Am i really this bad and lost?

[Ironborn]

Its hard to remember how and what actually happened, but from what i can remember it went something like this.

About 6 years ago, way before i even had OCD i once hit a bird while driving.

I was driving like 20mph trough a urban area. and i saw this bird in front of me, i believe i thought that i would drive right past it, also i did not brake, i dont really know why i did not brake  but when i passed i saw a lot of feathers in my rear view,  i remember feeling kinda 'shocked' but i did not stop and went on. at the time this did no haunt me for to long and i forgot about it the same day.

But now i am all screwed up because of this, i am constantly asking myself if i killed the bird, What if i killed it? why did i not go back and check on the bird? i feel as if i should not deserve to live anymore when having taken another mammal / bird its life, why should i be allowed to still live, and not that bird?

Also my OCD is trying to tell me i did it on purpose and that i am a real murderer because i did not hit the brake pedal, i know that giving in myself at the police would do nothing because they would just laugh about it. but for me this is a real serious thing, i see all living things as equal, and it feels as if i just murdered another human being, because in my mind it does not matter if its a bird / mouse /  or a human i still see it as murder. ( i guess if i would have actually murdered another human my guilt would be a lot higher, bu my ocd tries to tell me otherwise i guess)

Also i am afraid this is no OCD but this guilt and pain i am going trough constantly is just what i deserve. i am afraid that this will never go away, and will keep haunting me until i decide that my faith should be the same as the bird, i just feel 'unworthy' of living because of this.

i just whish there was some kid of therapy that would let you erase certain thoughts / situations from the past, so that i would not get this high anxiety over them.

I really could use some help and insight on this, because im really lost here.


PS: the weird thing is that i do eat meat (organically) but somehow feel less about that, then having that collision with the bird.
although before having ocd i ate a lot more meat, and ever since i got OCD i started feeling guilty and bad for eating meat.

Edited July 7, 2017 by Ironborn

[St Mike]

4 hours ago, Ironborn said:

i am constantly asking myself if i killed the bird, What if i killed it? why did i not go back and check on the bird? i feel as if i should not deserve to live anymore when having taken another mammal / bird its life, why should i be allowed to still live, and not that bird?

You are ruminating and this is a compulsion. All the "what ifs" and "why did I nots" will not lead to any acceptable answers. The best thing to do is to stop ruminating, because it will break the intrusive/obsessional thought - compulsion cycle. Rumination will only complete the cycle and that will in-turn lead to more intrusive thoughts and more rumination. Let it go. 

 

4 hours ago, Ironborn said:

Also my OCD is trying to tell me i did it on purpose and that i am a real murderer because i did not hit the brake pedal, i know that giving in myself at the police would do nothing because they would just laugh about it. but for me this is a real serious thing, i see all living things as equal, and it feels as if i just murdered another human being, because in my mind it does not matter if its a bird / mouse /  or a human i still see it as murder. ( i guess if i would have actually murdered another human my guilt would be a lot higher, bu my ocd tries to tell me otherwise i guess)

This is OCD latching on thoughts, distorting it, making it irrational and using it against you and your value system. You are not a murderer. If it were the case then I am a murderer many times over, I had to snap chicken heads at the jungle survival course during my time in the army. I also had to kill crabs for my family's dinner many years ago.

 

4 hours ago, Ironborn said:

Also i am afraid this is no OCD but this guilt and pain i am going trough constantly is just what i deserve. i am afraid that this will never go away, and will keep haunting me until i decide that my faith should be the same as the bird, i just feel 'unworthy' of living because of this.

This is typical of OCD with themes involving hyper-responsibility. Many sufferers go on the guilt trip and start mentally self-flagellating themselves. They feel that they are such horrible, detestable people, sinners who don't deserve to be treated well. They start to self-hate and self-loath, intentionally denying themselves of dignity and self respect. This is the way sufferers shackle themselves with guilt which they don't deserve. The sufferer does not deserve any guilt because they didn't do anything wrong in the first place. They were "tricked" by intrusive, irrational thoughts which are involuntary, nonsensical in nature and sufferers give such thoughts significance when they shouldn't in the first place. 

You don't deserve any guilt. You are ruminating on a distorted thought over an event that happened 6 years ago.

 

4 hours ago, Ironborn said:

i just whish there was some kid of therapy that would let you erase certain thoughts / situations from the past, so that i would not get this high anxiety over them.

Sadly, there isn't such a therapy that can erase thoughts to the best of my knowledge. CBT or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is the gold standard in treating OCD. Basically, it helps you change the way you perceive and react to your thoughts. The OCDUK website and forum has plenty of information and advice. You may also consider seeking advice or treatment from a qualified medical or mental health professional. 

The following are just suggestions based on my experiences as an ex-sufferer.

The first thing you need to do is to stop ruminating. Stop doing compulsions. Understand that intrusive thoughts are mental chaff, mental nonsense.

Practising mindfulness is one method I used when I was recovering. It is to gently bring your mind and attention away from the intrusive thought and back to the present. This ensures that you would not be "wrapped up" or entangled with the thought which in-turn reduces anxiety and in-turn reduces the urge to ruminate or do some kind of compulsion. Refocus your attention to your daily activities or do a more wholesome activity like exercise, reading, to take away attention from the intrusive thought. An idle mind is OCD's workshop.

You could also do deep breathing exercises to calm the anxiety. Finally and in my most humble opinion, the most important is to be kind to yourself and practise letting go and forgiveness. Treat yourself kindly and don't shackle yourself with guilt because this guilt is brought about by OCD which is irrational and not justified.

OCD loves to make mountains out of molehills and make elephants out of mice. Don't listen to it.

 

[Ironborn]

I not sure if this is OCD. and it hard to explain how it really works but ill give it a try.

A lot of times whenever something happens, or i remember something that pops in my mind from the past, and  i start to get a lot of intrusions over those thoughts and things like (i must be a murderer because i did this or that and stuff like that). It then feels like i have 'gained' new knowledge and this new knowledge is the truth. Especially the ones like i spoke about in my OP with the bird are the ones that are most disturbing to me because i feel like that the only way to make it 'right' would be to go trough the same thing that happened for example with the bird, i would have to get run over by a car and possibly die, and that would make things right. Even tough i REALLY don't want to die, i feel like there is no other solution for getting even with what happened. I feel really disturbed because of this, and i would want to know how i can overcome the feeling of me being a murderer, and i mean a murderer in the way of every living thing that ever died by my cause.

what i am wondering a lot of times aswell if this is really OCD or is it maybe something like the 'universe' trying to tell me the truth.


Also i  feel like that i cannot blame other people for not feeling like a murderer or anything else that this so called 'OCD' tells us because they just have not yet reach my 'level' of consciousness, it feels as if i will never be able to escape this level of knowing what is wrong or right, i know this may sound confusing, but in some way i sort of feel like i am enlightened and therefore am FULLY  responsible for every little and big mistake i make, and that the only way of coming to terms with that is to suffer in the same way.


Sorry for explaining it in such a weird way, i find it hard to exactly describe whats going on in my mind.

Edited July 8, 2017 by Ironborn

[PolarBear]

Sounds like you've ruminated way too much on the subject. 

[St Mike]

8 hours ago, Ironborn said:

what i am wondering a lot of times aswell if this is really OCD or is it maybe something like the 'universe' trying to tell me the truth.

what you describe is quite similar to other sufferers have posted in this forum. The stream of doubt, the questioning whether this is OCD is not uncommon among OCD sufferers. That is one of the reasons why OCD is also known as the doubting disease in layman's terms.

Rather than ruminate, the best thing to do is to let it go. The more you engage with the intrusive thought, the more doubt and guilt will surface, the less you engage with it the less doubt and guilt will surface. This one point I can testify to be true because it happened to me before.

[Danielle_l]

@St Mike you've given such good advice and guidance in this thread! 

[Ironborn]

5 hours ago, PolarBear said:

Sounds like you've ruminated way too much on the subject. 

Yeah i might have, but  just don't know how to stop ruminating. the subject just comes up the whole time, and literally mean the whole time.

 

5 hours ago, St Mike said:

what you describe is quite similar to other sufferers have posted in this forum. The stream of doubt, the questioning whether this is OCD is not uncommon among OCD sufferers. That is one of the reasons why OCD is also known as the doubting disease in layman's terms.

Rather than ruminate, the best thing to do is to let it go. The more you engage with the intrusive thought, the more doubt and guilt will surface, the less you engage with it the less doubt and guilt will surface. This one point I can testify to be true because it happened to me before.

How does one 'let it go' ? i really don't understand, as i said in the reply to Polarbear the subject comes up like atleast a couple of times in a minute, can you only imagine how many times it crosses the mind i an hour or a day ?




I do have to note that about 6 months ago i quit my medication, i did this under supervision of my psychiatrist.

But 2 days ago i decided to start again, i cannot live like this anymore, i am just anxious about the side effects that will come while building it up again, and the thing that im mostly scared about is how can medication help me to not feel like a 'murderer' anymore? i mean just as i said in the other post i feel like i have reached some kind level of knowledge, and no matter how good i will feel because of the medication or whatever its not going to 'unlearn' the knowledge and the knowing of me being a bad person do you get what i mean?

Edited July 9, 2017 by Ironborn

[Franklin12]

Hi Ironborn. I understand how difficult it is to stop ruminating. It comes so automatically that it feels as though it is happening to you, rather than being a behaviour that you are doing to yourself. Here are some tips and points that helped me to learn how to stop.

1) Fear is fear. It feels just as terrifying to someone who is scared of Ebola as to someone who is scared of buttons. 

2) You can't just 'let go' - you can't just decide that something isn't important and then instantly not be afraid of that thing anymore. 

3) What you can do is to decide that you will try to let go, to try to start behaving as though that thing isn't important anymore - the 'fake it til you make it' type approach.

4) You need to start to train your brain to recognise that either the thing isn't important, or, if it clearly is important, like Ebola or being a paedophile, that there is no gain to be had from trying to work that thing out/remember that thing/stop that thing from happening. You need to recognise that doing all those things will keep you trapped and ill. This is really what we mean by letting go. You are letting go of your safety behaviour. You are letting go of the ladder that you have been clinging to and trusting that there is a safety net there. 

4) Letting go is scary. Very scary. You do not know if the safety net is there until you reach the bottom. Before you reach the bottom you have to fall. Falling is scary. You will probably try to grab hold of the ladder again. 

5) It is more than likely that the safety net is there. But in life there are no 100% guarantees of safety. You must accept that very occasionally, bad things do happen. You must accept this tiny tiny risk to be fully recovered. It is useful to train yourself to have faith that if bad things happen, you will cope and get through it.

6) Once you have accepted all the above, you can let go. But be aware that you won't just be able to stop ruminating simply because you have decided to. This behaviour is very deeply ingrained. You have been doing it for years. Improvement will be a gradual process. However you can see huge improvements in days.

7) Don't expect to be able to let thoughts gently pass like little clouds, or leaves on the river. You may have to fight very hard to not ruminate. Remember though - you are fighting your desire to ruminate, you are NOT fighting the thought. Assume the fear is true.

8) Find some distractions to keep your brain occupied. You can't think about two things at once. 

9) Keep track of your progress - notice how long your spike lasts after a trigger, and how intense the feeling is. Then check how far you have come since you began.

10) Feeling the fear becomes a lot easier once you start to see the benefit of not ruminating. But it still feels like fear. Fear will always feel like fear. You just won't feel fear as often or for as long. Because it feels like fear has always felt, you will want it to go away. The fear will make you want to do your safety behaviours. But you musn't. Accept the fear and don't fight it. It will go away. 

[Ironborn]

It just keeps coming back to me over and over. I am trying to not give it any attention, but the moment i do so i feel like a bad person, because only a bad person would be able to semi accidentally hit a bird and not care about it right? 

I dont want to be such a heartless person. So everytime i try and not ruminate on it or not engage with the thoughts i feel as if i am trying to get away from my responsibilities, and my wrongdoings. 

Edited July 10, 2017 by Ironborn

[PolarBear]

The reason it keeps coming back is because you ruminate over it. Plain and simple.

At the risk of offering reassurance, no, no one else would be stuck on this like you are. They would have forgotten about it a long time ago and moved on. They certainly wouldn't punish themselves like you are.

You are not receiving messages from a higher power. You are experiencing intrusive thoughts from your own mind. The only reason they keep coming back is because you do compulsions, notably ruminating. Stop the ruminating and the thoughts will ease.