- Date posted
- 5y
- Date posted
- 5y
Same here I used to get confused about the same things. Obsessions are your intrusive thoughts, urges, images, fantasies etc. Compulsions are what your ocd tells you to do, when your intrusive thoughts come. We should never do compulsions, because they are the thing your ocd tells you to do when you get the thoughts. You don’t have to stop the thoughts, just ignore the intrusive thoughts. What are your thoughts like?
- Date posted
- 5y
I will start thinking about a time someone wronged me or hurt me and I will replay the conversation over and over and over in my head. I thought replaying the conversation was the compulsion, but then it started feeling intrusive. I think the ocd is telling me to ruminate about what happened. I’m scared that if I accidentally try to stop the wrong thoughts, I will end up making the ocd worse.
- Date posted
- 5y
@Nattt “Fantasies” shouldn’t be included. That’s something you enjoy<
- Date posted
- 5y
We shouldn’t let compulsions or obsessions in our mind, I ignore both of them because both are apart of the ocd cycle, and they make ocd stronger if we do them or focus on the obsessions
- Date posted
- 5y
The intrusive thoughts are the ones that you don’t like, that hurt you in a way, that you think are not good and etc. Those are the thoughts, when you get any of those thoughts I think they are ocd thoughts because they are intrusive. So dont worry, try to not think about any of those intrusive thoughts. Try to remove your focus from them. If it’s possible, you can write some thoughts on a paper and come up with a positive line for example : Thought :She hurt me Positive thought: I can’t keep on crying about it now, time has passed by. If she hurt me, I shouldn’t care cause she probably didn’t deserve a great person like me
- Date posted
- 5y
I'm not the one to say someone is wrong and I am not a mental health professional but in my research what your saying is detrimental and will not work. Blocking the intrusive thoughts or distracting yourself from then will only make them come in stronger and leave you less equipt to deal with the anxiety when it comes. As I researched you should do a recovery therapy called ERP, look it up it will help you.
- Date posted
- 5y
The obsessions are the spontaneous thoughts that cause distress. For example "ohhh you looked at his crotch. You just be gay!" The compulsions are the thoughts you use to try to decrease the distress. These might be reassurance "no, I'm not gay, I love women", reviewing memories for evidence for or against the fear "remember how tingly I felt when I first met my wife" or "there was that time in elementary school when I kissed my best friend tommy on a dare, maybe I really am gay", checking thoughts "I'll look at gay/straight porn and see whether I get aroused", pushing thoughts away "no! I won't think that!", etc. In general, thought stopping (ex the stop sign technique) and thought replacing (replacing negative thoughts with positive ones) is a slippery slope in OCD. Those behaviors quickly turn into compulsions
- Date posted
- 5y
It all just becomes a big jumbled mess in my head in the moment. It’s gone now though. I took a nap and I’m feeling better. It’s just frustrating when it gets like that.
- Date posted
- 5y
The only thing you need to stop doing is the compulsion but in term of figuring out which is which I'm not sure in your case
Related posts
- Date posted
- 25w
Does anyone else find that their compulsions actually make their OCD/obsession worse? I don’t mean in the obvious way, like that it strengthens the OCD cycle, I mean in the way that when I perform my compulsions, they make my anxiety so much worse in the moment. My main compulsions are ruminating, arguing with my thoughts, and memory reviewing, but they all just end up giving me more intrusive thoughts/questions, making my anxiety more intense, and making me think my intrusive thoughts are real. I’ve always read that you perform compulsions because they bring you relief, and I suppose for me, they more make me feel like I’m working towards “solving the issue” or “answering my question”, so then is that my version of “relief”? In reality, it just makes my anxiety worse because the more I ruminate/memory review, the more jumbled together and foggy my thoughts/memories become, which in turn makes me think that if I ruminate/memory review just a little more, I’ll be able to “push through that fog” and find my answer, which then also causes me anxiety because my brain feels foggy and hence makes completing my compulsions/figuring out my obsession impossible (which I guess is good because I’m not supposed to complete my compulsions). All of this is making me believe that I don’t have OCD and that my intrusive thoughts are true and that’s why I can’t shake them and that’s why I feel the need to figure them out and why I feel so foggy… Or is this just meta OCD playing it’s devious tricks on me? Has anyone else experienced this or is this not OCD and I should be concerned that my obsession is true?
- Date posted
- 19w
I’ve been stuck in this cycle for the last month or two and am not sure how to get out of it. Basically, I will work on ignoring the thoughts and not responding or engaging plus limiting/completely eliminating compulsions. After a week or two of constant work, the amount of intrusive thoughts in a day goes down. The anxiety each thought causes also goes down with some, but not all, thoughts passing without notice like they would for a normal person. The thoughts that do stick cause anxiety and make me want to ruminate or do other compulsions but I make sure to limit them. After a bit, I’m in a pretty good head space. This is usually when it goes down hill. I’ll start to question if I even have ocd because some of the thoughts (once again not all) pass without notice. The difficulty resisting compulsions goes down and so does the anxiety, only increasing the questioning. I spend a while questioning if I’ve ever had ocd in the first place and then something sets me off or the questioning itself becomes a trigger and I get stuck back into the same ocd cycle with constant rumination, anxiety, and other compulsions. This lasts for a week or two before I know I need to stop and try and work hard to get back to ignoring the thoughts. And the cycle just restarts over and over again. Does anyone have any tips to stop this from happening? It’s really harming my recovery as every few weeks I dive back into the same negative place I was.
- Date posted
- 18w
I honestly can’t tell when thoughts are being affected by OCD. Sometimes I think I have what I think are normal “grey” thoughts, but then OCD adds so much weight to them and I spiral. I had this thought that I wished my boyfriend was more confident or independent. I felt so guilty for thinking it. I told him, and of course it hurt him. He told me it’s a normal thought to have, I just dwell on it too much. And that it’s the kind of thought most people keep to themselves. That’s the thing. I don’t know what’s okay to keep to myself and what isn’t. I think sometimes I say things out loud not just to relieve anxiety, but because I genuinely don’t know what’s okay to think or say. I do not know the line between a normal grey thought and something that’s “bad” to think. I don’t know how to tell if it’s something I should process privately or something I need to be ashamed of. I get this confusion with intrusive thoughts too, but those are easier to spot and evaluate. This is harder, because again, it is *my* thought. That makes it harder to sit with. Maybe the intrusive part is the voice that questions what kind of person I am for even thinking it. I don’t have the same telltale signs anymore. My physical anxiety isn’t there anymore, it’s all in my head and that makes it so much more confusing. But I don’t know. The line between honesty vs compulsion is so blurry. I just feel lost
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