- Date posted
- 4y
- Date posted
- 4y
I think similarity in regards to the line. Except mine is not a vertical concept where morality lies either above or below. Mine is more horizontal, where if something negative falls on my line of time and events, then everything after doesn’t count. It’s textbook Perfectionism OCD. But good news is, it doesn’t have to be this way forever. You can adopt a new way of perceiving things that causes way less stress and agony.
- Date posted
- 4y
Hey just checking in hoping you’re doing okay today!
- Date posted
- 4y
Doing much better! I am just on edge that I could fall back into it. I am just going to keep going and not ruminating. Thanks for checking in!
- Date posted
- 4y
@LucyA5118 Awesome!! Keep it up you’re doing great. I’m right there with you, trying to keep moving forward without rumination
- Date posted
- 4y
Comment deleted by user
- Date posted
- 4y
I have but it’s really hard to do because the obsession/compulsion all relates to me being happy and I haven’t done the list in months because it know it might take me weeks on end to complete without it feeling right so I haven’t even done the compulsion but still think about it every minute of every day and even when I try to hold on to past memories that made me happy ocd finds a way to make reality say nope those were all fake and never happened
- Date posted
- 4y
Hey! I’m really sorry that you’re having such a tough time. I relate to a lot of what you shared, huge part of my ocd “requires” me to suffer or punish myself. It’s absolute torture. Have you worked with a therapist doing ERP?
- Date posted
- 4y
So I have technically been doing ERP for the last several months and still feel awful. It’s hard to do ERP for my situation because it’s not necessarily a fear but me just wanting to know my life has been real and that I can be happy in other ways outside of doing the list. I haven’t done the list in months because I know it will take at least 24 hours minimum to complete and possibly much longer if it doesn’t “feel right.” So I am not doing the compulsion and still feel totally miserable as if my life was all made up and the only way to be happy is by doing this list to make my life seem real. So awful I feel so hopeless and as much as I don’t want to do the list I don’t know what else to do because I’ve stayed away from doing it since March and still feel this way.
- Date posted
- 4y
@LucyA5118 Yeah I totally get that. It’s awful an awful feeling. There’s a good chance that if you do decide to do the list, you’ll probably feel you have to do it again and again and again. That’s awesome that you haven’t been giving into that compulsion! Takes a lot of strength. Maybe you still feel bad because you’re engaging in mental compulsions?? Are you still actively trying to figure out if your life is real? Can you identify what the core fear of all of this could be, like why it’s so bad for you not to know if your life is real or not?
- Date posted
- 4y
@annano you’re totally right. I am giving into mental compulsions I spend almost every day trying to think of a way out of this mess. I try not to and try to live my life as normal and find myself thinking about it whenever I feel happy. I convince myself it’s all a trick and because reality put me on this negative scale (I basically somehow formed a line in my head where above means good and below means bad) and it used that idea I made a while ago against me and basically said that once reality started on I was on the negative side of the line. So even when I think I’m happy not a minute later I realize that it’s false reality and that I’m really miserable and it’s made yo
- Date posted
- 4y
Man, I soooo relate. It’s absolute torture and I see why you’re finding a way out. There is a way out! You just gotta practice new ways of thinking and ultimately deciding that you’re not gunna live this way anymore. Have you done ERP w a therapist?? Sometimes it’s so much better to at least start treatment with a therapist bc you have accountability and help from a non OCD brain
- Date posted
- 4y
Wow I’m so happy you understand haha... I sound crazy talking about all of these invisible barries like the line and rules and other crazy stuff. I’ve been to multiple therapists and stuck with one for a while with no luck. No matter how hard I try the demons cover every scenario and say that it’s just them messing with me and there really isn’t even a therapist there to begin with. Every time I’ve gotten better by thinking a certain way the OCD (even writing this I’m thinking it’s not OCD it’s reality that’s controlling you and the only option) finds a way to use rules or methods I’ve taken to get myself out of past obsession cycles unable to be used again. So for example when I first got into this phase of being in the dungeon with no way to ever be happy other then doing the list I thought “Okay well at least I have past memories that were happy with my family so that’s enough I will just live in this dungeon knowing I at least have that” so then once I accepted that I was able to move on and it faded away. The next time OCD kicked in (the demons what I’m really thinking) I was able to get out by thinking “All that’s left is reality this isn’t reality” and as I thought that and believed that thought there was a negative thing (blob, dot, feeling in my head like with the line just some invisible thing) attached to reality that led me down into the dungeon again except this time (and since this is reality) it said I was just made the moment I thought of reality and all of my life before that wasn’t real therefore, erasing all of the good memories, my family, my life basically as I knew it disappear up until that point I decided on living in reality. So now I have had nothing to turn to because this is it this is reality according to reality. My only “out” is the list. For the last several months I have been dealing with this and even when I think I’m making progress it assures me that I’m still on the negative side of the line and that progress is only the demons tricking me and I’m still in the same spot.
- Date posted
- 4y
I must say, you’re super strong for not giving into the one compulsion that you’ve convinced yourself could possibly bring relief from such an awful awful narrative. I really relate to this type of thinking and feeling of being trapped. I think it would be very beneficial for you to try and identify what your core fear is in all of this? Is it that you will never get to be happy on earth? Does it having something to do with never knowing for certain if life is real or not? Something else? Also if you feel comfortable sharing, do you have a heavy religious background?
- Date posted
- 4y
The core fear is that I could be happier or that I’m not happy enough. I was raised Catholic & still had some religious ties before
- Date posted
- 4y
Maybe you can try to sit with that fear and uncertainty without trying to find an answer for it.
- Date posted
- 4y
@annano I think that’s a good idea. I just don’t even know what I believe anymore. I try to convince myself that I do believe this is all irrational and that my life has been real but the doubt seems to overpower that sometimes and makes linear blocks for me to think I don’t believe my life is real
- Date posted
- 4y
@LucyA5118 It’s like nope you can’t think it’s real because you thought it wasn’t real x amount of times and that’s the limit and proves you are in this dungeon and your past wasn’t real
- Date posted
- 4y
@LucyA5118 Ok so let’s say your biggest fear is that your life is not real then maybe try some ERP with that obsession. Find something that triggers that thought and then expose yourself to it without compulsing.
- Date posted
- 4y
I ask about the religious portion only because I know the influence my strict religious upbringing has had on my ocd. It reinforced these linear and rigid perceptions of myself and my reality.
- Date posted
- 4y
Let’s do it together!! I hope you have a great day :)
- Date posted
- 4y
Yes! You too 😊
Related posts
- Date posted
- 23w
Never feels like I can fully put my mind to rest. The problem with OCD for me is once I'm over one worry there's another buried deep into my mind that I'm not fully over. The two events I'm not completely over is when I tried to help a 17 year old with POCD when I was 19 and the topics unfortunately were detailed and even then I explained to them I wasn't comfortable with talking to them. I guess I just had a hard time saying no to someone needing help but it eventually made me so uncomfortable that I stopped talking with them altogether at some point. Then the other thing is being so worried that I committed a crime because my elbow touched someone's behind when I didn't want that to happen at all. I didn't want to listen to my OCD by saying move my arm or something horrible is going to happen so I didn't and then something bad actually did happen. I thought it would just be a light touch while zipping a bag up but then it was worse than I ever wanted it to be and it was so awkward and I hated it. I feel like I just won't be able to get back to the way I was before OCD started all of this. Aside from that I've just had extreme health anxiety but am too afraid to reach out to a PCP even though I need to. Something deep down is telling me I should do this but I'm just so anxious and embarrassed about sharing things to them. I can't even enjoy the things I used to do because this is constantly just messing up my life. I'm hoping I get a start of positivity next time I see my therapist. This just sucks. Feels like others around me are doing so much better than I am and I'm just kind of stuck on these same problems and feeling absolute shame and guilt from the past over and over again. I'm just so sick of dealing with this every single day so I just use escape whenever I can. Even that doesn't really work. I just wish I could go back in time.
- Date posted
- 19w
Hi this is my first time posting on here. I wasn't sure if I should because I want to make sure I'm not seeking reassurance because I heard that makes ocd worse. I don't want to talk about what my ocd problem was, but basically I was really upset about a religious ocd problem that I know isn't true. I'm feeling a lot better about it now, but when it was bad I decided to try and get better on my own. I read about ERP therapy and how you're supposed to make a list of your ocd problems, from least distressing to most. So I wrote them down on two pieces of paper. At first I started with the simple ones, like looking for spiders before leaving the room. I have a tendency to look for spiders before leaving a room but lately I've been trying not to anymore. Then I decided to try and do one of the hard things. It was a religious ocd problem. I decided to start simple, and just write the problem down on a piece of paper. So I went downstairs and got some paper. But then I thought, oh no, my ocd is probably not going to like this. What do I do with the paper once I write it down? If I think what I wrote down is bad and going to upset God and I will go to hell, (even though I know logically it's not), my ocd is probably going to freak out if I throw away the paper. It probably won't calm down unless I erase it. So I just decided to not write it down on a paper, and just type it on my phone instead. So I did, I typed it on my phone. So, even though I didn't write anything down on the paper, now it feels like that peice of paper is bad. I feel like it's connected to the problem I was having, and I was so upset I called my mom crying asking her what to do. Eventually I decided to just put the paper back with the rest of the paper downstairs, but I'm still upset. I feel like I have to throw away all the paper downstairs, the pencil I was going to use to write down the problem, and the eraser I was going to use in case I needed to erase anything. It feels like if I use any of those items I will make God angry and go to hell. I know I shouldn't do this though, so I'm not going to. I don't know what to do with the papers where I wrote down my ocd problems. They are on my desk and I'm too afraid to move them. And if I put them in my desk I'm afraid they will get mixed up with other papers. I guess I can do whatever I want with them. I think I'll put them in a folder or binder and if I make any more ocd papers I can just put them in there. I'm just really confused on how to move forward. Right now, I'm too afraid to use the papers, pencil, or eraser for anything. I feel like I can't write on them, draw on them, or anything. It's even making me feel like I can't make digital art. It's making me feel like I can't do a lot of things. I guess what I have to do is just do whatever I want to, because I know the ocd isn't true and doesn't make sense.
- Date posted
- 15w
i’ve unfortunately fallen into the cycle of trying to figure out my thoughts and find answers as to why i feel so distressed. this still pertains to the situation regarding changing my room for those reading who have seen my multiple posts over the last few days. i’ve been so distressed and in so much panic about it. i’m also panicking over my other room looking so different from when i left it. it’s been making me feel crazy because to me there’s no reason for my anxiety to latch so hard onto something that seems so minuscule. i was thinking i was having anxiety over change, but it’s like symptoms of ocd too that’s making it really hard for me to let go. SO i started thinking maybe it was perfectionism ocd? i’ve realized over time that i do compulsions to where things have to feel “just right”, but i also do that with any environment i’m in. like it HAS to feel cozy to me and provide me comfort in order for me to feel at ease. and this change is causing me to panic because there’s something wrong that i can’t find an answer to. maybe the different colored carpet? but it’s also more than that it feels like. however, now it’s spreading into other areas of my house where i’ve always been fine in and possibly to just any area i’m in at all. hence why it’s making me feel crazy because there’s no reason for me to be THIS distressed over that as i’ve never really had this problem before. and when i did it would last maybe an hour to a couple of days at most, but this has been going for over 2 weeks with my really bad anxiety being this week. i’m doing a little better, but it’s still hard when i can feel that panic waiting for me to acknowledge and just engulf me in the ocd cycle. i’m also analyzing basically any feeling i have so i just feel off in general and like i’m going insane. i’ve been so hyper focused on how i feel and that will send me spiraling too. multiple themes then start coming in like existential ocd and fear of solipsism. not to mention my harm and contamination ocd that just adds on when i’m this vulnerable. then i worry if no one is real, then no one feels the way i do. or just in general that what if no one feels the way i do. honestly, i think being out of college and in my house with nothing to do is causing me too much time with my thoughts. which is why i’m so distressed about everything that pops into my brain.
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