- Date posted
- 5y
- Date posted
- 5y
Think of the OCD like a starving dog that you've been feeding every day for years. It's going to come to you for food as soon as it sees you. The first day after you stop feeding it, it will still come to you because it's hungry. The second day, again it comes. Eventually, it gets tired and comes to you every few days, because you're not feeding it. Then eventually a fe times a month. Then a few times every six months. The key early on is to be persistent and show it that you will never be it's source of food, no matter how often or how early in the day it rears its ugly head. Starve the beast!
- Date posted
- 5y
I love the hungry dog analogy
- Date posted
- 5y
I completely understand what you are being through. I wanted to fight an OCD that came up anytime I want to make a gift to someone I care about. Each time I wanna make a gift to someone I like, I fear to think bad things towards the person concerned about the said gift,the moment I touch it. So I wanted not to fear my thoughts, then I materialized them (my thoughts) by saying my bad thoughts at loud while I was touching the gift, in order to fight my fears. But after doing so, I have what I call a backfire, I culpabilise so much that I decide to retake the gift into my hands and make a pray to conjure my bad thoughts. But then even after doing this I culpabilise and feel shameful about it. It is complicated to get rid of our OCD but I'm still certain that the best way to get rid of our fears is to accept them and not see them as enemies. It has to be a message coming from our subconscious.
- Date posted
- 5y
Yea I get that. Yesterday I had an intrusive thought. I was afraid I was going to hurt my sister. She was asleep and I sat in the bed next to her for about 3seconda to see if I could calm down. Nope. I got more worried, in my head I was like “what if you did want to hurt her and that’s why you sat next to her” I woke up. Came back to the room. I was afraid of myself so I was gonna wake her up. But she had a nightgown on. It was a bit up. So I was gonna pull it down so it can cover all of her legs since I was worried. But then I backed down because I got even more worried. I thought “what if you did that to try to touch her”.......it sucks. And this connects to a false memory/real event OCD thought. And I got even more worried.
- Date posted
- 5y
Another thing that I do. Is I sometimes get the urge to laugh/smile and it’s always when I’m having a thought. I’m not even sure if do smile but if I do that gets me more worried. And it gets me really worried. It happens after thoughts and it happens when I’m seeing a disturbing video. In my head I also feel horrible and bad about the thoughts. But it’s like my brain is fighting itself. And I’ve never gone through this before. It barely started happening about a week ago. Ughhh help
Related posts
- Date posted
- 25w
I’ve been stuck in this cycle for the last month or two and am not sure how to get out of it. Basically, I will work on ignoring the thoughts and not responding or engaging plus limiting/completely eliminating compulsions. After a week or two of constant work, the amount of intrusive thoughts in a day goes down. The anxiety each thought causes also goes down with some, but not all, thoughts passing without notice like they would for a normal person. The thoughts that do stick cause anxiety and make me want to ruminate or do other compulsions but I make sure to limit them. After a bit, I’m in a pretty good head space. This is usually when it goes down hill. I’ll start to question if I even have ocd because some of the thoughts (once again not all) pass without notice. The difficulty resisting compulsions goes down and so does the anxiety, only increasing the questioning. I spend a while questioning if I’ve ever had ocd in the first place and then something sets me off or the questioning itself becomes a trigger and I get stuck back into the same ocd cycle with constant rumination, anxiety, and other compulsions. This lasts for a week or two before I know I need to stop and try and work hard to get back to ignoring the thoughts. And the cycle just restarts over and over again. Does anyone have any tips to stop this from happening? It’s really harming my recovery as every few weeks I dive back into the same negative place I was.
- Date posted
- 11w
I had an "OCD episode" several months back from NOT doing the compulsion. Or at least not "resolving" / dealing with the intrusive thought. What if "Not" dealing with it creates an issue that never subsides or makes you worse? This sounds dramatic, but I literally feel and believe like I was psychologically traumatized by not doing a compulsion --- which for me has been ruminating and "problem solving" to "deal" with whatever "challenge" / intrusive thought comes up. When I wasn't able to "deal" with it properly in a kind of stalemate, the "anxiety" last for at least a month. And it was severe -- brain fog, sundowning, cognitive difficulties, I think maybe even disassociation. You could even call it a mental breakdown and burnout (from OCD itself). Even went to a neurologist 'cause I think thought there was brain damage or some sht. I'm STILL recovery from that. I feel worse cognitively, and even think it that episode pushed me into some type of clinical depression. So isn't that lovely that "not dealing with the OCD / not doing the compulsion" is actually a shtty choice (for me) as well.
- Date posted
- 11w
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 :)
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