- Date posted
- 3y
- Date posted
- 3y
The response prevention message you’re using sounds a bit harsh. The message should reinforce the uncertainty you feel and remind you not to do compulsions, not beat you up! How about “maybe I made them uncomfortable, maybe I didn’t; there’s no way to know for sure.” “Maybe everyone has thoughts like these, or maybe they don’t. Thinking about it won’t help me find the answer.” I’m sorry you’re going through this. Remember that the goal of ERP is not to get rid of the thoughts, but rather to learn to coexist with them peacefully. Be aware that ERP itself could become compulsive if you’re thinking that ERP will make you a better anti-racist. When in doubt, lean gently into the uncertainty and discomfort. Best of luck x
- Date posted
- 3y
I’ve heard that OCD attacks our values. So it makes sense that it is attacking your values about being an ally. My ocd attacked my values and it was scary. I know it’s hard.
- Date posted
- 3y
No you’re not alone. It isn’t my primary theme but I have it. My thoughts on the subject are extremely explicit and offensive and in the past I’ve wondered if it really was OCD because of how detailed the thoughts are and how they come up in such varied situations. I get nervous mostly around strangers and also around friends sometimes. I worry if it’s noticeable and assume what others are thinking when they’re around me as well. With that and every other theme I have I try to practice acceptance and say “well maybe I am but so what, I can change/live with it etc.”, that’s just temporary too, it doesn’t stop the cycle. And I consider myself as highly anti every form of racism. It’s completely opposed to everything I believe in and have always believed in. But what OCD usually does is find what’s the most abhorrent thing to you and tries to convince you to the absolute best of its ability that that’s what you are. But you’re not, even if part of you believes you are. Even if you’re almost fully convinced you are. I know that reassurances like that don’t ultimately convince. But you’re not alone and there is hope. You’re doing the right thing getting help for this
- Date posted
- 3y
Racism-themed OCD…that term is rather new to me, yet the more I come across it, the more I suspect I have it.
- Date posted
- 3y
If our society wasn’t so obsessed about race I think you wouldn’t suffer from this. Not your fault.
Related posts
- Date posted
- 19w
i’ve been having this theme pop up recently where if I see people either criticize or be a hater and spread misinformation or seeing old controversies about my current interests/hyper-fixations i find myself having a crazy anxiety attack about if it’s “morally okay” to be interested in my interests anymore. i feel really singled out and like im doing something wrong because im watching a youtuber or listening to a specific musical group. in all of these specific situations the people involved have talked about the situations and have changed accordingly but seeing it makes me feel like i shouldn’t be allowed to like my favorite things. to be clear none of these things are dramatically evil or bad. it’s either misinformation/uneducated people influencing someone opinion and then they learn and change. it just makes me feel like im not allowed to like my favorite things anymore because of people criticizing it??? if that makes sense??? also this is a little off topic but also not really because i’m 99.99% sure im autistic because of MANY things but with this specifically i have very strong interests and i feel very deep feelings about them and any and all criticism or hateful comments towards my favorite things trigger me deeply and make my ocd act up and make me feel uncomfortable and uncertain and anxious and it causes physical discomfort to me. i really don’t know how to calm myself down about this specific theme it’s brand new and makes me feel really anxious. not trying to look for reassurance but does anyone else understand what i mean??? does anyone have any advice on how to not give into the negative comments??? any suggestions on how to ease this specific anxiety???
- Date posted
- 15w
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
- Date posted
- 13w
I can be way too hard on myself and beat myself up over the smallest slip up in regards to OCD. Sometimes it can feel like I'm gaslighting myself on what was "so blatantly and obviously a moral atrocity in thought and intent", when 95% of the time I'm not even sure what my own intent with dealing with these thoughts is or why I do what I do. It makes me feel like some shameless beast for "daring to even entertain the thought of something so VILE!!!" When I just get so confused and scared on moral issues, like my mind is pulled down a rabbit hole I can't escape until the tricks are done on me and it's too late, i've accepted such ideas I hate until that hate and trying to not give in convince me "it might not be that bad". It feels like anything, even the most mundane things can trigger this. This cycle happens mainly because I feel like there's "no way to escape committing more 'attrocities' in thought or compulsion anyway"...and these cycles become the basis for more of these incidents. there a way to stop this? There have been multiple times where I called myself the R word, and even knowing it's a slur I still called myself that because "I'm nothing if not deserving of such scorn". Any attempt to stop the madness makes it worse and it's like all this I talked about is so convincing I dare not question it until after the fact. Please help.
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