I was at work and my mind just randomly thought I said something and I was like okay maybe then I had an idea of what I may of said which is something positive I always say, every single day I say “I’m a queen” to uplift my spirit and confidence. It’s a way of reassurance for me. So I was like okay I think I remember saying that, if anything, which is fine ofc, then my mind says “what if you said queer” and I was at work I was doing a few things at once, I whispered it ofc but I was like no I wouldn’t and would never say that. This topic has brought me so much pain and I’ve fought it COUNTLESS times before and always will upset me because I’ve always liked boys I’ve been with my boyfriend whom I love very much for a year and a half, my mind always will try to twist and trick my mind and it makes me angry because I know I would never say that after all the hurt these stupid thoughts have brought me. Also I was calm which made me believe I said queen, I sounded out “queen” and “queer” and I say them completely different, and I literally say “I’m a queen” multiple times a day, every day, so there is way more likelihood that I said that in my opinion, I was calm after and then I was like “wait did I said something” and then my mind began overanalyzing, I am trying to stick my ground and I hate not being able to go back and time and know for sure. What I’m sure of his I love my boyfriend so much and I’m not EVER changing ever because of these stupid thoughts. But help!!! What can I do?

Thank you, I am just terrible at coping. I can’t even fathom me saying that it’s so much different if it comes out of your mouth, I can always get over thoughts but i don’t know if I said it if I did it was definitely unintentional, I feel so paranoid ?

@catherinez My suggestion would be to practice deliberately saying "I'm a queer" out loud. It's not an evil spell. They're just words.

@Scoggy so if you said it out of random and you’re straight, you wouldn’t care? I’m getting thoughts like “you can’t love him now, lol but you said” like nothing is definite and why does my mind always think it happened and never that it didn’t ?

@catherinez I think it's easy to say thing accidentally which are on our minds, they don't mean much about whether it's true or not. But analysing whether it would mean it's true and analysing whether you said anything aloud and what it might have been is all you doing compulsions that you need to stop. "Your mind" keeps telling you it happened because you keep arguing with it. Stop having an argument about it.

@catherinez My suggestion was to deliberately say it out loud in order to cause anxiety and intrusive accusations, so that you can then choose to not ruminate or do compulsions which seek to get rid of the anxiety.

@catherinez https://adaa.org/learn-from-us/from-the-experts/blog-posts/consumer/demystifying-mental-compulsions-and-pure-o

@catherinez Once we identified her analyzing and “What if” questions as mental compulsions, we talked about how to stop them. There are different techniques to do this, but mental compulsions are difficult to stop because these thoughts come immediately after the initial hit of the obsession. One of the tenets of ERP is to allow the obsession just to “hang out” in the person’s mind, to fully experience the anxiety/dread/anguish caused by the obsession and do nothing about it. But when the obsession morphs right into thinking compulsions, that’s difficult to do. It’s hard to differentiate the obsession from the compulsions. This difficulty has also led to the false idea that there are some OCD sufferers who only experience obsessions and not compulsions. These people are erroneously referred to as having “Pure-O”. What is actually going on is that the person, after experiencing the obsession, is primarily engaging in mental compulsions. To help understand the difference between an obsession and mental compulsions, consider that even though both the obsession and the compulsions are thoughts, compulsions are voluntary and designed to get rid of the yucky feelings generated by the obsession. Obsessions are involuntary. You can do nothing about an obsession, but you can control thinking compulsions. That is an important distinction. My patient thought she was experiencing anxiety caused by the obsession, but in actuality she was avoiding the obsession by engaging in mental compulsions. Asking unanswerable questions gives momentary relief, but the constant analyzing generates its own anxiety, because there are no answers. To recover, the patient needed to mentally return to the obsession, and ride out where the obsession took her. This is particularly terrifying for people with Harm OCD. Their brains are taking them to horrible places, usually with images of them committing atrocious acts on innocent people. My patient was terrified of the obsessions and couldn’t allow herself to imagine drowning a child or stabbing her boyfriend. But to recover, she needed to stay with these images and the concomitant horrifying feelings, and not retreat from them. Eventually, with exposure to the harm thoughts and images, without performing behavioral or thinking compulsions, the patient recognized these obsessions as random noise generated by the brain and she no longer needed to analyze them.

@Scoggy So I practiced saying it out loud... and there I am not stressed about it because I am doing it on purpose, but something about saying it unconsciously scares me and makes me doubt and doubt and be scared that I meant to say that, I say queer and queen differently, I’m certain I meant to say queen and my mind is just scared/mixing it up, still feeling stressed ?

@catherinez Ok, so how would you feel about not knowing the answer to that scary possibility that it means something, and instead of trying to find an answer via mental compulsions, just letting the question be there and be scary without getting rid of it, like in all my previous comments?

@Scoggy I’m just worrying about these thoughts affecting my relationship ? I don’t want them to

@catherinez Ok, that sounds like an additional worry. You only have to deal with one worry at a time. I'm not sure what this new worry has to do with my suggestion of treating the other worry? So how do you feel about doing what was in my previous comment?

@Scoggy I am willing to try it, I’m just one to keep going back and back to it because my mind has a mentality of “remember you said” and my mind thinks that if I said that that I can’t love my boyfriend or that I can’t be in a straight relationship. It’s toxic and upsetting

@catherinez Those are intrusive thoughts and ideas. Your job is to not debate them or analyse them or try to solve them or test them or argue or go in your memory etc. Just let those thoughts and bad feelings happen without doing all the things I just mentioned which attempt to get rid of the thoughts.

@Scoggy I’ve just fought these thoughts again and again and know they’re not true. And I care about my boyfriend so much so these thoughts break me. The fact that I felt fine then started panicking makes me feel I didn’t say it, I apologize I don’t receive any therapy or treatment especially due to the circumstances

@catherinez It doesn't matter whether you know they're not true. You need to let them happen without trying to investigate them or prove them wrong. You need to stop analysing whether you said it or not. This is treatment.

@Scoggy I’m trying so so hard but it’s crippling, I’ve tried to do so many things to distract but I keep getting terrified of me imagining that happening, my stomach is burning terribly

@catherinez Well, you're not supposed to distract yourself either. Or imagine anything. You can survive feeling terrified and stomach pain and anxiety, and if you feel those things without pushing them away or doing compulsions, your body will kind of "digest" them. If you find it difficult to stop thinking and analysing and investigating, try focusing in on the physical sensations of the uncomfortable emotions you're feeling. Notice where they are in your body and what they feel like. Just take deep breaths and let all those sensations happen in your body without doing anything about them. They won't kill you. Feeling them won't make your fear come true or make you believe it. They're just feelings, they only need to be felt and then they'll leave you alone and stop bothering you.