I am a bad person and I also have OCD- I don't know how to cope with this

[BelAnna]

Hello All,

My Mum has an appointment for a biopsy tomorrow for suspected breast cancer.

I do not understand what is happening. For years, since I was a young teenager I have had bizarre OCD thoughts about my Mum. Most revolving around fears of her getting cancer, which then became thoughts that I was wishing for bad things to happen to her. These thoughts were awful and have and continue to really bother me.

I am in my twenties and have been living at home most of the time over the past few years (minus a few short stints at both hospital in London and attempts to return to my degree in Scotland) and have been vile (blaming my parents, being unkind etc.), even though my parents were caring for my gran (who had dementia and physical disabilities, continence issues, night-time wakefulness, falls etc.) and have always been kind to me. I also kept having a thought when staying up late (2am+) at night (pretty much every night) that I was deliberately doing it to cause my Mum cancer; all the while having these weird thoughts, although they lessened over the past year as my OCD latched onto my dog!

I cannot make sense of what is happening. I do not know what to do if the worst comes to the worst (i.e. if it turns out be the suspected 'inflammatory' type cancer, which has a less than 20% 5-year survival rate).

I really think I am evil but that labelling myself as 'evil' is just a cop-out for actually having done real, significant and repeated harm. I don't know what to do at all. Why would I deliberately make this happen?

I know that people think that stress and lack of sleep are not necessarily significant factors but they can trigger immune responses that cause illness.

What am I supposed to do now? Why did this happen? Why did I let the OCD affect my behaviours? How come I can love my Mum so much that this is the worst thing I can imagine happening and yet behave so badly (I would class it as emotional abuse).

I don't know why I'm posting here but if anyone can help i'd really appreciate it x

 

[PolarBear]

Well this is about the third time you've posted similarly. The advice is not going to change this time from the last couple of times.

You have magical thinking OCD. You think because you have intrusive thoughts about something that that makes it real in the real world. It simply is not true. You cannot think someone to have cancer. It doesn't happen. By anyone, ever.

Your responsibility should be to start dealing effectively with your OCD. Right now you are doing compulsions in response to the thoughts (biggest one being ruminating about how you could be causing your mom to have cancer, secondarily probably doing Googling like crazy about cancer). These are things that you can gain control over and work to stop doing. You can also start realizing that the thoughts are just thoughts. They don't mean anything and you do no have the ability to affect physical change in another person simply by having thoughts about it.

[daja]

*hugs Bella*

[BelAnna]

 Thanks Daja and Polarbear.

I'm sorry for my post seeking reassurance- I'm not trying to be repetitive but just seek different opinions about what I should do and I guess someone to say something to make it all magically better! In reality there is very little that I can do.

I don't see how this could happen when it is the thing that my OCD has been based on for 13 years.

I had a chat to my cousin who helped me to feel hopeful about the chance of my Mum surviving for a while yet but this just feels like a waking nightmare. Even when I'm not worried that my thoughts caused this (sometimes I can rationalize to some extent) then I'm fairly sure that the sleep deprivation (part of which I'm responsible for) and my being an angry/irritable/anxious and difficult person have had an effect.

I am working on my OCD but not currently in CBT and very confused and distressed by my situation at the moment (added to the stress of Mum's appointment tomorrow, my Gran's funeral in on Thursday and because she lived with my family and was there every day it is quite a significant day in my life).

I realize this post is disjointed and I sound like I'm losing it a bit.

Anyway thank you for your support PolarBear and Daja.

Edited March 14, 2017 by BelAnna

[paradoxer]

Just reading the first few lines of BelAnna's post - it was blatantly obvious - standard issue OCD 'magical thinking'. BelAnna, try to treat the obsessions with the contempt they deserve.