- Username
- getwellsoon
- Date posted
- 4y ago
Seriously though, the "maybe I enjoy the thoughts" or "I do enjoy the thoughts" are thoughts, not feelings. The guilt is the feeling. Feelings aren't your enemy, they just want to be felt, and the best and easiest way to feel your feelings is to seperate them from any beliefs which seem to go with them, and not attempt to draw any new conclusions based off them. A feeling of guilt is the normal reaction to a shameful idea/belief/intrusive thought/worry. There's nothing magical going on. Instead of resisting the feeling as a proxy to resisting the thoughts, just let the feelings come and go instead and then you can deal with thoughts on their own merit. The guilt or fear isn't some kind of special indicator that the belief is more likely to be true, it's just a normal physiological response.
The idea that you want or like the thoughts is a cognition, not a feeling. You can "feel guilty" but there is no such thing as "I feel like I like something shameful", instead it's "I have an idea or belief that I might like something shameful". It's beneficial to separate out cognitions and feelings, because to become flexible and adaptable and ultimately recover from OCD, you need to be able to accept and process feelings without attaching immediate judgments to them. For example, in luchalysol's case, laughing at something someone said triggers the thought that they like the person, which triggers guilt, which they then debate and resist, causing a cascade of worries and emotions which alternate between believing that the fear is true and doubting it. The steps to deal with it would be seperatkng the guilt from all the OCD debate and "evidence" which came after it, feeling the guilt physiologically until it goes away without doing any rumination compulsions or other attempts to get rid of the feeling by discrediting it or arguing with it. Then when the guilt is gone, it's much easier to internalise what you know already- that laughing at someone being funny probably doesn't mean you're romantically interested in them, and that it's not important to have a guarantee.
Im sorry, I didn't clarify, I have harm ocd, not hocd. I feel guilt because I "shouldn't" be laughing, even if at something completely unrelated, after having the intrusive thoughts Ive been having. It almost feels like ocd makes me believe that the only way I can disagree with my thoughts is if Im miserable all the time.
@luchalysol Oh, I see! Should work the same way though, thankfully. You have the idea that you shouldn't be laughing and any happiness is an indication that you feel ok about having the thoughts, which triggers immediate guilt. That is a VERY unfair thing for your brain to do to you, but arguing with the feeling obviously doesn't help the situation. If you can let that guilt happen properly as just a sensation, without any self reassurance and without thinking about the problem, it eventually all gets felt. Then by going back to the happy thing and feeling happy, you basically solve the problem. Even if you get the intrusive thought and the guilt again, you just repeat the process of feeling the guilt and then going back into doing the things you want to do and feeling the ways you want to feel despite doubts popping up. I've found feeling feelings makes me super flexible. Not trying to fight the feeling just makes it happen less often and feel a lot less convincing and strong, but it can be a bit inconvenient and draining to constantly take time out to myself to feel overwhelming, 'negative' emotions. But, I did manage to cure an entire theme via doing this only 2 or 3 times (feeling until the feeling is completely gone) using a book (letting go by David Hawkins), and then after that I didn't need to take the time to focus on and feel the feelings because they weren't very strong, instead I would just refocus to what's going on around me instead despite the nagging feeling that something was wrong (starving it of attention basically).
I feel you. Its scares me so much, even laughing about something funny makes me feel like I like them and then feel guilty. Ocd really fucks with you in ways that are almost unexplainable.
Yea and I pray to not happend anything like I feel guilty and I always say sorry for those thoughts..?
I had an awful intrusive thought/half-dream (I was in the weird place between awake and sleeping lol.) and it actually started off fine but then my brain said “this is a child” and I literally panicked. I was kind of aroused when it started and I feel so guilty about it. I know the body responds to what is “sexually relevant” but it’s such a scary, awful, disgusting feeling, I feel like a terrible person for having this come into my head. Like I secretly want it
This one time I got an intrusive feeling that I liked the thoughts and I didn’t. I’m scared of getting that feeling again and I worry about what if I did again. I hate the thoughts and I definitely don’t like them but these intrusive feelings suck and is one of the hardest things to get over :/
It sucks, and it’s hard to understand that these thoughts aren’t mine cause why does it feel like I’m getting excited by them as well? When that should be the last thing that should be happening. It only convinces me more and I just sit there after feeling it like “what am I supposed to/can do about this?” And I just feel distraught cause if it’s not what I want, why am I feeling something like that towards it? When I should be feeling something more negative?
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