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snowbear

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About snowbear

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  • OCD Status
    Living with OCD

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    Female
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    North Wales
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    Creative writing, psychology, mental resilience and leadership

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  1. My way of dealing with it would be 'Ok, I'm obsessing about this tooth. Nothing I can do about it until I've seen a dentist. I've booked an appointment, so now I need to get my thoughts onto other things and leave this line of thinking alone.' Then every time my tongue strayed to the cracked tooth or thoughts started up about it I'd force myself to let it go, refocus and get busy doing something that took my mind off it.
  2. Hi jamesk and to the forum. When I was 7 my mother became 'contaminated' and by my teens my whole family were the source of contamination in my world. Fifty plus years on everything to do with my family still feels contaminated and I have to work hard at fighting that 'natural' feeling. So it's important not to let things coast and accept the status quo or you may all find you miss out on normal family life for years to come. Looking back, what could have helped to make a difference was talking openly about the OCD. Those are extremely difficult conversations to have, especially for your daughter who will feel guilty for feeling the way she does about family members. But brushing it under the carpet is worse, so do try to sit everybody down at some point and talk about feelings in a safe way with no judgement passed by anybody on what's said. In my case there was a specific incident which started the emotional rejection/ contamination process and the rest of my family became contaminants when they took my mother's side over mine. But often people can't identify a reason why it began and that's ok, you just work with where you're at now. This form of OCD is known as 'mental contamination' and is different to the classic handwashing 'direct contamination' or fear of germs. It 'spreads' by association so that whole cities, countries or even the whole world (!) can become contaminated. The thinking behind this can seem crazy to those unaffected by it, but a good comparison which might help thow some light on it is the Hindu caste system which is a widely held religious belief that nobody bats an eyelid at. In the caste sytem, people associated with dirty or lowly jobs are called 'Untouchables'. They 'pollute' those they come into contact with and those of a 'higher' caste will go to extreme lengths not to become polluted by contact with an Untouchable. So maybe the idea that a family member is polluting your daughter's world isn't quite so 'out there' as it first seems. With mental contamination though it's not about social rank, it's about unpleasant emotions and difficulty reconciling the emotion a person generates in you with how you're 'supposed' to feel about them. For example, in some families it may be unacceptable to be angry with your parents. One of those unwritten rules that nobody even realises is there but which gets absorbed subsonsciously at a very young age (typicaly before the child is even talking.) So when a parent- who is only human after all - generates feelings of anger in the child, there's no outlet of expression available. The unspoken anger gets internalised as a pollutant. First the feeling pollutes, then the person associated with the feeling becomes a contaminant. By that stage the initial event that caused the anger could be long forgotten by all parties, but the 'contamination' feeling remains and further contact with the contaminant fires it up again and again while the logic to it all falls further and further into obscurity. At that stage it's about addressing the fact that your daughter has certain strong feelings which are upsetting her, feelings she doesn't understand and doesn't know how to process. That's bog standard therapy stuff - the reason for the feelings being there is immaterial. Mental contamination is typically dealt with by the sufferer the same way a pollutant, germs or toxin would be. So washing, disinfecting, bleaching, avoiding, throwing out things that have become contaminated...are all typical ways of dealing with this kind of contamination. The problem is of course, that you can't wash off or disinfect away a feeling. So any rituals undertaken are at best a temporary fix that reduce the immediate emotional overload, but leave the underlying problem unfixed. Oh yeah, I can empathise with that one for sure! When you challenge her OCD it feels to her like you are threatening her very survival. So unsurprisingly she'll dig her heels in and fight back with everything she's got, setting wider and wider boundaries in order to stay safe. But OCD left unchallenged will always slowly take over. Daily life is like running on a treadmill just to stay still, which is exhausting for the sufferer. Try as they might to contain it, the OCD gradually wins. So what's the right approach? It's about getting on the same side as your daughter, so that you all challenge the OCD together. Otherwise your attempts to fight the OCD may be perceived as challenging her, as invalidating her feelings, or as forcing your rules on her without any regard for her beliefs. And you get on the same side by talking about it. By having those difficult conversations. By making it clear that you know she is not her OCD, and that you want to help her to fight the OCD, not that you just want rid of the OCD. You can learn more about mental contamination from one of our conference presentations here. Professor Radomsky is the leading psychologist in the world on this subject! So we're very lucky to have him associated with OCD-UK. His book on the subject was published in 2015 and is intended for therapists rather than sufferers, but if you have the cash to spare you might find it useful reading. It's available on Amazon books here (and probably from other book stores too.) Any further questions, just ask.
  3. Hiya, It's very easy to give advice, but I bet a lot of the people telling you to just stop it are struggling to 'just stop' their own compulsions too. We all know that's what we have to do one day to stop the misery of OCD, and we all hope at some point to have the strength to do it. But you're right, it's not easy. What kind of support do you think would be most useful for you at this time?
  4. Sounds to me like exactly what the OCD support groups are there for. Have you checked them out yet? https://www.ocduk.org/support-groups/online/ Laura has a whole section devoted to the groups just below the main OCD and Family/Friend forums.
  5. Love that. Short and sweet and oh so very true. Might add it to my signature quotes some day.
  6. Handy has given you the information you'll get if you google it. Personally I think it's just 'CBT'. All these new 'types' of CBT are a bit of a misnomer - it's all just CBT. The whole point of CBT is that it adapts to the individual needs of each client, so giving each part of the process new names just confuses people IMO. Not unlike some people still talk about HOCD,ROCD, SOCD and Pure O They're all just plain old OCD and the extra letter adding in what the person's obsessions are about is irrelevant. Same with i-CBT. It's just CBT, with more emphasis on a particular part of the process at the start - and (if the therapist is worth their pay packet) the CBT will adapt as you progress so it remains specific to you as an individual and covers all the needs which are revealed through the sessions. They've started to give different aspects of CBT these new names because CBT is now well-established as a therapy and focusing on a single aspect of it is the only way psychologists new to the field can get their name attached to 'new' research. Really they're just proving (again!) that CBT works while trying to gain some kudos and reputation off the back of their 'not-so-new-'new' research. If you've been told i-CBT is what's on offer, say thank you very much and get stuck in.
  7. Good to see you're finally taking action to tackle your OCD. (Reducing the number of times you give in to compulsive masturbation.) It's a step in the right direction.
  8. I don't doubt for a second that you're genuinely putting everything you've got into trying. As I said above, the emotions we experience are the result of our internal dialogue and behaviour. If your anxiety comes back the instant the thought comes back, it's because one part of you is trying really hard to apply the CBT while another part of your brain is continuing with the same internal chatter. Without you realising, that internal chatterbox is locking you into an endless game of tug-of-war. You need to become more concious of what you say to yourself when The Feared Thing rears its ugly head, and change the record (as we used to say back in the days before digital downloads!) Refocusing on life can be hard work. Have you ever tried mindfulness meditation? The analogy I was taught was to treat your mind like a playful puppy that you're training to 'stay'. At first the puppy hasn't a clue why you want it to sit on the mat - it gets excited at every new sight and smell and keeps running off to every corner of the room to investigate. Remember it's just a curious puppy! You need to be firm but gentle, never get upset with it. Every time it runs off somewhere or barks to get your attention, simply bring it straight back to the mat, calmly repeat 'stay', turn your back and return immediately to what you were doing before it ran off/ barked. After a while the puppy starts to understand that when you tell it to stay on the mat it is supposed to stay there, neither running off on its own nor bothering you. As long as you remain calm, firm and gentle with it the puppy learns to be calm itself and 'stay' instead of wandering off. Training your brain to refocus on what you were doing before the intrusive thought hit you is exactly the same as training that puppy. When your brain wants to go off into 'what ifs' and worries, without getting upset with yourself you calmly bring it back to where it is supposed to be - again, and again, and again... With practise satying focused gets easier and the temptation to rush off elsewhere and investigate the latest thought flitting through some corner of your mind gets less. You're not being obtuse. If there are things that aren't yet clear, just keep asking questions until you understand it so well you could teach it! Of course your anxiety is genuine. There's no such thing as 'non-genuine' anxiety! It's not like you're faking it. You feel what you feel. What I'm saying is you are also in control of what you feel. You can change what you feel to something else on a whim. Think of how you can be totally happy one minute and feel instantly overwhelmed and tearful when a sad song comes on the radio. In response to hearing the music you changed your thoughts >> which in turn changed your emotion. What you want is to 'know' in advance. To feel confident and/or non-anxious before changing your internal dialogue. Sorry, but it doesn't work that way round. Wanting certainty first is a case of putting the cart before the horse and going nowhere as a result. This is where we sometimes talk about 'taking a leap of faith'. Allow the change to happen without getting certainty first. Knees knocking or brimming with pretend confidence - Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. (Which just happens to be the title of an excellent book by Susan Jeffers. I highly recommend it for anyone who struggles to do the things they dream of due to lack of confidence.) Susan Jeffers talks a lot in her book about committing 100% to each and every thing you do throughout life. Whether it's world-changing or simply your everyday routine, commitment is key to success and happiness. So not feeling able to commit 100% (being pulled in both directions) is a problem. Happily there's a fix. Same thing. *shrugs* If you weren't highly bothered about, and unwilling to accept the teeniest tiniest possibility however unlikely of The Feared Thing coming true, then there'd be no obsessing or compulsions in the first place. It's the 'cart-before-the-horse' conundrum again. You prove to yourself that the Feared Thing doesn't need to be feared by taking a leap of faith and taking action without certainty. Feel the fear and do it anyway. Change and action first - and then - through making the change and by taking action without waiting for certainty/ confidence first - that's how you discover the feared thing wasn't a real or worthy concern. Sadly, it doesn't work the other way around. Feeling genuinely free of fear is created by facing the fear head on, knees knocking, sweat pouring but with an internal dialogue that says ' I'm taking a chance and I'm ok with that.' How you get yourself to the point where you're willing to say 'I'm ok with that' is a very individual thing. For some it means waiting until you hit rock bottom, until there's nowhere left to fall and no other option but to start climbing back out of the deep black pit you've thrown yourself into. For others it's a matter of gathering information, gaining an understanding of what needs to be done and then just rolling up their sleeves and getting on with it. A few hardy souls simply make the decision one day that 'enough is enough, it's time to change' and then they commit 100% to making the change and just go for it. Whichever route you take to get to the point of 'I'm ok with that' there's one thing that's almost universal. You'll try and slip, try again and slip a bit less... keep trying and eventually reach a point where you look back and realise you finally made it. I doubt there are many (any?) people who feel 100% confident they're going to reach recovery until after they have created being free of fear for themselves. The journey to recovery isn't a motorway where you can see miles ahead and speed along with confidence you're not going to hit some oncoming traffic. It's a winding path through a forest, full of shadows that might yet be misinterpreted as tigers. It's about putting one trembling foot in front of the other and doing that for as long as it takes to stop stumbling and get your balance. I'll guarantee you one thing that might surprise you. Whatever your Feared Thing is, however totally dire you imagine the consequences of it being true are, IF it ever happened, you'd cope a lot better than you think you would. Which means it was never really worthy of being feared to the extent that you now fear The Thing. Could be a genuine thing anybody would naturally, and sensibly, find frightening BUT not to the extent that it paralyses you or takes over your life. We only find out with absolute certainty and complete confidence that The Feared Thing was more of a mouse than an elephant by committing to The Leap and saying to ourselves, 'Yeah, it might happen and I'm ok with that because whatever happens, I'll handle it.' The confidence that you would indeed have been able to handle it a lot better than you imagined can only come with hindsight. Did I mention I have a tendency to waffle a lot? Time I shut up and went to bed.
  9. Hmm... Part of the problem may be the framework you use to decide what is OCD and what isn't. @Angst also talked about Theory A vs Theory B on another thread recently. I've pasted part of my reply here and put the relevant bit in bold so you have it on your own thread to refer to, floods. It's such an important point I hope you'll forgive me for saying it again. It's the degree of the response that makes it OCD, not an either/or choice between a legitimate problem and OCD. For a lot of problems anxiety is the normal response. Thinking a lot about the problem is normal. These are totally appropriate, but temporary states. It becomes OCD when that short-term spike of anxiety becomes prolonged, severe, and unresponsive to taking action or receiving reassurance. It becomes OCD when thinking about it becomes all-consuming, gets confusing, or goes round in circles without helping - morphing from problem solving into rumination. There's a world of difference between thinking about something and rumination. It's ok to think about it, provided that is constructive, time-managed problem solving. If you find you're getting stuck in that content, trying to solve it but getting nowhere - and the more bogged down or anxious you get the stronger the urge to push on and fix it - that's your cue that you're slipping into OCD mode. 1. Obsessing (spending all your time thinking about it, or prioritising the topic over other things you need to think about/ do) 2. Compulsively trying to solve the problem by going over the same ground again and again (instead of approaching it constructively in short bursts and then letting it rest completely while you give your full attention to other things) 3. Feeling the anxiety escalate in spite of (or because of! ) the attempts to problem solve. Or anxiety doesn't reduce when you take appropriate action/ receive appropriate reassurance. Stopping this from spiralling into a full-blown OCD episode comes down to recognising the signs that it is OCD as early on as possible, and then choosing to set the worry aside for a bit while you focus on something else. Anxiety isn't meant to be constant. Nature uses anxiety to gear us up for action (flight/fight response.) How you respond after something has triggered an anxiety response is VERY important. If i) your internal dialogue is 'Was that a tiger lurking in the shadows? Not sure. Quick check - seems ok. Right where was I...' ii) your behaviour is to go straight back to thinking about something else then the result will be iii) your anxiety will naturally spike and fall away as your emotional state returns to something more neutral or positive. If i) your internal dialogue is 'Was that a tiger lurking in the shadows? Not sure. Can't see anything. Check again. Still not sure. What if...? Tigers this, tigers that, tigers, tigers, tigers... ii) your behaviour is to check repeatedly even after the lights are turned full on and the shadows have gone, ask someone else if they saw anything, Google the places tigers lurk... then the result will be iii) your anxiety spike will stay high or even escalate. Why? Because our emotional state is always dictated by our internal dialogue and our behaviour. The good periods don't come out of the blue. They result from you talking appropriately to yourself and behaving normally. If the 'work' is a struggle, it suggests you're playing a game of tug-of-war with yourself. Part of you is trying to apply CBT, while the other part of you is still 'talking tigers' and behaving as if the (perceived) threat was still present. So next time you're struggling and not seeing the fruits of your labours, listen to yourself. What is your internal chatterbox saying? Notice your behaviour. Are you still checking every shadow, avoiding shadowy places, thinking about tigers instead of what you're having for dinner etc With practise you will get good at taking back control - you'll be firing those bolts out of the blue, creating your own calm, happy space where tigers dare not tread.
  10. Agree. Another way of saying that is to place no value on the thought. Which ties in with the advice to place a higher value on doing the things you want to do and a lower value on trying to problem solve or have certainty. Theory A/B works for some people and that's great! If it works for you, stick with it. But for some the risk is 'Theory A or Theory B?' itself becomes another unanswerable question, one more debate, more fuel for their compulsive ruminations. Particularly those who think the method is comparing 'This is a valid worry' with 'This is just an OCD worry.' (Which is NOT the intention of using theory A/B.) We can have valid worries that we have an OCD response to. It's the degree of the response that makes it OCD, not the validity or otherwise of the thoughts. As long as they keep a clear focus on what Theory A and Theory B is actually about, then it's fine.
  11. Says who? That's 'dealing with it.' Just because it comes back every now and then doesn't mean you did the therapy wrong or that you're missing some part of the 'cure'. Every time it crops up again, just apply the same therapy - don't engage and get busy doing stuff you enjoy. Sorted again (and again, as and when needs be.) The more times you go round that cycle, applying therapy, getting yourself out of the OCD rabbit hole and back to normal - the faster and better you get at it. The aim isn't to 'never have another intrusive thought'. The aim is to become a wise old person with the capability of stopping OCD in its tracks so swiftly that you halt it in the very same second it tries to start.
  12. Hi Relinsky, I agree. Saying 'Just choose to stop ruminating' is very unhelpful. 'Just' suggests that it's easy. But it's not at all easy to do. It takes practise. However, if we change the emphasis in the advice ... 'Just choose to stop ruminating' then it is helpful, because this is what you have to do in order to actually stop ruminating. We often don't realise it, but rumination isn't an automatic process, nor is it outside of our control. When we get drawn into the OCD arguments in our head, we're choosing to try to solve the problem/ try to stop the anxiety. At least part of you wants to engage with / fix it. OK. So you take on board the message 'Don't engage with the thoughts' and your conscious intention is to do exactly that. Then you get an intrusive thought, and you fall straight back down the rabbit hole of the OCD cycle. We can compare it to making New Year resolutions - the good intention is there, but temptation is also strong. If you make the choice a tug of war between ruminating (do your best to solve the problem) and not ruminating (leave the problem unsolved) then you'll always struggle. Happily, that isn't the choice you're asked to make through CBT. The choice is more like 'Do you prefer chocolate icecream or strawberry icecream?' It comes down which flavour you prefer in the moment. So you might think, 'Chocolate reminds me of home, makes me feel safe - so I like the chocolate flavour. But strawberry reminds me of summer holidays and freedom, and that makes me happy - so... I prefer the strawberry flavour. Now, let's put that into therapy terms: I value certainty, it makes me feel safe, so I put a high value on engaging with the worry and ruminating to try to find a solution. But my life sucks and I'm miserable. So I'm ready to put a higher value on freedom and happiness - to choose the don't engage, don't ruminate option. Now it's no longer a choice between something you desperately want and something you don't really want but feel you ought to be good about and choose. It's a simpler choice between two options, both of which you like, but one you value slightly more because of the way it makes you think and feel. It can be a close call between chocolate and strawberry, but as long as one flavour wins by a tiny margin it's choice made and your preferred icecream is on its way to your tummy. Behaviour is driven by our thoughts, feelings and values. Instead of setting up a tug of war between 'want' and don't really want' you make it a set of weighing scales tipped in favour of what you value slightly more. Apply the weighing scales / value way of thinking and now when an intrusive thought pops into your mind the pull to engage is easier to resist. The desire to find answers/ ruminate is balanced by the desire to be happy again (in a way that doesn't demand answers before happiness.) You 'simply' want stop ruminating slightly more than you want to engage. So you get an intrusive thought and instead of the no-win struggle you reply, 'No thanks, got better things to think about. Bye OCD! ' You choose not to ruminate. Does that help to make how-to-do-it clearer? (And being told to 'just choose' less frustrating!)
  13. How about taking a break from thinking about it? Get your mind onto something else for a few hours.
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