- Date posted
- 18h
How does the uncertainty start to feel better?
I have moral OCD and worry a lot about if I’m a good person that people like to be around. I work really hard in my every day life to be super friendly and welcoming to everyone, having a good attitude and a good sense of humor, but in particular when something bothers me and I need to communicate it, or I need to give feedback at work, it feels soul crushing and like I’m a horrible person, especially if people aren’t good at receiving feedback and are upset about it. I also feel really guilty when I get an intrusive thought about someone else, in particular their appearance. For example, a person in a different team at work that I have a friendly relationship with gained a lot of weight since the last time I saw him, and I feel absolutely horrible for noticing, especially since I myself am very overweight, much bigger than him, and I don’t think it’s a bad thing to be a big person. For my ERP therapy last night we explored that specific example, and while saying that I noticed it felt mildly uncomfortable but manageable, but when having to accept that those thoughts could make me a bad person I couldn’t stop crying and am still upset today and am crying writing this at my cubicle desk. I also can’t look at that coworker today without feeling extremely guilty for bringing up something that he’s likely insecure about in my therapy appointment. I feel like if there’s even a chance I’m a bad person deep down that it means I deserve bad things to happen to me and deserve how miserable I feel and that I shouldn’t be a member of society, and that I shouldn’t even consider myself a human being especially since that means that me being nice to people has all been a big lie and deep down I’m just this rotten, terrible, miserable being, who on top of being that way is also a big fraud. It doesn’t help that this Saturday, Halloween, is my 5 year trauma anniversary of something that happened to me that I feel deep down I deserve because of who I am as a person. It doesn’t feel healthy or like a good path for ERP to make me feel this miserable and worse than I was before, and I’ve been struggling for a while before this, and I could see if I continue down this I might self isolate and cut off important relationships and elements of my life the way I have in the past when I’ve felt this bad out of fear of causing harm to others. Is there a way I can bring up to my therapist to do ERP therapy in a way that doesn’t have to do with accepting that I might be a bad person? Accepting that the thought is an intrusive one I feel fine with, but accepting that it might be true is so devastating to me that I absolutely cannot process that. Even accepting that maybe people were upset with me for a particular action is fine, but accepting that my fear of being a bad person is legitimate is too much.