- User type
- OCD Conqueror
- Date posted
- 5y
Same literal feelings today. This time it’s over if I resolved something or not with an old friend. I can’t remember if I did or not. Just know it will pass. OCD comes and goes. I’m thinking laughter, if we can find it, may be helpful? Self-compassion and self-love are at the heart of all of this.
Everyone has old themes, some of us have many... typically, at the very heart of it all, we need to forgive ourselves. Do you think that everyone you know needs to confess and ask forgiveness for everything they’ve ever done (& don’t forget we often punish ourselves for mistakes as if we intentionally hurt something or someone)? Remember, you can’t be there for your friends until you can start being there for yourself. I struggle with self-esteem because I feel it’s wrong for me to “like” myself. That’s OCD. I’ve been reading a lot about self-compassion and it has helped. Wishing you all the best - use that mind strength of compassion (that your OCD is trying to turn into confessions) to give yourself compassion.
If a counselors advice to you is to put it behind you. Past is past. It’s over and done. Find your tools that help you cope And use the heck outta of them
This sounds bad, but I feel I have to confess to each person in my life because I feel I don’t deserve to be around them. Like I’m not allowed to enjoy their presence.
Same for me. Magnification of real life. Assuming the story I have told myself is fact and likely. Going to worse case scenario and thinking I can’t cope. Wanting release from it and googling which is making it worse. Eugh so bored by myself!
My therapist helped me realize that all my Googling had become one of my main reassurance seeking tactics and reminded me that the thousands of google searches had not typically made me feel better. He asked me, as an exposure (& to validate my need for detail), that I limit myself when I google something online to only click on one result... it can be any of them, but just one. I can read what that one says and then I have to move on. May be something to try. And as all have said we need to give ourselves compassion. It’s like we’re in a jail cell and the prison door is wide open, we even have the key too (just in case). Everyone has long forgotten (or never even gave thought to) what we did or didn’t do that we’ve labeled as bad (whether it was or not). But we won’t walk out of the cell. We need to walk out of the cell and LIVE. We deserve to live.
I had a really hard day yesterday. I had a memory come up, of a thought i had years ago, when my OCD was still fairly fresh. I remember that i was fantasizing, and i had a thought pop in of one of my obsessions, and for a second, i think i may have entertained it- maybe even enjoyed it. I talked about this with my first therapist and was able to move past it, but it has remained one of my stickiest and most horrible thoughts. Yesterday i tried to think through it again, and i definitely had an arousal feeling. I have this terrible fear that i could enjoy my obsessions if i just let go. I don’t want to be the kind of person who enjoys these things. I have a life and a family that i love so much, i’m just so deeply afraid of being irreparably evil. I feel like i’ve done something horrible, and that it’s only a matter of time before people find out. I don’t even necessarily know what the thing is that i’m supposed to have done. My brain offers a myriad of options, of course, but i’m usually able to talk myself through them- or when i’m not, have a family member talk me through them. I’m afraid i’m fooling them all. I just want to be a good person, but i feel like such an imposter. I want to be loved so desperately, but i feel like anyone who can find it in themself to love me must be evil too.
Never feels like I can fully put my mind to rest. The problem with OCD for me is once I'm over one worry there's another buried deep into my mind that I'm not fully over. The two events I'm not completely over is when I tried to help a 17 year old with POCD when I was 19 and the topics unfortunately were detailed and even then I explained to them I wasn't comfortable with talking to them. I guess I just had a hard time saying no to someone needing help but it eventually made me so uncomfortable that I stopped talking with them altogether at some point. Then the other thing is being so worried that I committed a crime because my elbow touched someone's behind when I didn't want that to happen at all. I didn't want to listen to my OCD by saying move my arm or something horrible is going to happen so I didn't and then something bad actually did happen. I thought it would just be a light touch while zipping a bag up but then it was worse than I ever wanted it to be and it was so awkward and I hated it. I feel like I just won't be able to get back to the way I was before OCD started all of this. Aside from that I've just had extreme health anxiety but am too afraid to reach out to a PCP even though I need to. Something deep down is telling me I should do this but I'm just so anxious and embarrassed about sharing things to them. I can't even enjoy the things I used to do because this is constantly just messing up my life. I'm hoping I get a start of positivity next time I see my therapist. This just sucks. Feels like others around me are doing so much better than I am and I'm just kind of stuck on these same problems and feeling absolute shame and guilt from the past over and over again. I'm just so sick of dealing with this every single day so I just use escape whenever I can. Even that doesn't really work. I just wish I could go back in time.
So I have been struggling with the same theme of ocd for 4 months now. My ocd centers around past events/false memories that ocd skews to make seem bad or it twists my thoughts on what my intentions were. this is related to cheating or being weird while I have been in my amazing relationship. I have never cheated on my partner and never will and I believe it is wrong. But my ocd is telling me other wise. I love my partner so very much and I would never want to hurt him but my brain is getting to me. I was getting better. I was trying “maybe I did, maybe I didn’t”, I have been back on meds and in therapy and I stopped confessing random interactions from years/months ago about 1.5 weeks ago and it really helped. But now I woke up this morning and feel the pit in my stomach again. I feel extra critical and like why would you do this? What does this say about you? What was your intention with this? And I’m just stuck mentally reviewing and ruminating on everything you could imagine. I know my personality and I know in the moment maybe I did find them attractive but mainly I was just being nice or funny or even just a good friend, but looking back now I’m like “was it flirting?” “Why did I still snap this person” “why would I even talk to them” and stuff like that. I feel this intense sense of guilt. I have told my partner everything that I keep getting stuck on and he didn’t care, he said he understands or “that’s a little weird but it’s okay” and hasn’t missed a beat. He said eveything I’ve told him is normal and I’ve heard that from my friends too. I just really need help. I don’t know what to do anymore. I am so disappointed because I thought I was gonna be done with this, so why am I still so worried and caught up in this.
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