- Date posted
- 5y
- Date posted
- 5y
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
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
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
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
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
- User type
- OCD Conqueror
- Date posted
- 23w
I’m disappointed and upset with myself. Growing up in an immigrant household that didn’t believe in therapy as much, I mostly only really took care of my mental health when it came to playing sports. I was not a great communicator when it came to my feelings or being vulnerable with my partners and friends.The world makes you feel like it’s normal to not say what you mean and that you have to be indirect with a lot of the things you say. It caused a lot of fights, hurt feelings, and words I should have never said between me and my recently ex girlfriend. We had broken up about a week ago, but today is the day she said she did not want to talk to me anymore. I wish I did more than journal and meditate. I wish I got treatment for my OCD earlier, or just any therapy at all. I wish I learned to be better at communication way before I met her. Maybe I wouldn’t have lost her, maybe if I had been more honest and more direct about my feelings, our fights wouldn’t have happened. I wish I could have been more for her. I wish I could have been more for myself. I wish I took mental health, growing, and healing more seriously. I am disappointed for my skepticism and being okay with stagnating as a person. I should have healed and addressed my issues sooner. I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know how to move on. It feels like I blew my one chance to be with the one person I really loved and the first partner I planned on something really long term with. I feel both the weight and pain of disappointment in myself, and losing her. I know the breakup is hitting her too, and I am worried about her wellbeing. They say there are 5 stages of grief, I wonder what stage this one is. And I wonder how long it’ll take me to just come to acceptance. I want to be better. I want to not hurt people I care about. I want to be the man I am supposed to become.
- Date posted
- 22w
I would really appreciate it so much if someone took the time to read this and help me. I don’t know what to do anymore. I haven’t posted here in awhile. I had my OCD managed pretty decently for a year or so on medication, but I had to stop taking it, and after around 3-4 months, the OCD has become unbearable again. It used to be much more surrounding existential themes, eating, and others, not really real event/false memory stuff. But now it’s gotten really out of hand and I don’t know how to do it anymore. It’s surrounding a time of my life a long time ago. It was a dark time. I wasn’t myself and I was going through a lot of things, and I did a lot of things I regret. I self-destructed, embarrassed myself, and wasn’t good to the people around me. I was able to get my mind off of it for a long time, even though I would still think about it a good amount. I was able to be in the present, at least moreso than now. But now that I’m off medication, the guilt has become my obsession again. I can’t move on. I can’t do anything without thinking about all of these memories. I’m obsessed. I’ve started hating myself again, so much so that it’s hard to do anything anymore or believe I deserve anything good. The people around me tell me it wasn’t even that bad, but to me it was. To me, I failed myself, lost myself, and failed everyone around me. I can’t stop thinking about every person I said something wrong to or every time I screwed up. I’ve now started to convince myself I did terrible things I can’t remember, and that my mind just can’t deal with it. And that’s why I feel so guilty. There’s nothing to really support this though. But I’m starting to really convince myself that’s true. I’m trying not to listen to it, because I’ve convinced myself I have hit people with my car before and haven’t remembered when I absolutely didn’t and I know I never have. I drive back over and over to check there’s no one, even though I never heard any bang or felt myself anything. I can convince myself of some crazy false memories. So I know that I shouldn’t listen. But it’s hard not to when I have this guilt gnawing at me constantly. I come to conclusions that this guilt must be because I did something terrible that I don’t remember, even though I already think the things I remember were bad enough. But I would know by now right? If I did something bad I don’t remember? I don’t feel like this all the time. But it’s a lot of the time. But maybe that should be reassuring, that I only start obsessing like this when I think to. The past haunts me though. And I can never be in the present. I’ve started to resort to some unhealthy behaviors to distract myself or help me work towards something. I am starting to hate myself so much and feel like there’s no way I’ll ever be able to get out of this loop. I feel like I just can’t do this anymore. Maybe I need to go back on medication. But I don’t know. I don’t really want to. But will I ever fix this without it? Why do I feel SO guilty, all of the time? I do all these things for people because I feel indebted to them, because I feel undeserving of everything. I feel awful about myself. I don’t know what to do. Does anyone else deal with this?
- Date posted
- 14w
I feel like I really need help right now. I keep reminiscing on my old relationship and comparing it to my current one. For context, within my old relationship I had been with him for a pretty awful year and 3 months. Within the first 3 months I realized that I didn't actually want to be with him, but I felt sorry for him. So, I stupidly started self sabotaging the relationship. I know that it was stupid, and I tried to break up with him but every time I felt bad. His mental health was already bad and I hate any possibility that I can make someone's mental health worse. That whole "relationship" was so toxic on both ends though. All of that alone has me so messed up. But with that I also had this false attraction to him. Like, I would always be figuring out what I wanted in a relationship and tried to do that with him despite knowing that I didn't actually want to be with him. Now my mind keeps trying to convince me that I'm doing that with my current relationship. I know that I'm not. This one feels genuine and it's pretty healthy. We have our bumps, but we both have this want to fix it and it's just so nice. I hate that my brain is trying to ruin this for me.
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