Hi NOCD users, I wondered if anyone is having difficulty separating yourself from your symptoms? We talk about this often during therapy sessions and within the ERP program. I understand that when you are dealing with these strong obsessive/intrusive, unwanted thoughts and images, it feels like it is a part of you! It is not a part you like or want. So many clients have shared how much they wish they could stop and how it feels like the OCD obsessive thoughts and compulsions are taking over their lives. They don’t feel like themselves anymore. This creates quite a dichotomy because what they believe can be the opposite of what they are thinking. How confusing this must feel! To believe in something so strongly and have your mind be telling you that you are the opposite in your thoughts. It can make you question who are are! This isn’t good for your self esteem/self worth. How much you like yourself and how valuable you feel as a person. Decreasing OCD obsessive thinking and compulsive actions is going to make you feel better. Staying true to who you are, not allowing the OCD symptoms get in the way of who you are inside. Challenge yourself to separate your “self” - who you really are including all of your beliefs - separate that true person from your OCD symptoms - they are just a thought and they are not real or factual. Let us help you separate yourself from these OCD symptoms, let us help you separate your true self from the uncertain thoughts. They are just that, uncertain. Learn to be more comfortable in uncertainty. We here at NOCD understand the pain this gives you and can help you by teaching you the first line treatment skills of ERP! If that sounds familiar to you, I hope this suggestion will help.

The subject of OCD matters to the sufferer because it feels like confirmation that they are fundamentally unlovable and unwanted—as if even existence itself doesn’t want them. They feel like an error, carrying a deep sense of guilt and shame, as if they were inherently wrong. They suffer from low self-esteem and a deep internalized shame, because long ago, they were fragmented and learned a pattern of fundamental distrust—especially self-distrust. But the real trouble doesn’t come from the content of the most vile or taboo thoughts. It comes from the fact that the sufferer lacks self-love. That’s why, when you begin to walk the road to recovery, you’re taught unconditional self-acceptance—because that’s what all sufferers of OCD have in common: if you aren’t 100% sure, if there isn’t absolute certainty, the doubt will continue to attack you and your core values. It will make you doubt everything—even your own aversion to the thoughts. You have to relearn how to trust yourself—not because you accept that you might become a murderer someday—but because you enter a deep state of acceptance about who you truly are. It’s not about becoming a monster at all. It’s about making peace with what lies at the root of the fear. Making peace with the guilt. With the shame. Making peace with yourself and the person you fear you might be. Because that fear is not rooted in reality. It’s not rooted in any true desire to act. It’s rooted in your identity—specifically, in what might threaten it. That’s what confirms the belief that you are fundamentally wrong. And OCD fuels that belief by using intrusive taboo thoughts to attack your very sense of self. But then I wonder: let’s say, for example, someone fears being or becoming a sexually dangerous person—how could that person practice unconditional self-acceptance? I would never accept myself if I were to harm anyone—the thought alone makes me want to cry. I know it’s not about whether or not someone acts on the thought. It’s about the core fear underneath it. So how do you accept yourself when the thoughts—and the feelings around them—feel so completely unacceptable ?

I am learning to shift my center of awareness from trying to control my obsessions to observing my obsessions…the art of detachment. When it comes to OCD, we need to no longer identify with the mind and instead zoom out as the observer…not a critic or judger of the mind who needs to figure it out, control it, fear it, feed it, but simply observe it. From there, our freedom lays. This is the gift of developing sacred presence. Not losing ourselves in intrusive thoughts, but transmuting them into presence, awareness, and choice…the choice of compassion in the face of compulsion, courage in the face of uncertainty, and love in the face of fear. Anyone else practicing this type of detachment from the intrusive thoughts and shifting into the observer of the mind instead of prisoner of the mind?

I’m having an OCD flare right now, and my brain is telling me “you don’t have a sense of self.” A few days ago, I felt confident and grounded. But today, my brain is looping on every reason why I must be “unstable.” For me, the things that trigger this fear are: • Looking back at past versions of myself and feeling like they don’t fit who I am now. • Cycling through different interests and worrying that means I’m just trying to “be someone.” • Feeling doubtful when my mood shifts (like going from confident one day to grumpy the next). Questioning my treatment choices: one day thinking I need OCD residential, the next deciding I’m fine sticking with my therapist. OCD tells me this back-and-forth means I’m unstable. • OCD telling me, “See? This must mean you have BPD.” Logically, I know people change interests, grow out of past phases, and feel differently depending on context. I also know I have consistent themes (music (specifically metal, electronic, rap (but of course my OCD makes me question if I really like it), horses, fairness, sensuality, authenticity, health, art, certain aesthetics… etc.). But when OCD flares, it makes me doubt everything and convinces me I have no solid identity. I’m also PMSing, tired, and hungry right now, which makes the OCD voice louder. It feels real, even though I can recognize it’s probably just OCD doing its thing. Note I also have ADHD + OCPD + BDD I have been told by four therapists and one psych that I do not have BPD. But of course “what if they’re wrong.” “What if they’re not telling me.”