aren’t the only one struggling with those kinds of thoughts.

The maybe maybe not is very difficult. But i actually asked my therapist this at one point. Like... I'm doing this maybe maybe not thing, but what do i even do from here? Because when i go to the maybe it ends up feeling like my reality. But i don't normally feel like that. His response is that i still struggle with "thought action fusion". I end up thinking because i had the thought, it means that I've done something, or the thing happened. But a thought is just a thought. After you've done the exercise, you don't really need to stay there. You've thought about/said your worst possible fear. But nothing happened. You're still right where you are before you had the thought. You can move forward with your day, and if the panicking thought arises again, you can say "maybe this is true. Maybe not" because you dont need to solve the inner workings of the universe. I'm learning more and more that compulsions are less "what" you do, and more "why" you do it. Taking deep breaths and having positive thoughts are not bad or compulsions. But if you're turning those things into a desperate "I NEED TO DO THIS OR ELSE" and you cant move forward without it, then that's when it's a compulsion.

The maybe maybe not thing did NOT work for me either. I’m doing so much better now I was stuck in a vicious cycle for abt 10 months and I’m finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel. I use to wake up having panic attacks and not being able to eat at all during the day bc of the guilt and anxiety I was overwhelmed with. I had to learn that we can’t control intrusive thoughts but we control what comes after the intrusive thought. My issue was I would just get the thought and I would be the one to make all the things after that. One thing that did help me was asking myself is this something someone without ocd would even be giving a second thought. Also considering timelines like the thing I would ruminate on had happened a year ago, I would ask myself is this something a “normal” person would still be thinking abt, probably not bc it was a year ago. OCD is really really good at blowing super minute things out of proportion. Once I stopped doing compulsions my thoughts got so much quieter. Just being able to recognize when u start ruminating also helps. Don’t focus too hard on fighting the thoughts. Like if I told u NOT to think of a pink elephant what is the first thing you’d think of? Probably a pink elephant right. The more u think abt something the more your Brain labels it as important

Also just take into consideration science. Like think of your mind like a phone and storage once it gets full we delete things we don’t consider important or relevant anymore. It’s been proven that we only really remember 20% of our lives, and we actually change our memories subconsciously that’s why one person may remember something one way but u might remember it differently. Constantly thinking abt a certain situation or time period makes your brain think it’s extremely important so it won’t push those memories into the trash. Like there’s no way to prove 100% certainty just try to remember that. Also ocd latched onto what u care abt most, so if you’re constantly feeling guilty abt being a bad person or something that’s a pretty good indicator that you’re not a bad person.