- Date posted
- 6y
- Date posted
- 6y
Hello Korie, thanks a lot for your reply ! I guess that is what it is, it's connected so strongly to who I am and my relationship to the world that I am just really scared of losing this. OCD always targets what I care about anyway. I'm trying to be patient and to tell myself that once I am in a better place mentally it will be fine. At least, you are right, music won't go away and it will still be there for me when this happens. How do I go about sharing a song with you ?
- Date posted
- 6y
Alright. There's this one by the band Girls, Hellhole Ratrace. Quite a sad song but the chorus always reminded me that I should stay hopeful for tomorrow and that one day I'd be able to be free and dance again.
- Date posted
- 6y
Tha is for sharing
- Date posted
- 6y
I don’t have any ideas but I understand what you are saying completely. Music saved my life in my teens, it is the running theme of connection within my family, it expressed and validated every emotion and became a playlist of memories and feelings and accomplishments and mostly an ode to myself. Music was my lovenote to myself. I could hear a song and remember where I was it saved me and I could recognize the progress I’ve made since then. Physical proof that I felt and loved. And now music is just noise and it breaks my heart. And I’ll obsess on the fear that not connecting to music now MUST mean that I don’t connect to my family, it MUST mean that I haven’t really made progress at all, it MUST mean that I don’t feel anything anymore. But I do. I feel heartbreak and I miss it. Which means that I feel. I believe that someday I’ll hear the music again. I believe you will too. You don’t miss something that didn’t exist. Music IS real for you and me. And more than anything, because it isn’t human, it doesn’t have a timeframe that it’s available to us. Meaning: music won’t get overwhelmed by our obsessions, or limits. It doesn’t expire. Music will be there when you are able to hear it and when you are not. And it is not a fault of yours that you can’t “hear” it right now. YOU are the one that needs to be heard. And when you know you’ve been listened to, and when you are not drowning in your sounds of fear and discomfort, and you can speak your song of bravery, the music will come back to you again. If it helps, we can both recommend each other one song that is or was significant to us and I will listen to yours and you can listen to mine. I wish you luck, my friend.
- Date posted
- 6y
Just tell me the song name and artist and I can look it up on my own.
Related posts
- Date posted
- 25w
(Sorry for the long post!) So one of the OCD things that most affects me at times, and that I have not really found other people dealing with (in literature or in my work as a therapist working with people with OCD), is one that often relates to potential dating and people I am interested in. Typically, as a gay male, I meet people on chat apps or dating sites, so the first interactions are virtual. What I find often happens is that I sort of build an image of the person, and then if anything goes against that, I start to get anxious and the OCD kicks in. An example may work best. I started talking to a guy that I find incredibly attractive, and who seems to find me attractive as well, and when we became friends on instagram, I saw that he has done some amateur modeling for a friend who does pictures in various states of undress. There are a few in underwear, and a few with no clothes (no genitals are shown), and this started off the thoughts of "oh no, he must just want sex" or "I bet he is super promiscuous if he has pictures like these." This leads to me investigating the other photos on the site, and the guy who does the images to try and figure it out, what kind of work it is, etc. I even found a way to work it into a conversation with the guy, like "wow I don't think I could do that. You're braver than me," and he said he did it because the photographer is a husband of a coworker and expressed interest in doing the pictures, and he loves his body so didn't mind doing it, and they are really good friends now. OCD then gets triggered "he loves his body? That must mean he really IS promiscuous. What if he and the men also have threesomes?" This leads to intrusive thoughts of me having to picture this happening,or him having sex with other people, over and over until it "feels right." I'll recheck his dating profiles in which has said that he is "not into fast sex," and then think about and picture scenarios about how that could just mean he wants to talk to someone once before having sex. The OCD also affects conversations--if he doesn't get back to me quickly on WhatsApp, I scour the texts to see if I messed something up (ocd responsibility--it's always my fault). I texted him yesterday, and he hasn't looked at the messages (he has read receipts on WhatsApp), but I check and see that he has liked a post by someone on instagram or has posted a story, so I think "clearly he sees that I've messaged and is purposely ignoring it, because he hates me and wants nothing to do with me. That's it, I'm never going to hear from him again." We were supposed to hang out last week, but he asked to reschedule because he wasn't feeling well, so my OCD then said "he was at an event the night before, he probably met someone and is still at their house." He did text the next day to ask what my schedule was, and then said "perfect. I work in Lisbon until next Thursday" (I'm currently living in Porto, in Portugal, where he also lives), so he seems to be interested in hanging out, but then I think "he probably saw something that I did online or someone we both know in common somehow told him something and now he's done with me. Or maybe he met someone he's more interested in, and will just ignore me now." This type of experience has happened with several guys I've been interested in, and it has actually led to me pushing too hard and making them uncomfortable as I seek certainty, so I'm trying to be aware of that and not engage in that kind of behavior. I also realize that there are like a billion different OCD things in this post, and I'm writing another post as well related to how moral scrupulosity has been controlling my beliefs about sex, etc., something my new therapist identified after one session. Anyway, I just wanted to see if anyone has experienced anything along these lines, because when it happens it takes over and it is painful and I just want to rip it out of my head. Additionally, I never quite know how to manage exposure to this type of thing--there is the logical one of not checking social media, and not texting or re-reading texts, but it's also hard because I will actually force myself at times to think about him having sex with people, and then that makes me feel overwhelmed with anxiety, but I also can't suppress the thoughts, as that doesn't work, and am thus trying to do more of an ACT/acceptance approach. Unfortunately my therapist is out of town this week, so we can't work on anything surrounding this until next week. Thanks for taking the time to read this, and I apologize that it is so long, but it is just really sucks right now.
- Date posted
- 9w
I still do not have an OFFICIAL diagnosis (I dont have the means to do so) but given my symptoms, past and present in my life hugely suggest OCD is what I am dealing with. I cannot be 100 percent certain but after searching for answers and researching for a long time now, I am fairly certain and confident this is what I am struggling with. Given this step forward, I am making more effort into giving up compulsions. at the current moment I believe to be dealing with ROCD, as I have been having several intrusive thoughts that conflict with my relationship. For starters, recently over the past month or 2, I have been struggling with intrusive thoughts like not being over my ex, being attracted to someone else, losing feelings for my partner and not being in love, etc. I can consciously identify that I dont believe these thoughts to be true but it causes me so much distress and anxiety. It gets extremely unbearable some days, and I have leaned into 2 main compulsions. I have relied on thought checking and googling as my source of relief. At first the googling was genuinely to start finding answers; hence why I have made some of the discoveries I have about OCD including this site. But it developed into every time I was anxious, I would whip my phone out and start googling strictly to find an answer that would reassure me or calm me down. As for thought checking, it acted as a way to reaffirm my love for my girlfriend in my head when I have had the thoughts that collide with my relationship and how I feel about my girlfriend. It worked at first but developed into a compulsion where every time a bad thought got me worked up id either do my normal googling or Id think about that in my head to calm myself down. Over time these compulsions have gotten less and less affective and now when I do them it only gets me more anxious and desperate for reassurance (strengthening the cycle or whatever it is lol). I did some more research and finally have accepted the very real fact that I am going to have to sit in heavy anxiety and not give into compulsions for a while in order to treat this. I have to sit in the thoughts that make me feel all this hightened anxiety and distress without giving into compulsion. to be honest I am scared, the thoughts are more rampant than ever, but I am ready to commit to this. I dont think I am gonna be able to go cold turkey on my compulsions so I am ready for the reality I might relapse on the compulsions sometimes, But am gonna keep going until I can break these shackles OCD has on my life right now. I wanna ask, what is everyones methods they use to avoid giving into compulsion when the thoughts get loud? any advice is welcome :)
- Date posted
- 16d
fyi: [x] - feared identity So I've had OCD for a while now and even though I'm on a different theme than I was, I find that I sometimes feel indifferent or numb to an act that is completely immoral, especially after desensitizaton and learning that there is nothing that I need to do about the thoughts. I even ask myself "What if one of my friends turned out to be [x]?" and instead of immediately saying "I'm completely cutting ties and never looking at them the same way again" I'm like "..that wouldn't be great, I'd stop talking to them but also encourage them to get help.". Pure OCD for some odd reason made me feel empathy for even the worst, most evil people - not that it excuses their actions, or makes them any less evil, but then it also took that and made me panic about it: "What if you're becoming antisocial?" "What if you're on your way to degeneration?" "Why do you not care as much as you used to?" "Are you corrupt?" "Are you [x]?" "Only [x] would feel empathy for [x]." "Are you justifying these actions?". I feel like it is concerning, it does feel like I'm ignoring something that goes against my values, or that I have lost all values and I'm just a bad person. Especially when I get arousal nonconcordance or GRs: "Maybe I'm just traumatized, maybe I'm okay" turns into "You're okay.. with what? With becoming aroused by these things at all? Have you lost your mind? What's next, you're gonna act on these thoughts and say "Oh I'm traumatized?"", and I don't know whether it's logical or not. When I started with sexual intrusive thoughts I immediately found them disturbing and horrifying, and now after ERP and just living with the disorder for so long I'm almost numb... it feels terrible. It feels like I'm justifying or have become legitimately okay with untolerable, horrible behavior, and I feel like that says something about who I am really. I feel like that makes me dangerously close to acting on the thoughts, or that the thoughts were an indication of some repressed desire all along, even when I know there's no evidence towards that... or is there? Pure OCD has convinced me I'm in denial about something horrible many times before, mainly by utilizing my reaction and moral stance around the intrusive thoughts. I still feel like "If I panic when I have these thoughts, that means I'm not [x] and I'm fine."; "If I'm disgusted by the idea of acting on these thoughts, then I'm fine"; "As long as I don't respond the wrong way to the thoughts, I'm fine".. so what happens when you're told not to react to the thoughts at all? Or on the other hand, not to try and analyze a reaction? Panic. Cognitive dissonance: "Something's wrong, I'm not reacting how I'm supposed to". At the end of the day, I really hope I'm not [x], I really do. I can't imagine not only living with the title of [x], but also with the insane levels of distress that title would cause because for all I know, I'm not really [x]. But I could be, like I don't know if I'm not, and even though I'd rather not be [x] I have to somehow accept uncertainty I guess. That's what I've been told to do - but I feel like it's backfiring. I feel like I'm either a) recovering and meta-obsessing, b) I'm still in poor insight OCD and I'm not actually [x] c) I'm [x] and in denial / having OCD about a real issue Speaking of insight, it tends to come and go but it's been poor for most of the time, even after I learned about OCD.
Be a part of the largest OCD Community
Share your thoughts so the Community can respond