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- 4y
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Hello, I'm black, and I'm here to tell you that OCD makes us believe things that are the complete opposite of who we are. If you are worried about being racist then more than likely you aren't.
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It’s hard though I stopped living my life because of this. My anxiety level went through the roof. I thought I wasn’t worthy. I genuinely thought I was a bad person for thinking like this. I started worrying if others saw me like this. I kept trying to confess my thoughts to everyone. I lost myself and I started to question my whole life. I’m barely trying to get my life back together. It’s just because I would never say anything mean to anyone because that’s just not the type of person I am. I genuinely love people.
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Exactly OCD, makes you believe the opposite of the truth.
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Yeah having these kinds of racist thoughts can be really difficult but they are not who you are. For me it has been helpful to remember that we live in a racist society and so it isn't our fault we have intrusive racist thoughts. Reading books like White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo have been good for normalizing this and working through it.
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It’s just hard to let go of guilt and shame. And my family doesn’t understand they think I’m just lazy. Like I’m just waistung my life away. I really want to get back with my life but my anxiety is so bad and I’m scared all the time.
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It never used to be like this, but when I talk to a POC, I get anxious about what they're thinking and then I get anxious about what I'm thinking. Maybe it's white guilt knowing that white people have oppressed POC & I feel awful about that. Or maybe it's feeling like I'm not doing enough to contribute to change. This really sucks because I don't want to appear anxious when I talk to someone, I can't even really pinpoint why I feel anxious. Guilt as a collective white race probably & realizing how f'd things are.
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Yeah I definitely have a similar struggle. Also a white, cisgender man. Often when I am around POC I get anxious and self-conscious, worried that I am going to say something offensive or ignorant or take up too much space. Especially when I am in activism spaces I get really anxious because I feel like I will get called out for something I don't say. I don't know if I had connected the dots to it being a part of OCD but it makes perfect sense. OCD feeds off of whatever you value most, and since it is really important to me that I not act in a racist manner, that my OCD would make me anxious that I will. Though also important to recognize that we as white people are all racist at times since we have been socialized in a racist system. Guilt and anxiety about it isn't helpful but hard to avoid.
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Yeah sometimes it is hard to differentiate between white guilt/shame that a lot of white people have and what is OCD.
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I have one that I feel is even worse.. I have this intrusive thought that I find black men attractive purely because they are black, so therefore I am racist. I will see a man and I start to internally check 'am I attracted to them?' and then that question itself freaks me out because I think that Prehaps deep down I only think they are good looking only because they are black, therefore, I would be racist... Oh my gosh I can't even explain it😣😣😣. I have dated some black men when I was younger and now since getting OCD my mind latches onto this horrible thought that I only dated them because they were black. Which is not true, but this thought feels sooo true 😢😢😢... I guess that's an intrusive thought by its very nature--distressing. My OCD has also given me some pretty narrow thinking about what it means to be attracted to someone. Which gives me lots of intrusive thoughts too. That I'm sexually lewd or 'easy' or promiscuous. Which is completely opposite of my true nature... But with my thought records in therapy I am able to see a little that these are just intrusive thoughts popping up. I feel scared to even post that because I fear people will really think I am racist.
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- 4y
Oh yea I get a ton of racist intrusive thoughts around people of other races even though I’m Latina. It’s really fucking hard and scary. I was having a hard time for a while because after I met my bf (who’s an Asian man) I started to hear so many slurs and other taboo thoughts in my head. It shifted to another obsession but this one still lurks around sometimes and causes me to be on high alert sometimes when I don’t need to be.
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I'm sorry you struggle with it too. It almost feels like a cop out, like to blame it on OCD/anxiety, but I don't know, anxiety is a real thing. I'm in my late 20s and this has really picked up in light of Black Lives Matter/People of Color activism. Maybe I'm recognizing my own privilege?
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@canigetawitness Or that I'm not doing enough to advocate for equality. I'm not sure, but I hate when Im anxious around this, I know I show outwardly signs of anxiety, and I don't want people to think it's because I don't like them.
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@canigetawitness You’re supposed to be mindful but you shouldn’t constantly be on edge about stepping on someone’s toes or ruminating because you won’t be able to continue normally.
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I probably just need to chill the freak out and stop over analyzing and just be a person.
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@Serio? Nobody’s perfect. Even people who are minorities like me can be racist and do shitty things too.
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@Serio? Yes, I do stay mindful, but it can go overboard.
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@canigetawitness Sometimes it feels like the more mindful I am the more anxious and self conscious I get in these situations.
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@Niminah Yeah, I don't know, I just feel ashamed that white people have contributed to oppression of POC.
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This is happening to me too as well. It’s horrible because never in a million years would I ever discriminate someone because of the color of their skin because I too am a Latina. It happened in August and I’m barely seeking help now. It makes me have so much guilt and shame because I’m educated and I went to school. I have always supported every movement but i started to question myself and my thoughts got the best of me. I had to quit my job because my anxiety is so bad. I started to wonder if people thought I was a racist. I even confessed to my friends and they thought I was crazy. I want to apologize to every person of color because I can stop the thoughts and my best friend is biracial and I want to tell her what’s going on but I know that’s seeking reassurance. It’s so horrible. I have my appointment this Saturday.
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@Anonymous I feel you. It's really hard. I certainly don't want to come off as racist, but recently my anxious mind is telling me I am . I support POC movements as well & consider myself to be an ally. I don't know why my mind is making me feel so bad. Have you found anything that's helped you with your fear? I'm sorry you're struggling with it too.
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@Anonymous That's also good to hear that you have a therapy appointment! I'm glad you'll be able to speak to someone for support.
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@canigetawitness No I haven’t I started talk therapy it helped a little. My therapist said that I am not my thoughts. She told me to just let the thought be there and not try to push it away but I feel so guilty when I hang out with my friend because the thoughts come in my head and I even want to tell her and appolgize but how can I if they’re my thoughts. It’s horrible.
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I too struggle with this! My therapist has me at the minute writing down my thoughts in thought records - the column headings are Situation Initial thought What that thought means about me? // if that thought was true what does that mean about me? Coping strategy? What did you do to lessen the anxiety And that's my first step on the ERP scale to start looking at that. Already its been really helpful as it's given me some space between me and my thoughts, to see them on paper, and see how irrational they are. I'm not 'over' the theme or anything but it has definitely been a great starting point =)!
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It’s so hard when you get racial slurs that pop in your head that makes you believe you really are. It’s so debilitating.
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But guess what? You've never said them. I deal with religious OCD so I deal with blasphemous thoughts often. If they bother you and you don't want them and you don't say them then just like I'm not an Atheist you aren't a Racist.
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It’s so hard I can be so happy and then the thoughts come in and I can’t control them. I have my appointment on Saturday. Any tips?
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Yeah I feel for ya. It is so hard to give up trying to control thoughts compulsions and just sit with the anxiety. But you are on the right path by being on here and getting connected to a therapist!
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I just feel so bad because I can’t even relax when I’m with my biracial friends because I’m in my head all day and the thoughts come. It’s like I’m not even here. I want to apologize to them but I feel like that’s reassurance and I don’t want to hurt them with my thoughts.
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Honestly yea you might end up pushing them away with these thoughts because they could be hurtful
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@Serio? Not a helpful comment lol. Hey Melody, your friends don't have to know, or you could choose to let them know you struggle with OCD and instruive thoughts 🤷♀️ it's up to you! I think you having friends of different races is the perfect opportunity to practise ERP in real life! You should look up some ERP examples and Prehaps ask your therapist to create a hierarchy for the ERP surrounding this topic 😊. It can seem like this will never end, but ERP is our only way out of this.
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@ButterflyStar I will thanks!
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Yeah I know, and I’m not that person. I would never judge any person by the color of their skin because I too am a POC. I love them I grew up with them. it just hurts me.
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Yea all I’m saying is that this is a case when the confessing compulsion could be harmful to someone else
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I hate this Subtype ocd because it’s something I value most. I’m seeing my therapist this Saturday and I have some hope. I hate feeling like this. I’m not living my life anymore.
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Omg I understand you it totally sucks. Sometimes I lose hope. Even though my therapist says you are not your thoughts. I feel like they are and God is punishing me and I question everything I do now. I overthink. I’m scared that Everything I do is bad and God is watching me all the time. I feel like a horrible person even though I have never hurt anyone. I watch old movies and shows that I used to enjoy and I feel so guilty because the thoughts come up. I watch the election and I’m happy but that guilt brings me down. I hate myself. I don’t know why this happened to me!
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Hey melody!! You sounds just like ME!!! idk if you are a Christian but I am a Christian and I am constantly bombarded by horrible instrusuve thoughts that I'm constantly sinning and offending God. I worried for so long, and sometimes do still, that God is punishing me (ocd thought, but still super scary).. And for the first year I had no restbite. I was very unwell, it was a traumatic time. Slowly, bit by bit, God is helping me recover through therapy and His help. It is slow, in my timing and thinking lol. And I am still very entrenched in ocd... But a lot has improved!!! Sooo much!! I honestly know how you feel so much.. Its like the only relief is when you sleep (if you can), and it feels like living is actually enduring a living Hell. Always here if you want to share what's going on!! You WILL get better!!!
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I had this constant narration in my head of everything. Sometimes it's still like that but it's nothing like it once was. I used to have this running narration where everything was so oooo scary to me.. Ugh gosh it's unbelievable. Praise God I am not where I once was, by His grace!!!!!
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@ButterflyStar Please pray for me. I get really sad and angry because everyone else is happy and I’m not. Also I had a question I had a memory when I was younger. There was a time where I went through a period where I used to wash my hands every 5 minutes like when I would touch something. I think I was like 10. Then I went through a time where I used to touch the door knob like 3 times before I left the house. Could I have developed OCD earlier?
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@Melody 25 I was already going to pray for you 😊I will, for sure. I understand.. That is a normal feeling. I believe it will go with time.. Yes that sounds like ocd in your younger years. It's awesome that you are in therapy tho 😊👌👌
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Thank you so much I’ve been struggling for 6 months now. I keep thinking about how happy I was last year and I get even sadder. The worst is that I can’t tell my family because they’ll think I’m dumb. I have so many dreams but I feel like I don’t deserve them. I can’t even sleep and having anxiety is horrible. I just want to be happy again.
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I'm sorry you're having such a tough time. Is there anyone else, apart from your family who you can talk to? If you like, you can talk to me.. I don't have social media but I can give you my email and then even WhatsApp if you use that app. But if not, I wonder is there anyone who is caring and a good listener who you could speak to? Just to offload a little.. I know looking back seems so heartbreaking. But you will come out of this period of life, totally different! You will have so much more empathy for others who struggle with it. You will be able to help people with OCD, even just by relating to them. Just take one day at a time. Don't worry about tomorrow, OK? ❤️ And what helped me sometimes was "Even hour by hour." that's all... Just getting through the next 10 minutes ❤️. You're not alone in your suffering 💟
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@ButterflyStar I’m having a panic attack right now tips.
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I want to reword "like I'm an annoyance" . I don't think POC think I'm an annoyance, I just feel ashamed of my own whiteness & privelege.
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I know that’s why I have so much guilt and shame.
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Though I think it would be ok to tell them that you are feeling anxious but not tell them the content of the anxiety. Sometimes that can be better than trying to suppress and pretend everything is fine.
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I have friends but I feel like such a burden to them. They tell me I’m not but they have lives and I don’t want to annoy them anymore. I need to be strong and want to get better. Yes I have what’s app! Also email!
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Ok I sent you an email!
Related posts
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- 23w
my ocd has been all over the place the past few days and it’s really exhausting. it’s convincing me i’m lesbian, im racist, i don’t like my bf, or im dying of 5 different diseases. im so tired. i’ve been more physical and keeping myself busy so im not sure why its acting up. within the past hour my ocd told me that i secretly like girls and i cant date my bf and that im racist bc i didn’t think a guy who is a poc was attractive. i feel like a horrible person and i feel like it won’t stop.
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- 16w
Cross post from Reddit: TW Religious ocd TW Racism This is going to confuse a lot of people but I’ll try my best. OCD could be tricking me. I don’t know. But I’ll do my best to explain. Warning: there are some extremely sensitive themes including racism. OCD has caused me to worry about making bad prayers. It is mainly an anxiety of what others would think of if I prayed for something bad. Basically, it can think of something bad, and I can think of why I want it, and say “amen” pretty easily. Not sure if that constitutes a prayer really since it is ocd driven, and might even feel more real to me than it actually is, but it gets very complicated. None of this makes any logical sense to anyone but me, but to me it makes sense and that’s the issue. My mind invented something where I can pray to pray for something. Yes, that’s right, and it makes no sense. Essentially these ideas for prayers come in automatically. I don’t necessarily choose them. I can somewhat choose how I react, but that is where it gets tricky. OCD also blunts my emotions with certain prayers or makes things feel more real than they are So, what happened, is my ocd targeted the theme I was most worried about having a bad prayer about, which was unfortunately racism. In the past, I made a mistake that was racist (I won’t get into what it was here), and I thought about it a lot. I imagined people never wanting to forgive me and saying I deserve to suffer forever. Additionally, worrying about making racist prayers made this go up. It was frustrating, because with ocd it can take what people say too literally. So if someone says: “you deserve to suffer,” I might be thinking that thinking about it 10 hours a day for multiple months was justified. This made me have a misdirected frustration towards the people I perceived as yelling at me, which was unfortunately people of color. Here’s where ocd comes in with the prayer obsession. OCD gave me the idea: well you’re so mad at them you could pray for them all to die. Unfortunately, with the prayer obsession I’ve had, I’ve had a bit of a history with doing bad prayers when I’m not feeling great, and I don’t know if that is just part of the ocd or not, or just doing them to do them. One example is world war 3. I don’t want people to get hurt, but when I was feeling horrible I thought “screw it, I’ll pray for it cause I want to die.” I knew God wouldn’t actually do it, and the normal me didn’t want him to. Then, and I don’t know why, it seemed extremely easy for a moment to pray for people of color to die, and I actually almost did it, but I stopped myself. This is where the praying to pray comes in. With ocd, if I have a moment where I almost did a bad prayer, my mind “saves” that mindset, and it is possible for me to go back to it any time. So this situation will present itself many times to me. With praying to pray, I can essentially be put back in the mindset at any time no matter what is going on, and by saying “amen,” my brain basically magically does it and it feels like the same thing. Because it feels real to me, it seems like the same thing as a prayer. Last night that is what I did for this and I regretted it less than a two seconds later. So basically, I ended up doing a prayer that was racist. This is exactly what happened in that moment. This isn’t who I normally am (although my brain would disagree), but in that moment, with magical thinking, I prayed for all people of color to die, out of what my brain said was “hatred.” My brain also said I felt genuine hatred, but I don’t think I really do. I think it is all related to a misdirected frustration of feeling like I was yelled at, which stemmed from ocd. After the prayer, all those feelings were immediately gone. I don’t know how messed up my brain was, or how much of a role ocd played. It probably at least blunted my emotions. It sort of came on all of the sudden too, but I did it. I’m really sorry. I don’t hate people of color despite what my brain says, but I feel like I did something really bad. When I sit with what happened and don’t engage with it, it does not feel like a big deal at all. The guilt is almost all ocd driven. So I don’t know if that means there is something I’m missing or not. I might be missing something, but I know what happened in the moment
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- 14w
I wanna start out by saying, I am really proud of how far I've come in recognizing my OCD tendencies and learned about how it can show up intersectionally for BIPOC folks who have racialized trauma and how me, being a White person, how it manifests itself for me. I'd also like to say, this is gonna be more of an analytical and reflective post. Please feel free to read and respond with any critiques or thoughts you have. I'm embarrassed about it nowadays, but it's important to acknowledge because it was a HUGE part of my teenage personality, unfortunately. I used to be a HUGE Shane Dawson fan 😭 like, his content was my strongest hyperfixation to date. So at this point in time, I feel like I'm still trying to decipher what kind of racial commentary and satire and jokes are genuinely funny and which are just perpetuating stereotypes and straight up minstrelsy. Shout out to D'Angelo Wallace for making the video essay that woke me up to seeing this issue more clearly. I try to be aware of how I can easily fall into just laughing at racial stereotypes without being aware of the serious consequences it has for BIPOC people, but at the same time, I don't want to be too worried about everything being racist and therefore that means it's bad and should be banned, cause that's also not always helpful, I've noticed. So racialized fear and polarization is something I'm deconstructing. I hate to admit this, too, 'cause it's embarrassing, but my OCD seems to latch onto racial issues. I end up obsessing about whether or not I'm causing marginalized people harm or not, particularly when it comes to racism. I believe this is because I know I was one of those White kids who was into "edgy" humor when I was a teen. I think it's just lingering guilt from knowing that was wrong, but OCD makes my guilt and rumination and therefore compulsions to "fix" it so much worse than most people. It's frustrating, but I have come a very long way in confronting and dealing with it. I'm very proud of myself for being aware that that's an issue I have. I've got to give credit where credit is due, to my biracial friend (who also happens to have OCD) for essentially helping me learn this, albeit the hard way with many arguments about racism and trauma. It's something that isn't talked about much, but we're learning to build bridges in our understanding of how mental health affects us as people with different forms of racialized trauma. Mine's not so much trauma, but social stigma, whereas his was from actual bullying and harassment and physical assault, simply because of his race. I've also learned how to recognize and deal with my own mental health issues WHILE confronting race because of Black advocates like Tony Nabors who does Racial Equity Insights, F.D. Signifier who does really great intersectional analyses on social issues pertaining to Black people, and D'Angelo Wallace for being the first Black YouTuber that made the problem with Shane Dawson video that finally helped me break out of my lowkey toxic parasocial/trauma bond relationship I had with him, lol. Does this post seem too wordy and analytical for this forum? Let me know if this isn't the right audience for this type of writing and reflection. I just wanted to talk about it because it's something I had to figure out largely on my own. Wondering if anyone else relates to this or can see themselves in this.
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