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Angst

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  1. I use DuckDuckGo and Apple products because I don’t want to be tracked. The function of tracking is for google and others including social media is to sell advertising. That is why they are so rich. Taking ads from newspapers and ITV. Your profile is also sold to companies which aim to affect elections as revealed by the Cambridge Analytical scandal. With targeted biased posts. I am a member of Liberty the civil rights group. In many countries, perhaps most, I would not want this known to the state. Who knows what might happen in the future! I am a Quaker in the wars I would not want my details to be known. The Quakers revolutionised mental heath care and set up businesses such as Cadbury, Rowntree and Clarkes and had remarkably good personnel policies including very good housing for their employees.
  2. ‘When I start to grab ahold of a particular topic that is bothering me and really try to fight it….’ Don’t fight it. You a giving the thoughts too much significance. Let the thoughts spread into and out of consciousness. Do not cut off the conversations but switch your mind to other conversations in the real world. Rather than type on a key board a text message or comment on a social media platform have a real conversation on the phone or video call or in person. This will enable to switch your mind by having a second party involved - you will listen to their remarks and the cadences of their voice. Feeling compelled to do things like test, check and ruminate are compulsions. Compulsion is an abstract noun and a scientific category - OCD, as it were, compels you to do things. But it is you who is doing the compelling. You yourself are obsessing about something. You think your thoughts are important and significant and reveal something about you. That is why I have found cognitive therapy to be successful for me, The therapy being Theory A or B or Beck’s approach of seeing negative automatic thoughts as meaningless nonsense. To let go to have to accept that the thoughts have no significance.
  3. Hi cherry A good read on this is on the BBC Science site- ‘We all have false memories.Here’s how yours are made’. The brief article goes through the work of Julia Shaw who’s a researcher at University College, London. Shaw’s book ‘The Memory Illusion’ is a very clearly written book on memory. Memory is not like a video tape - it is influenced by the context of recall. It is very easy to implant false memories and influence the recall of an event by for the example the way you question people. The famous example is if you question a person about an accident and say how fast was the car going when it crashed into the other car the speed estimate will be faster than if you say how fast was the car going when the car collided into the other car. The verb used affects recall. False events can be implanted by ourselves and others. The work of this is led by Elizabeth Loftus. In experiments she demonstrated how easily this is done. She has also appeared as an expert witness in court cases. I would leave the event alone and not deliberately replay the event in your head. We can make ourselves believe all sorts of things. I think knowing about the fallibility of memory might help you. You do seem to be in a repetitive cycle of ‘recall’. Don’t try to stop the intrusive memories or thoughts. When I have an intrusive memory I say to myself here it comes. Acknowledge it and move on. Do not linger or try to search for the truth in your memory banks. Reassurance will give your temporary relief but the doubt and uncertainties will return. Let it all drift away. Easily said but possible if hard.
  4. Hi G Just looked at the NICE recommendations. It is not updated much. CBT is still recommended along with the suggestion that in addition Acceptance and Commitment might be more helpful than progressive relaxation. Most interesting was family therapy together with CBT for 13 to 24 year olds in a longitudinal study studying patients over seven years period with a high percentage of patients recovering from OCD. There were problems as in all these studies about getting patients to commit to long term research. There was a lot of research stuff on medications and teletherapy.
  5. Hi G In the UK treatments for mental and physical undertaken or financed in the state socialised medical system, the National Health Service has to be evidenced based. The body that deals with getting the evidence is NICE - National Institute for Clinical Excellence. If you go to their website you will read about their recommendations for the treatment of OCD. Their recommendations for treatment are based upon research published in academic journals which are rigorously peer reviewed that is the research is scrutinised by other academics and researchers to see if the results claimed are evidenced. I personally see a problem with knowing the efficacy of mental health interventions in that there is a lack of long term follow up of patients who have received treatment. It would be better if a sample of patients were followed up after a year, five years and ten years. This is done, for example, with cancer treatments. There are samples of patients taken which are followed up years after a treatment. That way, we have a more effective way of knowing the effectiveness of a treatment. It could be that simply undergoing therapy and having the undivided attention of a therapist produces a ‘placebo’ effect in the short term. There are many therapies available in the commercial sector. It could be that therapists look for a USP - a unique sales point to differentiate their service from other therapists. You are right to want clinical evidence before you pay for treatment. In the UK in the private sector, the therapy industry is unregulated. Anybody can call themselves a therapist, a counsellor or a psychologist. That is why OCD UK has a page on its website indicating on how to get a therapist who is a member of a recognised professional association.
  6. I feel the same for you as you feel for yourself. People can be too blunt rather like the old joke ‘Pull yourself together’ the reply being ‘I’m not a pair of curtains’. I was going to reply to your thread saying that you have two conditions and each might reinforce the other. But I wasn’t sure if this was correct. But your post in this thread confirms it. I have a number of conditions that mingle together as well. Don’t let a third condition, depression, build up. Don’t feel guilty. Nothing to blame yourself for. People choose to read your posts and choose how their react. I really hope that you enjoy the rest of your holiday!
  7. Hi Kcbell We are a social species. We do have instincts but we need to be socialised to be fully engaged in a human community. For example if an infant or young child is isolated they will not develop language along with a whole set of social skills. Since I have lived alone there is more space for obsessions to grow in significance. Many widows and widowers feel alone and isolated that is why there are things like luncheon clubs, University of the Third Age groups, apartments blocks for older persons with communal areas. Being active alone does present difficulties for example the surcharge on holidays for solo travellers. Many women have told me that they dislike going into a pub alone. Some men too. They are commercial ventures which specialise in providing holidays for the solo traveller. There are clubs which offer memberships - darts teams, bowls, photography, birdwatching, rambling, volunteering opportunities.
  8. I read the technique from NHSInfo.Scot in the OCD section. The aim is to reduce the potency of OCD thoughts which carry a lot of emotional weight. My problem at the moment are intrusive memories. With intrusive thoughts pertaining to the physical world such as checking the front door things are external. You can observe yourself doing things repetitively. I have been successful with this form of therapy. I find that memories, being purely in the mental world, have a bigger emotional impact. Memories define who we are. So, as said, externalising them might be an effective strategy. I am able to dismiss intrusive memories. But even after being dismissed they have a physical impact upon my body - increased heart rate, my body tensing up, closing my eyes tightly, my stomach tightening up. We tend to forget that things like OCD have a physiological effect as well as a cognitive effect. After all things like fight or flight triggers chemicaland physique changes in body in preparation for action. I think my experiences might be on the borders of trauma, depression and OCD. I’m trying to learn how to not react to triggers.
  9. I think whenever we cognitively go ‘over and over’ something whether it is memories or thinking about something it is a symptom of OCD. Repetitive actions such as repeatedly checking taps or going over memories to check times when you felt good are features of OCD. It could be that reviewing memories is a form of mental reassurance. However, if a bad memory is exposed then to substitute it with a good memory can serve a purpose. This technique was taught to me by a therapist It is the repetitive nature and the checking purpose of your memory retrievals that appear to be indications of OCD. The checking that in the past you felt good.
  10. Hi Nicole It sounds a very traumatic time. My sympathies. I know nothing about the effect of tasering. Have you mentioned your concerns to your GP? But the constant thinking will not help. I think you need to have a plan. Write it down. About what you are going to do. I think the plan should include seeing a doctor. Once you have written down the plan switch your mind to other things. Remember OCD demands certainty. And lots of things can potentially damage us. Worrying about what might happen will eat away your time and your attention. What do you want to do? Direct your attention to achieving something to give you pleasure.
  11. It seems to me that you ruminate in response to a thought. The thought is intrusive or disturbing to your well being. To stop rumination you need to dismiss the thought as not worthy of consideration. You nip in the bud the power of the intrusive thought before it grows in your mind. I have found Theory A and Theory B helped me reduce the power of thoughts. I am thinking of trying Aaron Beck’s idea of not allowing such thoughts to disturb me. That is why I have asked if anybody had tried the method of indicating Negative Automatic Thoughts. I imagine that some will say that by doing this you are focusing too much attention on the thought. But the technique is designed to reduce the potency of intrusive and disturbing thoughts to stop us mulling them over.
  12. I wonder if anybody has used a diary method to log NATs and then to see how they could be reframed.
  13. In the UK Theory A and Theory B is the way to decide if a pattern of thoughts is OCD or not OCD. It is discussed in thread Back with vengeance. It is a pattern of thoughts concerned with a distinct theme. Sonetimes a thought ‘randomly’ enters my consciousness. It is such a ridiculous thought that it is called ‘magical’ thinking. Such as I must walk down one side of a street or something bad will happen. The thought that something bad will happen is related to stopping something bad from happening by obeying the thought. Magical thinking is closely related to superstition. In English culture it includes many things such as the danger of having an open umbrella inside. I find magical thinking thoughts are easily dismissed especially if you do not abide by cultural traditions. But they can be unusual and unique but ridiculous. I have intrusive thoughts from the past. I define them as depression, others define them as OCD. These are triggered by a stimuli such as a picture or word or conversation that triggers a memory from the past. It is the way memory works. If I mention to somebody about getting food poisoning on holiday then the other person if they have had a similar experience will mention it. It is the way conversations and empathy work. We automatically go to our memories to empathise with the other person. With depression and OCD there is a tendency for this to be very strong with negative memories rather than positive memories or what are construed in the present as being bad in the past. This is called autobiographical memory and is currently being researched in the context of OCD. There was a reference to it a few months ago on the OCD UK site about research being undertaken in Oxford.
  14. The standard cognitive therapy in the UK for OCD and health anxiety is CBT which includes the idea of Theory A and Theory B. Basically Theory A is that you have a real problem and Theory B is that the problem is OCD or health anxiety. You look at the evidence - your experience - to decide which is true. This is best done with a therapist who with you will formulate a treatment plan. If you have the book Overcoming Health Anxiety it will go through the stages of self therapy. It seems to me that you have extreme pessimism or you are ‘catastrophising’. Obviously none of us on the forum are professional qualified to provide a diagnosis, but you are saying things like nothing will work, so nothing will, closer to the end. It would seem to me that this extreme pessimism might be an indication of a psychological issue a la Theory B rather a somatic problem a la Theory A. Or at least an exaggeration. It could be that going through Theory A and Theory B that you discover that you are spending a lot of time ruminating or mulling over something. The therapist might ask you about your thoughts and how long you think these things and the emotional intensity of these thoughts. Just outlining a hypothetical case. Perhaps buying the book might help?
  15. Hi Gingham You are being too self critical. I suffer from this and I think many on the forum do. Things improve, things deteriorate. It is not important enough to cast yourself into despondency. If I remember correctly your compulsions are like/were like mine. You do not like doing compulsions. You spent nearly a day in bed because you did not want to go up and down the stairs. My compulsions are now manageable. I check the front and back doors once before I go to bed, for example. Going up and down the stairs may be good for physical health but it’s no good for mental health. To talk ‘therapeutically’ to people about your mental health is only there for good and deep friends and some families. Many do not want to know. I have known this. Many do not have a ‘support network’. Often friends disappear in a crisis. You are lucky to have good friends. So I think chit chat is good. So talking about a common interest is good. It could be about anything. What are you interested in? Join a group that engages in that activity -walking, choirs, amateur dramatics, golf, photography, cooking. Some find volunteering helpful. Engage in a social activity that involves an interest outside your mental anguish. It could also be spiritual or political. Deeper friendships develop from these things. Don’t be too hard on yourself!
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