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ROCD? This is new to me


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You're still seeking reassurance from us and you know we can't give you that. You want us to turn around and say that dating someone else a few months after breaking up with your previous boyfriend is alright because you're panicking about it, even though there is nothing to panic about at all in that regard.

A good rule of thumb to determine whether a thought is an intrusive one or a legitimate concern is to see how it makes you feel after it pops into your head. If you get a thought and immediately start feeling anxious about it and the anxiety makes you want to do a compulsion (such as post on here for reassurance) then it is an intrusive/OCD thought. Non-OCD thoughts simply don't elicit the same kind of response in us.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Is it possible to feel anxious about this whole thing even if a specific thought didn't pop into my head? 

Im pretty sure this feeling I'm having is OCD because I've been on here on and off for the past hour reading this post and it's responses... which is a compulsion. I just. Ugh. I keep getting the feeling that this isn't OCD. But that's also a sign that it's OCD. My brain is ridiculous.

edit: I also think I have poor insight/ lack of confidence in myself and I don't know how to fix that.

Edited by constantworrier1989
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  • 4 weeks later...

So I've been doing okay the last couple of weeks. 

Then yesterday all of a sudden the thoughts came back, just not as severe. I felt like I was faking having fun with my boyfriend.

then this morning I went through a cycle of worrying if I'm a pedo, worrying if he's a pedo, then all of the thoughts went away for a few hours until about 45 minutes ago... and they're focusing on my feelings for my boyfriend. So now I'm sitting here at work worrying about whether or not I really love my boyfriend. This post doesn't make much sense, sorry,but I'm really irritated with myself right now. 

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Don't be angry. 

Sounds like you would benefit from learning more about how the disorder works ( the cognitive side)  so you can attribute these intrusions to OCD and not connect with the meaning it gives them or worry about them. 

The Four Steps add on process to CBT should also help you. If not familiar with them, you can find details by putting "the four steps" into the search field on the main OCD-UK website. 

 

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I almost feel like the fact that these thoughts aren't upsetting me badly is making me more anxious than the thoughts themselves. I had the thought, "well I don't love him so I should just break up with him" and I wasn't that bothered by it... but now I'm upset because I feel like this means I just don't have OCD and I'm not in love. 

I should note that I'm going to start my period soon. I'm going absolutely crazy right now ?

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10 minutes ago, taurean said:

Don't be angry. 

Sounds like you would benefit from learning more about how the disorder works ( the cognitive side)  so you can attribute these intrusions to OCD and not connect with the meaning it gives them or worry about them. 

The Four Steps add on process to CBT should also help you. If not familiar with them, you can find details by putting "the four steps" into the search field on the main OCD-UK website. 

 

I saw this just after I posted another comment. I'll check this out when I get home, thank you ?

Edit: where can I learn more about the cognitive side?

Edited by constantworrier1989
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I might just be venting at this point but here we go: 

when I'm not worried about my feelings for him, I'm constantly worried that I've annoyed him. Or that he doesn't love me. Or that he'll get sick of me. Or I'm not enough for him. 

To be clear, he has never once said any of these things or given me any reason to think them, I just think them and endlessly worry. I don't know if this is also OCD or if I'm just a crazy girlfriend ?

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Sounds like OCD. 

You can learn more about the cognitive side by initially taking a look at my piece "don't ignore the cognitive side"  which you can find via the search field top right, choosing to restrict the search after the first results to "in content title only". 

A self-help book using CBT will help you understand the cognitive side. "Break Free From OCD, co-written by our patron Professor Paul Salkovskis, is a good one. 

Edited by taurean
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So I'm on my period, I came across a buzzfeed video about falling out of love, and I'm trying to not freak out. I'm trying to ignore the one similarity I had with a video created by a social media account while NOT trying to reassure myself that I love my boyfriend. 

Wish me luck ?

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Hi all,

Clickbaits, Chaosed is so right, these articles are rubbish. I found myself looking at a website about palm reading and trying to read my own to get confirmation (reassurance!!!!) that I am in the right relationship. Unless it's erp, we're just hurting ourselves. 

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3 hours ago, Coffeecake said:

Hi all,

Clickbaits, Chaosed is so right, these articles are rubbish. I found myself looking at a website about palm reading and trying to read my own to get confirmation (reassurance!!!!) that I am in the right relationship. Unless it's erp, we're just hurting ourselves. 

Lol! I was trying to look into something about Venus being in retrograde a month or so ago for reassurance. Thank god the website was so annoying it gave me time to realize I was being dumb. I'm glad I'm not the only one who has looked for "signs" or proof in silly places.

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I'm feeling really hopeless at the moment. He was home last night and this morning, and I felt almost numb toward him even though I was trying to feel love. 

He's at work now, but I'm afraid for him to come home because what if I still feel numb? This is so unfair. Before all of this I was the happiest I'd ever been in a relationship. Maybe that's why my OCD decided to latch onto it? ?

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1 hour ago, PolarBear said:

How much time did you spend trying to feel love, trying to figure out why you feel numb, analyzing what it means, judging how much you love him and on and on? There's your compulsions.

A few hours, at least. Does the fact that I felt numb mean anything? I mean people in a relationship can't feel "in love" constantly. 

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True enough. Feelings ebb and flow naturally. Your attuned to your feelings right now, which you shouldn't be. Feel what you feel and get on with your day. And watch those compulsions. No good will come from doing them.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I know it can be very distressing to accep these kind of thoughts, or to have these feelings towards him.

Tour brain threw a stick at you, that you might not love him. You latched to this thought and the fears that go along with it: that you will break up if you don't love him, and you will be sad, and it will be catastrophic even. So now you feel trapped. There's isn't any way to escape the events blown up to catastrophic proportions that you not loving him would imply, right? But wait, there is a solution: you could make sure that you love him, in this way the trap is avoided, right? So easy, in theory! So you start overthinking the problem, going on and on in your head about your relationship in the past, the way you feel in the present, what you feel when you are with him and what you feel when you aren't together and think about him.

The first mistake is to believe that rumination will bring you to any conclusion ever. Our brain loves to help us, and if it senses that we give so much importance to wether we love him or not, it will start throwing more and more uncertainty and doubt surrounding this situation. Since completing a ritual gives us relief, thus releases dopamine in the brain, and making him throw more and more sticks at us. Did I look at him a certain way? "yes/no/maybe" -> five minutes later you've found the answear => dopamine. Do I feel love when I look at him? Half an hour later, when you decided that you did (or not) => dopamine.

So not only you teach your brain that this is very important for you so you want to solve this problem as often as possible, and it will comply by giving you more worry and distress surrounding the issue, but you are rewarded with dopamine when completing a ritual, and because of the fact that the brain tries to help you and be as happy as possible, and it sees that this is where you want to take your source of dopamine from, he will throw more and more sticks at you too.

As you can see, the mechanisms I described above have nothing to do with wether you love your boyfriend or not. They work more as an addiction to the thoughts you have, reinforced by the dopamine and perpetrated by the compulsions you make.

As any addiction, the only way to get over it is to stop doing it - in this case, the compulsions. Of course you will get withdrawal symptoms for a while, long or short, it depends on everybody. Firstly, if you stop doing a compulsion, your brain will think you are in a life threatening situation (because that's what you trained him to think) and it will prompt you to give in to the compulsion (what he thinks it will help you escape this "danger") by throwing at you thoughts violently and violently. Don't give in, distract yourself, and in this way the brain habituates, which means that you let your anxiety go back naturally to normal levels and you teach your brain, through repetition of this, that there isn't a danger in the first place. Another thing we deprive your brain of in this case is the dopamine it recieved when completing a ritual, so this may also be a reason it will through thought after thought after thought each one more distressing than the other when you start working on your comoulsions. Because we are so tensed when doing compulsions constantly, they become the main source of our dopamine (sadly), you can use all the free time from freeing yourself of the compulsion to take on more pleasurable activities: reading, waking, starting a project, go out with a friend, cook a nice dinner for you and your partner.

You don't have to drop your compulsions cold turkey, you can apply techniques of reducing and delaying, but I won't explain them in detail in here. PolarBear made a great video about them.

What you can do when you are with your partner is to accept all the things in your head and focus on the time spent with him. You both deserve to enjoy each other without having the OCD clouds float over you, so if you observe the thoughts in your head without judgement, you accept the fact that you have this thoughts and you accept the uncertainty of wether you love him or not, then again, you will shift your focus from mental compulsions to the present moment, and I believe this won't interfere anymore with the time you spend with him.

The best personal example I can give regarding this is when I just let all those distressing thoughts I had about me cheating on my boyfriend come into my head and go naturally, without me doing anything about it to convince myself of the fact that I won't do it, accepting the probability that that could happen and that was it.

When we accept our thoughts and not react to them, there isn't anything else for the OCD to latch onto

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm having a lot of trouble dealing with this... sometimes my boyfriend annoys me. I know this is super normal, especially since we live together, but I guess my brain is making it a bigger deal than it should be. I worry that since I get annoyed with him (he gets VERY chatty at times lol), that that means it's not going to last etc. 

Do I just try not to worry about being annoyed? 

Also, I've stopped using my hormonal birth control (still using protection though, the last thing I need right now is a baby) and it seems as though it's really helping! It took a couple weeks to feel better but there is definitely a difference. Has anyone else experienced worse symptoms while on birth control?

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