- Date posted
- 5y ago
- Date posted
- 5y ago
Sounds like you already know that the frequency and intensity of the guilt you're experiencing is inappropriate for the situation. Although our minds don't necessarily acclimatise to guilt the way they do to anxiety, guilt can be made stronger by resisting and arguing with it instead of allowing it to happen. Emotions don't always make sense but they do need to be felt so that they can stop popping up or controlling your life or state of mind. I wonder if you have a day totally free soon where you could focus on letting your guilt happen fully without arguing with it, reassuring yourself or ruminating about the situation or the past or the future or asking yourself or others for reassurance or looking for it. Just feeling the guilt. You can focus on the sensations of it in your body if you need something to focus on to prevent being all up in your brain. A whole day will probably be long enough to feel the guilt through until it's gone without compulsions. If you catch yourself doing a compulsion, try to come back to the body. You can survive the physiological sensations of guilt without doing any thinking about whether it's accurate, inaccurate, right, wrong, or means anything else. This should help your problem. I have had serious issues with doing my own compulsions and avoidance to stave off guilt as it's a very uncomfortable and worrying emotion, as well as getting so drawn into the debate with it that I begin to question myself much more severely. More rumination and analysing and memory checking only equals more opportunities for things to pop up which make you feel even worse or take you into worse self-doubt. In future when you feel inappropriate or overwhelming guilt, your responses should either be feeling it through as described, or doing the "worry later" method if you can't face feeling it, in order to avoid doing compulsions at all costs, including venting/confessing to others with more posts or asking friends to attempt to validate that the meanings attached to your guilt aren't true, as reassurance. Feel the guilt first. We're here to support you in that. Later comes the insight, and the beers and rants with the boys if you like.
- Date posted
- 5y ago
I have very similar feelings my ocd is mostly due to guilt about things I did when I was drunk. And I also have feelings of not deserving to be happy which is miserable. I’m trying to accept and embrace uncertainty like I always want concrete answers if I’m a good person or not but it’s not that cut and dry and I have to live with that uncertainty so it will lessen the anxiety
- Date posted
- 5y ago
Totally man! Like it’s so frustrating like I know I’m a good person. But it’s like because one person has said something ocd will latch on to it and fuck with you like I guarantee if you were to tell me the silly things you’ve done when you’ve been drunk - I would say oh don’t be silly that doesn’t make you a bad person at all! And vice verca!
- Date posted
- 5y ago
What? Man you were drunk! People say dumb things when they’re drunk all the time. If what you said hurt her really bad, why would she stay with you for another year? She’s just trying to find an excuse to justify why she was breaking up with you. You apologized, that’s what is most important. It’s on her for holding onto that memory. She needs to forget and forgive, not you. I hope everything goes fine with the girl you’re interested now:)
- Date posted
- 5y ago
Thanks for your reply man! The thing is so much happened too when we were sober about her attitude towards the relationship she was disrespectful undermining and made me feel like shit a lot of the time. It took the break up for me to realise this. But because when I’ve drank a bit too much and said a few things nothing awful though she’s used this against me in the break up which has made me feel like shit and that I don’t deserve anyone else. And now that I’m moving on I feel like my ocd is trying to hold me back.
Related posts
- Date posted
- 8w ago
Hey everyone, First time posting here! Wanted to share my story for some support but also to hopefully make others feel less alone. In short - my ROCD has made such a mess of my personal life. I was in a great relationship until spring of last year, at which point we separated mainly due to my ROCD. I struggled heavily with OCD about 10 years ago (harm based intrusive thoughts, sexual orientation ocd, etc). It took a lot of work but I was able to mostly overcome my struggles and truthfully, hadn’t given ocd much thought since then. I thought I was cured. And then 10 years later I am in a very fulfilling relationship with a girl I really love, but at about the year mark in my relationship things really changed. She wanted to have a conversation about next steps (moving in, marriage, kids, etc) and at that point my brain just went into panic mode and the ocd took over. From that point on, I was constantly scanning for red flags, felt very reserved when it came to any sort of statement or commitment and tended to avoid anything that would indicate I was committed to a long term future. It was not that I didn’t love it was just that my ocd was doing anything to keep me from making a big commitment. It eventually got a point where we had a big conversation about breaking up or staying together and my OCD convinced me that it was safer and that I would do less harm to her if we ended things, which was incredibly devastating to me. At the time I felt like my obsessing over small red flags were normal and that I needed to protect myself. I just had no clue it was ROCD. I spent the next 8 months missing her and kicking myself for my mistakes, and I eventually got the courage to reach out and see if she’d be willing to talk again, which she was. But the problem is, at this point I still didn’t know it was ocd. So when we talked again I was still plagued by ROCD as all the same thoughts and feelings came flooding back. We tried to talk through things but once again I was unable to make any sort of commitment to the future so it went nowhere. Once again, I am feeling very sad and angry at myself for not being able to handle ROCD. I feel like I let it control me twice and has robbed me of a lot of happiness and hurt someone I care very much about. I understand it’s probably not best to just look at ourselves with anger and guilt all the time but it’s hard not to when you feel like you just caused so much harm. Anyone feel like they can relate? Or if anyone is going through something similar I am happy to chat as ROCD can really be tricky. Thanks
- Date posted
- 7w ago
So i had really bad pure ocd but recently it’s been sooo much better but i’m in a relationship and me and my bf dated before about 2 years ago then we broke up and now we are back together but i’m having an issue where i will try to go back years and find something i did wrong and i really do not want to find anything to feel wrong about or guilty specifically something i may have done wrong to my boyfriend but the thing is i’m a good girlfriend and i’m very loyal so i don’t want to ruin something for me because of my past if that makes sense like i can’t remember doing anything wrong but my brain keeps going are u sure let’s look at all your interactions with people and it’s so annoying i just wanna live my life in the present does anyone have any tips
- Date posted
- 4w ago
I’m a 19 year old girl and I have relationship ocd. My bf (20) and I are in college and around 2 days ago he asked for a break via text and then we called after on the phone which was the last time we spoke. We’ve been doing medium/long distance (1-2hrs away from eachother). I’m his first serious relationship and girl he’s ever loved. He’s my first healthy relationship and he felt like home to me. We both date to marry and everything with him felt so finalized, as silly as it sounds. Due to life being life we haven’t been able to see eachother the past three ish weeks. During that time he became different, wasn’t as loving as he used to be, and I had to continuously ask him to call me and he only did once or twice for about 15 minutes. He’s incredibly busy and in a agricultural frat. Unfortunately, he seeks a lot of validation from his frat brothers. It’s funny too, because I absolutely hate frats since I feel like often, of course not always, but often, all frats are about partying and hookup culture. That’s ok, it’s just not my thing as that to me isn’t what I value. With my bf though, I still loved him anyway. My bf was different from the stereotypical frat guy douche. You truly would not guess that him of all people is in one. He has incredibly redeeming qualities - he’s so kind, always tries to do the right thing, is so gentle, hardworking, encouraging, sensitive and sometimes emotionally intelligent lol. Due to this he gets treated differently in the house and the brothers disrespected him constantly. He would literally cry about it in my arms or in his car multiple times. When he was in my arms I was tearing up because it hurt me to see him like that. It broke my heart, but he was always too afraid to speak up for himself. I got pissed so many times and said I will say something for him - I’d do literally anything for him to make him happy. It became very obvious to me that he’s seeking so much male validation to fit in even though he comes from a great family with two married parents, with his dad being an absolutely amazing person and two older brothers. Hes said so many times that he doesn’t belong at the frat and I agreed and would tell him it’s because he was too good for them. I think he’s changed now though, and he honestly wants to fully submerge himself into this frat. He’s also taking max credit classes and has a job. I’ve been working to transfer over to the school he is at and as of late I’ve been doing community college, doing therapy with NOCD, going to the gym, and finally getting a car and being able to drive. I find myself that in relationships I let the other persons mood define mine, and I minimize my needs to make them happier. I wish I wasn’t like this and that I was a normal person. I care so deeply about him and want the best for him and I. I think he saw that flaw in me and with the combined stress of us being busy and not seeing eachother, thought it was time for a break. We called after he sent the text and I sobbed and acted a fool on the phone and I was absolutley pissed st first but only because I care. That was our first phone call in a while. He was crying and sobbing and calling me baby and the last thing we said to eachother was I love you, with him initiating that. Not too long after he was quick to take a lot of our posts down and stop sharing his location. So I did the same, and then just deleted all of my social media. I don’t know if he unadded me on anything, I don’t want to know and I don’t want to see his posts. I don’t think he has any idea as to what he’s doing. I’ll never forget when I was his date to one of his frat formals and I spoke to an alumni for a long time. He said to my bf waiting for me while I was in the bathroom “you got a good girl, take care of her”. My bf told me after that happened, because it was sweet, but I don’t think he honestly knew what that man really meant. Because I think if my bf did understand; I wouldn’t have to practically beg him to acknowledge me with a “maybe we could call” text for weeks, he would’ve directly thanked my mom for all the gifts I bought him using her money, he would’ve actually looked my mom in the eyes when he’s talking to her, he would’ve made sure that with intimacy my needs were also satisfied - not just his, he wouldn’t have told me what makeup style I should wear and what celebrities/traits he finds attractive in other girls even though I’ve voiced I’m uncomfortable with it, he would’ve shown more interest in my hobbies and likes the way I did his, and lastly, he would’ve been more courteous about my feelings and put his ego aside. I mean I’d literally watch hour long videos about fucking warhammer even though I thought it was boring. I sent him an educational video about OCD that I don’t think he ever took the time to watch. Which hurts, because he knows it’s something about me that I discovered during our relationship. Meanwhile, while I have stuff to work on like every person ever, I understand that I don’t need to fit into a group to feel complete. I’ve been authentically myself, flawed and all. I’m not afraid to show my problems to people. I don’t think I’m better than him because I’m like this, but I think that’s where we’re at right now. He hurt me so much and if/when he decides to come back is when I let him. I want him to regret this and for us to work out, but only if there’s change. He said we should work on ourselves and I agree. I’m slowly feeling better, but this took so many people by surprise especially his brothers gf who I was incredibly close to. She also has OCD funnily enough, and we’ve privately bonded over our bfs just not understanding OCD or going to each other for relationship/self care advice. I don’t know what to do, he was home to me. I love him, but I don’t love his actions and I deserve more. I hope he realizes what he’s missing out on, regrets it, and truly understands my value.
Be a part of the largest OCD Community
Share your thoughts so the Community can respond