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Unusual Pure-O, Need Advice on CBT and helping myself


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Hello everyone.

First of all, let me say that I feel my Pure-O is rather unusual because I feel it focuses on an OCD theme I have never seen before. Because I am a writer, my OCD has focused heavily on my characters. After realizing that I have OCD, looking back I can see that I have obsessed about more 'classic' themes throughout my childhood. I suppose it focuses on whatever is most important or frightening to me. In this case, my characters are important to me because I enjoy role play and strive to become a fantasy novelist.

Unfortunately, because I was never diagnosed and ended up having to self-diagnose after an extreme episode of OCD about a year or two years ago, this thing has had an entire life time to brood and become ingrained into my mental processes. I can remember having obsessions concerning germs as early as 5 years old. Although I no longer obsess about germs or have outward compulsions, I've come to recognize the fact that I do indeed have mental compulsions. I've made strides in attempting to control these compulsions- for instance, not letting myself dig through my memories, or forcing my mind to refocus on other matters in order to prevent rumination.

However, I still have the same obsession- blaming my characters for real life events, as if they 'caused them'. This obsession tends to be pushed forward by the fact that whenever I have a thought about a character 'doing something', that thing generally does happen. It's a very annoying obsession, and I have had it under control for a while, by taking steps to be aware of my thoughts and not allowing myself to dwell on them. If something happened that associated with a thought, I wouldn't let myself ruminate. The obsession was still there, but I was slowly trying to teach myself to resist my various mental compulsions.

Recently, however, I had a relapse due to a bad nights sleep and multiple stress factors- so the obsessions have edged their way in again. I am doing my best not to let myself ruminate, and to resist the urge to dig through my memories if something bad happens, to 'see if I had a thought about a character doing that'. Yet thoughts continuously pop into my mind, that say things like 'if this (insert horrible thing here) happens, then you'll have to believe this is real! Your character will do it to prove it to you.'

Of course, something did happen. About a week ago, as I was stepping inside of the house, a small mole crossed my path, scurrying to the bushes near by. Aside from being shocked that a mole was out in the broad daylight, and thinking it was cute, my first thought was of how a dog I'd had in my teens killed a mole in the house. This immediately developed into the thought "your character is going to kill that mole!!" (Keeping in mind I've had obsessions in the past about my characters causing incidents of road kill- yes, my OCD has latched onto everything that could possibly bother me) I did my best to dismiss this. I even garnered some inspiration from seeing the mole, because I had been writing about a boy who was half hawk at the time, and thought it would be interesting if he was simultaniously disgusted and intreauged by the thought of consuming an animal due to the influence of his bird instincts. (I apologize if anyone finds this disgusting-it's a fantasy story and the character isn't entierly human)

The idea stayed on my mind, but I ended up having obsessions about "finding small animals dead in my yard" along with other obsessions. Never the less, on a night when I was feeling better, I wrote the scene, determined not to let my OCD get the better of me. I was feeling rather good about what I'd written, but of course the next day, my father finds a mole dead in the yard.

Now, there are several possibilities for how this mole died- a major one being the feral cats that live under a barn close by, and the fact that I do live in an area where hawks and owls frequent. However my OCD doesn't want to accept these explinations. I am doing my best not to ruminate or dig into my memories to see if I thought of the mole, and yet I can't help but wonder why the heck my obsessions, even the weirdest, seem to come to pass at the worst time.

Of course this makes me sound like I've lost touch with reality, but I assure you, I haven't. To be honest I think my obsession almost resembles that of those who's OCD tells them that they can cause bad things to happen with a thought, except in my case OCD has replaced "me" with a character doing things. I also do not take any preventative measures to "stop" these things from happening, because my OCD tells me nothing can stop it.

This has lead me to feel that I need help with more than just attempting to neautralize my compulsions, because I still seem to automatically associate a character with something bad happening in spite of a developing ability to deal with certain aspects of my OCD. It's become so automatic for me to immediately think "My character is going to do this-" whenever there is the potential for something bad to happen. It just pops in my head. I've gotten better about not repeating the thought to myself afterwords, but I'm at a loss for how to keep myself from making the initial association? No matter what I do to control my compulsions, it seems I cannot get rid of this immediate response from my brain. It's very 'stuck' in place, and I have a hard time finding the appropriate CBT methods to deal with it, because it's quite different from other obessions I've seen (Yet the mental processes I go through seem to be the same at the root)

Sorry for the long post, but I felt I needed to describe what's happening in full in order to show others the process my mind is going through. I'm wondering if anyone has any advice on a type of CBT, or method for dealing with the more immediate, subconsious aspects of my OCD that seem to happen on autopilot. Although ignoiring the obsession and occupying myself makes these thoughts loose power over time, and I'm often able to nip an obsession in the bud before I begin to ruminate, I'm wondering if there is anything else I should be doing?

I'm very determined to help myself because I find these annoying, intrusive obsessions to be counterproductive to what I truly enjoy in life, and I am sick and tired (to the point of actually getting angry at the OCD) of these rediculous thoughts causing me anxiety.

I will also say that I have posted here before, and even though I didn't stay long, a post PolarBear made asking me "why would you want to do that" ( cannot remember your exact words-I'm sorry. I believe it was you, I recognize the name) actually gave me the splash of water I needed to yank my head out of my compulsions long enough to see them for what they were and make strides to help myself. I'm back now, hoping to actually talk to the community rather than hide from my anxieties, because I do believe your thoughts are valuable to helping me get this under control.

Edited by HonorableMention
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Several things going on here. You are having intrusive thoughts that your characters can affect the real world. That leads into magical thinking, common in OCD, where you think your intrusive thoughts could be true. 

Dealing with this theme is going to be the same as for any other theme. You want to slow down and stop any compulsions you are doing and you should be doing exposures also.

You seem to have a pretty good handle on your compulsions, notably ruminating. When you get the intrusive thoughts you want to leave them alone. You want to do nothing about them. Let them float around in your head until they wither and die on their own.

For exposures I would sit down and think up a scenario for one of your characters. Something like, So and So will cause a plane to crash into my house in thirty minutes. Think it several times but do your best not to ruminate over it. Of course nothing will happen in thirty minutes so it will show you that there is no correlation between thoughts and what happens in the real world. Expose yourself like this every day until doing so doesn't get a rise out of your anxiety.

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