- Date posted
- 7h
This is long snd im so confused with everything
I have been struggling with intrusive thoughts, scary doubts, and feeling disconnected from my emotions. My biggest fear is not knowing whether my feelings are real and feeling like I need to figure out what every thought, sensation, or emotion means. I get intrusive thoughts and images that feel disturbing, unwanted, and confusing. Sometimes I notice a body sensation that my brain labels as “sexual,” but it does not feel like what I expect a sexual feeling to feel like. It feelsunfamiliar, strange, or “off,” and I become scared that it is a new feeling or that it means something about me. When this happens, I start questioning what the sensation means, whether I liked something, whether I wanted something, or whether it says something about who I am. A pattern I notice is that I start checking and testing my reactions. I replay images or scenarios in my mind to see how I feel, focus on sensations to understand them, try to accept the feeling to see what happens, or see if the sensation comes back. Sometimes the sensation appears when I focus on it, but when I stop focusing, it fades away. After doing this, I usually feel more confused, anxious, heavy in my chest, or disconnected. I feel like checking gives me temporary reassurance, but it ultimately makes me feel worse and pulls me further into the cycle. Recently, I have noticed that certain scenes in shows or movies can trigger this. For example, I was watching a show with my sister and a scene involving kissing happened. Immediately, my brain asked, “Do I like this?” and I became stuck trying to figure out what I felt. I started focusing on the sensation and imagining the situation more vividly to understand my reaction, which made me feel a heavy heart and anxious. Later, when another romantic scene happened, I noticed myself getting stuck again and analyzing my reaction instead of just watching the show. I also notice that after getting stuck on one thought, my brain sometimes starts searching for more situations to analyze. For example, I may have an intrusive thought around someone close to me and immediately question what it means or whether I wanted it. These thoughts feel negative and uncomfortable, and the distress comes from feeling like I need to understand why my brain created them or why I noticed a sensation. I have also been experiencing periods where I feel blocked from my emotions. My personality feels the same, but my feelings feel harder to access. I can still have moments of warmth, love, excitement, and happiness, but then I question if those feelings are real. It feels like my head is disconnected from my feelings or like my feelings are not fully connected to me. I describe it as feeling foggy, like I woke up from a long nap, or like my body and emotions are trying to reconnect. A major fear I have involves my boyfriend . I love him and I worry about losing my feelings for him. When I am not checking, I naturally have moments where I feel love and affection toward him, especially when I see him, text him, think about his silly faces, his humor, our couch rotting time, and the little things I find cute about him. I also notice moments where I naturally want to care for him, such as when I thought about buying him a mini fan because he walks or bikes to work and I wanted him to be more comfortable. Those moments feel natural, but then afterward I sometimes question if they are real. When I start monitoring my feelings, I feel blocked and begin worrying that I do not care about him, that my feelings changed, or that I do not feel the same way I used to. I worry about questions like “Do I really love him?” or “How do I know I want a future with him?” even though I have moments where I feel happy imagining our future together, like having a cozy apartment, spending time on the couch, eating together, laughing, and doing normal everyday things. After a major OCD spike, I experienced a strong feeling of relief where I felt like I was myself again and everything was okay. I keep comparing my current feelings to that moment and trying to get that exact feeling back. When it does not feel the same, I become scared that something changed about me or my feelings. I miss feeling connected and certain. I also spent time in a daydream and replaying mode where I would imagine scenarios and focus on my reactions and sensations. Sometimes I felt stuck in this mode. I would sometimes drift into it and sometimes intentionally replay things to test my reactions. After doing this, I started feeling more emotionally foggy, disconnected, and worried that focusing on these thoughts changed my feelings. My main fears are that this is a new feeling, that I have changed, that I cannot trust my emotions, and that I will not love Erick the same way. I want help learning how to stop checking and testing my feelings, how to handle uncertainty without needing an answer, and how to separate intrusive thoughts and body sensations from my actual values, choices, and feelings.