Stressed

[Gemzi3]

On 22/03/2017 at 18:36, PolarBear said:

You're not taking in what I'm saying. You don't know if there was a baby. You will never know. But you're willing to punish yourself just in case. You're punishing yoursrlf on the off chance you did something wrong, not because you know you did something wrong.

Thats true. I don't know 100% but dismissing the thought and going about my life pretending everything is normal feels like im living a lie, if that makes sense? It makes me feel terrible 

And i know that hitting my stomach was wrong, not that im not sure if it was wrong. 

[PolarBear]

Well, you're choosing to punish yourself just in case. You're choose a different path but it's up to you to do it.

[Gemzi3]

I really appreciate all the responses.

I just honestly dont know what to do when i feel this way.

The erp charts dont work, or looking at the liklihood etc. I feel like i have nothing in place for my biggest worry?

Accepting i could have killed a baby makes moving forward and enjoying life impossible

[PolarBear]

You have a choice. You can accept that you have no evidence that you did something bad and never will have, let it go and get on with your life. Or you can continue to punish yourself, never knowing if you did something bad.

[Gemzi3]

3 hours ago, PolarBear said:

You have a choice. You can accept that you have no evidence that you did something bad and never will have, let it go and get on with your life. Or you can continue to punish yourself, never knowing if you did something bad.

So what can i do? Like i say other honework ive done doesnt seem relevant. What would the steps be?

[PolarBear]

Gemzi, you can realize that you simply don't know, that in all likelihood there was no baby and there is no good reason to punish yourself. You can choose to believe that just as you've chosen, up until now, to believe there was. Forgive yourself. Then start working on stopping your compulsions. No doubt your big compulsion is ruminating, going over the thoughts in your mind again and again. Refuse to do that. Leave it alone. Let it go. If you've chosen this new path then there is no reason to beat yourself up over it anymore. You're going to leave it in the past and get on with your life.

[Franklin12]

The problem is that you are pinning all your hopes on being able to feel that you have committed a terrible sin AND hold on to the notion that you must never ever be forgiven for this AND also feel better. Something's got to give. 

[Gemzi3]

Everytime i try and feel happy my head just brings up why did i do that.

The rumination is awful.

I don't know if this makes sense but i feel Like my choosing this new path i feel like anytime i do anything wrong surely i could just say, oh thats ocd, i dont need to punish myself then?

[Franklin12]

But you can't be happy whilst holding on to that need to punish yourself. You can't have both. There isn't really a way that you can do both so you either resolve to loosen that value or you stay trapped. I doubt you would recommend to any of your loved ones that they should punish themselves forever more if they'd done what you did. Would you? If not why not? Seriously would you?

[PolarBear]

2 hours ago, Gemzi3 said:

Everytime i try and feel happy my head just brings up why did i do that.

The rumination is awful.

I don't know if this makes sense but i feel Like my choosing this new path i feel like anytime i do anything wrong surely i could just say, oh thats ocd, i dont need to punish myself then?

You're looking at it wrong. You're not blaming what happened on OCD. You did what you did. Nothing you can do about it. OCD came into play by latching onto what happened and making a much bigger deal out of it than it needed to be. 

No, you're not going to blame OCD when you make a mistake. What you're hopefully going to do is let things go.

[Gemzi3]

So what do i say to myself or do when the thoughts say by hitting myself a killed a baby, i shouldn't be happy, etc?

How is it possible to let it go and not feel bad? 

[Franklin12]

You will feel bad, that's the point. But normal people feel bad for a little while, they don't fight the feeling by ruminating and doing compulsions, and the bad feeling goes away.

[Gemzi3]

I honestly dont know how to stop myself ruminating.

I just want to know if hitting myself could have killed a baby. Its unfair that I've never had unprotected sex but remember messing around with clothes on and having a patch on my jeans.

I guess also being younger and messing around i cant imagine i would have made sure they wash their hands after touching themselves then me.

Its the same with remembering doing a Test, i would like i think i would remember if i saw a positive line? My memory has twisted it.

I want to move forward with my life, i know it was ocd that even made me hit myself, but blaming ocd seems to easy to let me off the hook?

[PolarBear]

14 hours ago, Gemzi3 said:

So what do i say to myself or do when the thoughts say by hitting myself a killed a baby, i shouldn't be happy, etc?

How is it possible to let it go and not feel bad? 

You refuse to ruminate over it. You give yourself permission to not have the answers and let it go. You let it go like millions of other people let things go. You forgive yourself and move on.

[PolarBear]

7 hours ago, Gemzi3 said:

I honestly dont know how to stop myself ruminating.

I just want to know if hitting myself could have killed a baby. Its unfair that I've never had unprotected sex but remember messing around with clothes on and having a patch on my jeans.

I guess also being younger and messing around i cant imagine i would have made sure they wash their hands after touching themselves then me.

Its the same with remembering doing a Test, i would like i think i would remember if i saw a positive line? My memory has twisted it.

I want to move forward with my life, i know it was ocd that even made me hit myself, but blaming ocd seems to easy to let me off the hook?

Keep telling yourself these things amd you'll remain stuck.

[Gemzi3]

4 hours ago, PolarBear said:

Keep telling yourself these things amd you'll remain stuck.

I've been lying here ruminating i cant seem to stop my mind going through it? 

It feels worse now than it's been in years i cant make it stop and i feel incredibly low and scared i cant move on.

[Franklin12]

What techniques have you tried to stop your ruminating? The problem is that you can't just want things to change but not change the things you are doing that are causing the problems.

[Gemzi3]

I have this homework where i write down thoughts and my predictions and then the outcome. But it doesnt work for this.

 

I have another where i write a thought and how it makes me feel out of 100, then how anxious i feel after 5min,10min,30min,1 hour etc. Again, this is the only thought it doesn't seem to work for. 

[Franklin12]

Well the first one sounds like ruminating about the liklihood of something bad happening, and the second one is recording how you feel - but when you are ruminating, what do you do to draw yourself away from doing it? When you are thinking, 'I've killed a baby' what do you do next? 

[Gemzi3]

I can't seem to make that stop. It doesnt go away when i try to distract myself 

Even when i eventually stop ruminating it just comes back and i feel depressed.

[Franklin12]

It will stop - you can only think about one thing at once. If you're thinking about something else you can't possibly be thinking about your fear. You need to find something that occupies your brain in such a way that you have to keep thinking - like a puzzle, but an easy one else your mind wanders off again. It's REALLY difficult at first but if you want to break this you have to resolve to really go for it. It's not going to work if you just try and keep a bit busy or go for a walk, you have to really occupy that thinking part of your brain. And when your mind inevitable wanders back to your fear, you simply remind yourself that you're ruminating and go back to your other task. 

[Gemzi3]

That feels impossible. I can't keep my mind busy every minute of everyday. Eventually I remember hitting myself and that fear of having killed a baby then sets in.

[OceanDweller]

I appreciate it's very difficult to move forward carrying guilt over something you have (or almost definitely, certainly have not) done, but (from personal experience) a life occupied punishing oneself with the only conceivable purpose of sustaining that guilt really is a distressing prospect. 

[Franklin12]

Yes it takes lots of practice. But if you practice you find that you spend less time ruminating, that you can stop ruminating more quickly, and that your anxiety about you fear eventually goes down. It does take hard work but it does work. You are still choosing to try and work this out. Your earlier post was just a big long rumination about whether you could have been pregnant, whether you knew you were pregnant, and whether hitting yourself in the stomach can kill a baby. You shouldn't be trying to work this out, you should be trying to not work this out.

[Gemzi3]

How do you stop looking for answers?

My mind goes back there everytime i feel happy? Like it wants me to be sad.

What can i ask my cbt therapist to do to help?