- Username
- Jaxiju
- Date posted
- 3y ago
This sounds like advice from a person who doesn’t understand OCD. I like to think there’s a difference between feelings being “real” and “true”. OCD makes me feel a lot of feelings and sensations that are real and exist but that doesn’t mean they have any truth about me and what I want (my theme is ROCD AND SOOCD) People have feelings that don’t align with who they are all the time! It’s ridiculous that this woman wants everyone to unpack every single feeling and sensation a person might have. Honestly I’d stray from getting advice from people who don’t have any understanding of what OCD can do to a person and how it tricks you.
It’s also possible that she meant that people with OCD tend to try to push away the false feelings that OCD tricks them with and in that case I kinda understand what she might have been saying? Like we aren’t supposed to push the feelings away just disregard them as false and let them pass naturally either way that’s not how she said it and honestly i understand why that would be so triggering. It’s hard to find good specialists who really understand OCD! Hang in there :(
First of all, I'm sorry you went through another triggering experience. On one hand, it's a good thing to be exposed to other people's opinions because it teaches you to rely on yourself rather than someone else's perspective in terms of OCD. It's a good exposure. On the other hand, it is still damaging because those of us with OCD take every word as truth from other people. We think that they must have figured out something that we, ourselves, haven't figured out yet. This is not true. If I had to guess, this particular person has no true understanding of obsessive compulsive behavior. Hypnotherapy is a freudian method, which relies HEAVILY on the meanings of thoughts. OCD needs the OPPOSITE of this method. It is NOT the best form of treatment to put OCD patients through hypnotherapy, as it only makes us feel more insecure and doubtful. What we use instead is called exposure response and prevention. This is derived from early classical conditioning and operant conditioning, wherein behavior is changed through facing fears and establishing new connections away from the fear. That process is called extinction. In short, we must put our thoughts through extinction through exposure. What I've noticed is that there are many therapists without proper understanding of OCD and treatment for patients. Take this person's advice with a grain of salt and learn to accept that there is a possibility that she is right, but deep down inside, you must acknowledge that you have OCD and it causes a lot of confusion and doubt within you. It takes so much effort to go through what you go through. Be kind to yourself and recognize how your brain works :) and stay off of platforms that do not have specialization in OCD!!! Have a great night.
thank you so much! I really appreciate that!!
thank you so much for your response @Kymyland ... the perspective in your second response is really interesting. ...The bio of the womans’ profile included: Counselor, Past Life Regression, Healer
How can something that’s not true feel so real?! Something I had intrusive thoughts about months ago, has come back and now I’m stuck. I had reassurance from my husband around these thoughts at the time ( I know that’s wrong by the way but I was desperate) Now I keep ruminating on that previous reassurance and my ocd is doubting that and my memory of it is feeling all hazy. I’m walking around with a constant feeling of being on edge and I’ve been resisting my urge to ask for reassurance again for weeks now but it’s just not going away. Can anyone here relate? How can I get it to move on? The whole maybe maybe not approach is just not appropriate here, it’s already making me uncomfortable around my husband with just the thoughts being present, thoughts that logically deep down I know are false.
I am drowning in my mind and I need some outside perspective or even just someone who may relate a little. I’ve already made a post about some of my story involving false memory ocd, but I figured I would come on here and share what has “reawakened” the issue for the past two years. I had laid off of worrying over my false memory for a few years, but it all started up again with me double checking that no crime/murder/etc had taken place in my town around the time I was struggling with harm ocd. Well, it quickly took a turn when I found an article about a “suspicious” death that had occurred around that time. According to the article, this death was eventually labeled as no foul play (aka not murder). But I still obsessed over this because of how real my worry had felt in the past that I somehow had left my house, hurt/killed someone, came back home and forgot. I searched through all of my activity history (Google, YouTube, Facebook) from around that time. I found a large gap in my Facebook activity (like several days of no activity) which was around the same time during the month the man had died. That only skyrocketed my worries even though I knew I had been struggling which may have been the reason why my activity had gaps (the previous month had a similar one as well). But nope, I continued obsessing and panicking because guess what? My YouTube activity from the weekend prior to when the man was found dead has weird activity (the history shows a gap in between 7pm - 4am on that Saturday). I tried finding a similar gap in the months surrounding, but could only find one that was sort of similar (7pm - 2am). So this led me to come up with the idea that I must have done “it” that night. Keep in mind, I would’ve been a scrawny 14 yr old girl at the time, and I don’t even know what I would’ve done or even could’ve done. That’s all to say — it just feels like my life is some huge lie and that all my fears are true. I don’t want to hurt anybody, and I know that younger me probably didn’t want to either, but how can I ignore what feels like actual proof that I’m a monster? It’s not like my false memories didn’t feel real either, so I can’t even shrug it off at all. I never see anyone have “proof” that their false memory is true, and in fact it’s usually people saying they have proof that it’s not. I’m just so lost, and I feel like I’m just lying to myself despite having been told by multiple therapists that this is just OCD.
I read multiple articles on false memory ocd an now I’m confused. I actually thought that false memory ocd is marked by things that are actually completely fabricated by the brain. But I keep seeing things like „an event that may or may not have happened“, does this mean that it could actually be true? Are there any ways how to find out if what you’re going through is real if it’s an actual bad act? Because for me I have been completely focused on false memory ocd lately and while I was ruminating on another one, I suddenly got an image of sth even worse that could maybe be like 7 or 8 months ago. I never remembered this happening and for months I’ve been convinced I had never hurt anybody but then I got this image. I instantly also thought that this didn’t happen and that I would definitely remember if it had happened because it’s actually horrible and it’s not just something you would quickly do and then completely forget, it’s an actual entire act. And I never was close to that person. But I keep being like „but what if I listened to my intrusive thoughts? But I can’t remember doing that and I even have posts on here from around that time saying I was too afraid of that person and that I would never ever listen to my intrusive thoughts… but what if I tried to get rid of my ocd theme by doing this? Nah that’s not what I would do and I know that… I’ve never done any harmful things just to get rid of this theme this is stupid“ etc etc. Like I keep fearing I might’ve done this and done it for various reasons. But I can’t actually remember doing it. All those scenarios feel like they’re just imaginations. But I can’t let go of it. And usually for memories it’s that with time you start to be able to puzzle it all together trough evidence and u don’t forget bad things you’ve done. For example, I know that like a year ago I pushed my sister while I was having an argument with her. I remember everything from then because in my entire life I’ve barely ever done anything to others and so I usually remember those events almost 100% perfectly. I also remember sth from almost 10 years ago in which I called one of my friends (and ik this is bad, that’s why I remember it) fat. I lost a few details but I still remember what exactly I did and that the exact same day I called the parents and apologised bc I felt bad. But for this scenario, I’ve been ruminating on it for TWENTY days and I’m still in the doubting stage. I have spent hours ruminating by now and I still don’t have any actual memories back, just things like „but what if I was mad and then just did this and instantly forgot about it?“ and all this. But not an actual full scenario of me doing this even though it could only be a few months away. Idk what To do, I can’t continue living with the uncertainty. If it’s real, then I won’t even continue living. People like these are terrible and disgusting and don’t deserve living and everybody can agree on that.
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