- Username
- NOCD_me
- Date posted
- 3y ago
Reading this in feb 2022, any updates/ how are you feeling? Would love any tips or encouragement on how to overcome this
I had this exact situation in 2017 and it was how I got diagnosed. It sucks and I am so sorry to hear you are experiencing it 😓 Sobriety helped me. I can NOT handle alcohol or uncertainty so I will be 4 years sober in September. I went to 3 therapists and confessed to all the false memories I invented. My partner at the time forgave me and didn’t believe my confessions anyway... but he was also sending inappropriate videos to camgirls so we did break up. Therapy helped a little. Psychiatric diagnoses and medication helped. Tracing footsteps did NOT help lol. I even asked local cops for surveillance footage of myself 😹 No joke. This experience is TORTURE but a lot of good came from it. Compassion helps. Treat the self as you would a friend: Even if you did something regrettable blacked out, no one deserves to be defined by a bad choice when they were not conscious. I hope it helps you. Tulsi Sweet Rose relaxation tea, vitamin B, and COQ10 help. Same with sleep. 🌷🌟😺🌈🌙
Thanks for your comment, it sucks to experience this. I’m sorry you went through it too and that it didn’t work out with your partner. I’m not on any medication but I am talking to my NOCD therapist. She basically said that I have to accept uncertainty that I won’t know exactly what happened, but that I should catastrophize and look for evidence of being guilty. There is just no physical evidence of my fear, and that feelings are not evidence. She also said that if it happened 1.5 years ago and if I hadn’t thought about it until my OCD episode, then it’s really most likely just my OCD. She said confession is a compulsion and it’s best to not talk about it with my boyfriend who I am still with because this is OCD and not reality. It’s hard to accept that though. But I think normally peoeple wouldn’t be studying this under a microscope and reaching out to friends and looking for evidence. :/ I just get paranoid because people do things when they Black out and don’t remember. Although there is always some evidence that takes them back to what happened, especially when it comes to having sex with someone. The more I type here the more I see this is OCD lol 😂
Oh 💯 It stinks
Thanks for reaching out 😊
I’ve dealt with cheating OCD since 2016... I know exactly how you feel. It’s always after a night out drinking. Actually I just got back from a bachelorette and I blacked out... go me!! I asked for reassurance allllll day and everyone kept saying you did nothing wrong! Some people were sober, but I think it’s our brains not trusting the fact. We have to have more faith in ourselves. We care so much and we have strong morals. That’s what it really comes down to. Don’t pick up the football and run with it. It’s about letting it be. I’m here if you need to talk
Hello there. Thanks for your reply! I am struggling with shrugging off the guilt of something I didn’t do. I feel like everyone I shrug one thing off another possibility pops up. For instance, I clearly remember only ever being alone with 2 people. The first I was definitely sober and the second person I was alone with was my friend who helped me get the Uber. I only ever remember being in communal spaces, and I don’t even remember the other people I was talking to. I only met them this one time. Now my mind is telling me I could have kissed someone or had sex with someone. The scenes of “how” it happened vary. I don’t have a person in mind. I can’t put a face to it. Where it happened flips around from places of the house I didn’t even visit to the middle of the living room where everyone was but says everyone left so I could have privacy. I even had the thought that I did something f sexual with the uber driver. I have no concrete details, no real memory, no messages, no new contact info, no physical evidence, no memories of anything other than drinking and talking with everyone. I know that even people who cheat when they drink/black out have something to tie them back to the event. Even if they didn’t remember it entirely when they woke up. There’s always something there. So I just know I didn’t do anything. But my OCD is strong. I would love to hear some of your tips for getting over these horrible thoughts.
Yeah, I had similar thoughts and like you, no faces, nothing, but bizarre concoctions of hypothetical “how” situations. Do you have access to therapy? Are you sleeping well? My mind did not shut off for months and I was on 2 hours if sleep or less. I also saw a psychiatrist who prescribed me Seroquel because I also have major depressive disorder. Once I got some sleep, it started to fade. It is such a brutal and cruel obsession but I came out of it and you can too 😺
Hello there :) yes I do have a NOCD therapist actually. We are going to work on doing an ERP imaginary script of the worst possible scenario happening. It’s just getting over the feeling of guilt. And getting over the “what if’s” that’s so hard for me. And just accepting that this is OCD and not reality. Because I can logically label this as OCD but doing so makes me *feel* like I’m trying to manipulate myself out of feeling bad over something that may have happened. Do you know what I mean?
I also want to feel NOT GUILTY when I says “this is ocd, I know that didn’t happen.” Because I get really tripped out by the concept of “certainty” and “uncertainty”. Back then I felt certain that it didn’t happen because there’s just nothing there to investigate. But now I’m investigating and I have a perspective of guilty until proven innocent. But I know if that were the case, everyone would technically be guilty of something. Does that thinking resonate with you as well?
*but that I SHOULD NOT catastrophize and look for evidence of being guilty
Oh and thanks for the recommendations ❤️ I appreciate it and I am glad someone understands my challenge. I just get sad sometimes about it when the OCD hits and wonder if I deserve the relationship I am in, or if I just started it based off of a lie. Although I know I’m doing my best to be as honest as I can, and I’m mixing the guilt of the binge drinking with the guilt of the “what if I cheated” obsession. Thanks again 🙏🏽
Yes, my experience with therapy involved dealing with that idea of being deserving/or not. Opened up my mind to how other relationships conditioned me to feel unworthy and undeserving. So I worked on that with self-care. That may or may not apply to you.
Yes, I think it does apply to me. For me I think I feel unworthy not because someone else made me feel unworthy but because of self loathing. I think self loathing is an issue of mine whenever I make a mistake. I have blank and white thinking. So when I make a mistake, I assume I made every heinous mistake one can make. I hate myself for the mistake I made of binge drinking. That is factually the bad thing that i did. But now I feel like a garbage human despite me not having done anything other than binge drink. Which I suppose feeds into the OCD framework of making me believe I acted in such a way to cause harm and pain to someone I love. I’m sure you understand what I’m feeling 😅
Yeah, for sure. It’s excruciating 😣 It’s great that you have an NOCD therapist 😺 I started with one this week too! The guilt about those moments of not-guilt is so unbearable and it is unbearable. I hope the ERP works 😺
I’m actually in the middle of my treatment. I came in for different themes, but this one from the past and around memories has recently popped up and it’s a different challenge navigating past events from future concerns 😪 I wish you the very best of luck on your therapy journey. And thanks for your insight. I feel less “crazy” or “bad” or “guilty” knowing that I’m not the only person who suffers from these thoughts. It’s good to know we are not alone and that we are all just good people trying our best to be honest and navigate this disorder.
This is exactly what I have right now!!!
How do you know it's a false memory/OCD and not something that actually happened? I feel like a terrible person. I'm a very creative person, and the more I stress about whether I did this bad thing the more it seems real. The worst part is is that I have no way of reassurance without sounding crazy. I have ROCD and I randomly started obsessing over the 7 months of our relationship whether or not I've cheated on him. Even though I love him more than anything and I would never do that! I'm constantly triggered by coworkers or classmates that I've previously found attractive or liked and/or I know they've liked me or flirted with me. I'm at the point now where I'm rereading simple texts/straightforward texts of these people asking me about school work or if I could cover a shift trying to find proof of something I can't remember. My partner knows about my OCD and is very understanding and supportive. I feel like I'm living a lie. When this first started my rational brain knew this wasn't real, but the more I become obsessed the more it becomes more distorted. I feel guilty for being happy. I just want to be guaranteed it's not real so I can move on with my life. It's moving to specific people now and it's scaring me how real it feels.
I keep oscillating between telling myself that a faint memory could’ve been true since it popped into my head in a moment of distress and it was the first immediate memory I had so therefore it must’ve happened, and that I’m just in denial and trying to make it OCD so I can live with the fact that it “might not have happened”. I’m so scared that it did happen and that I’m relying on the fact that I didn’t remember the specifics so that I can have the possibility of it not happening. It’s not something I condone today nor does it reflect who I am nor does it seem like something I would do, but if so, why did it feel so familiar ? I have evidence that my memory is really distorted at times and it combines things and I was in a state of such panic that I might’ve just compiled memories together that is the worse scenario (since it’s something I’m so afraid of happening). But then I keep getting scared that I’m just in denial because I feel a faint familiarity to certain things. I’m honestly so panicked and sad and heartbroken. I keep fearing I did something wrong and faint memories would pop into my head and I would question when it happened and try to remember everything and it would anger me that I couldn’t remember everything. And it feels so wrong for me to just live with the fact that something could’ve happened even though it’s not reflective of who I am today. It feels immoral to not confess. I just want words of comfort and understanding and I just need to know I have hope for the future and I can be happy. Please help.
Hi everyone - having a pretty bad episode currently and can’t eat/sleep. On Thursday, I went out with my boyfriends friends and got a little too drunk. I remember getting to the bar and I made it home safely, I just don’t remember the in between. (I know the consequences of alcohol and OCD - this was an accident and will be avoided!) On Friday morning, I woke up in intense distress that something happened with one of his friends at the bar - so much so false (or real??) flashes of a memory popped in my mind. I can’t tell if it’s OCD again or real this time. Cheating ocd is a common theme for me but still feels really scary and real. I’ve avoided asking the guy bc that could come off bad/crazy or remind him it actually happened if it did?? But the guy liked my IG story and a post and it’s sent me spiraling. I feel (and my friends I’ve asked feel) if something actually happened I’d be confident that I did something bad and have heard something by now but what if the information is being hidden? I’ve been running all around on Reddit, forums google etc. for answers if it’s OCD. am I just faking the OCD fear to absolve myself of doing something bad? Is it real this time? It feels really bad and scary but I haven’t heard anything? It’s getting a bit better but is my mind just hiding it from me? Any tips? Please help. Would I know for sure if this happened? Would someone tell me? Help.
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