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OCD about morals and honesty


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15 minutes ago, taurean said:

It's been another useful thread hasn't it just? 

Hopefully everyone has gained insight and knowledge. 

Yes totally agree some great insight and knowledge on another useful thread :)

Hope this been a good insight for you  gbg and hopefully it will help others too :yes:

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15 hours ago, gingerbreadgirl said:

I am probably more moral now than I was before this relapse happened! And I can't help thinking - isn't this a good thing? What if I was just a bit shabby morally-speaking beforehand, and this has made me see the light? Yes it is OCD-driven... but what if the end justifies the means?

But more moral now according to who? Also, what if you became less 'shabby morally-speaking' without OCD? What if it was inevitable that you would change in life? What if the changes you have made have nothing to do with OCD at all, and in fact OCD only makes you miserable? 

 

15 hours ago, gingerbreadgirl said:

Although I would say, when I was younger (teens, early twenties) I was the opposite, and would always blame everyone else for things that were my fault. 

Instead of the explanation you're using i.e that you're less moral, is there an alternative explanation for why you acted up or blamed people? 

 

15 hours ago, gingerbreadgirl said:

I certainly didn't used to be very moral, or kind, or thoughtful, and I owe the people around me a lot for putting up with it.

Does this apply to you at age 4, 5, 6, 7? It seems you are judging yourself around your teens, but what about before then at the age where you learnt all this unhelpful thinking. I had OCD by age 14, so I was already struggling, maybe you were to. 

 

15 hours ago, gingerbreadgirl said:

I've done a bit of exposure tonight and haven't confessed or done anything (other than a tad of ruminating...) and you're right, the anxiety and emotions have gone down.

Well done :)

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6 minutes ago, Gemma7 said:

Instead of the explanation you're using i.e that you're less moral, is there an alternative explanation for why you acted up or blamed people?

I have certainly spent a lot of time analysing this to death and trying to figure out exactly why I was so reckless and thoughtless back then. I think my mental health played a role, yes - I think I was trying to escape from my head in a destructive way.  But it doesn't excuse all of it.  Honestly - I think I was probably a bit spoiled and entitled and dare I say it selfish.  I know people thought badly of some of the things I did.  And I'm not talking little things that OCD has blown up.  As a student I once got so drunk I ended up in a police cell, for example.  I don't think I can or should excuse some of my behaviour  - lots of people have much worse problems but they don't act like I did.

Also - I think a lot of why I no longer behave like this is because of my partner making it clear she wouldn't put up with it.  She saved me from myself in many ways. 

10 minutes ago, Gemma7 said:

Does this apply to you at age 4, 5, 6, 7? It seems you are judging yourself around your teens, but what about before then at the age where you learnt all this unhelpful thinking. I had OCD by age 14, so I was already struggling, maybe you were to.

I think I can probably pinpoint exactly when this started, although I don't know what the cause was - I was about 7, and I developed a number of compulsions all at once (although nobody thought of them as such).  I also apparently went almost overnight from being a really pleasant and laid-back kid to acting up and being moody and "annoying" as my mum puts it.  I think also getting bullied around 10-11 didn't help.  E.g. One time my entire year fell out with me over something I did, and one kid said something to me like "we don't want to be friends with a liar".  That always stuck with me.

One thing I really want to stress is that I had an almost idylically pleasant childhood, my parents gave me a textbook perfect upbringing and sacrificed a lot in order to give it to me.  My brother is very well-adjusted and has no problems whatsoever.  So blaming any of this on my childhood feels far-fetched and frankly ungrateful. 

Thank you again Gemma, I think I should stop using you so much as a sounding board and try to figure this out for myself!! :) xx

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Hi GBG. This has been an interesting thread to read. I wonder if my experience has any similarities with your dilemma: you may or may not remember that a few years ago I had a really terrible theme of being murdered. This theme was the most intense I have ever had but on the plus side is what prompted me to finally put into practice what I had learned. Anyway, it seems so implausible now and I will try to summarise really briefly how I realise in hindsight that it all came about. 

1) Ongoing rumbling source of anxiety relating to me being a bit adventurous in my late teens. I was fine about myself when I was a teen, but over the years I have settled down and become part of a  ‘respectable’ community miles away from anywhere I grew up or anyone who knew me in those days. 

2) The more years that go by with me as a respectable person, the bigger the gap there seems between the ‘old’ me and the ‘respectable’ me. 

3) The bigger the gap, the more anxious I have become about being ‘found out’ as a ‘non-respectable’ person. It feels like not one person around here has had any kind of adventurous past, and that they would look down at that type of behaviour.

4) The more I hang out with these kinds of people (bet they all have skeletons really!), the worse I judge my own previous behaviour to have been. Then the more it feels I have to lose if I am ‘found out’. 

5) Anyway, back to the plot - a house over the road came up for rent, and I had a classic sudden intrusive thought ‘what if someone from my past life moves in’. Cue spiral of catastrophising from my cover as respectable being blown right up until being murdered (I won’t fill in the crazy OCD fuelled blanks because they are all completely ridiculous). 

So really what had caused the episode was me trying to protect an image to prevent me from being judged harshly by others. I think the wider the gap between ‘my past behaviour’ and ‘others past behaviour’ was what fuelled everything, and felt like I had so much to lose. Of course there are loads of problems with my thinking - others past behaviour is purely my perception rather than realist, my past behaviour probably wasn’t even that bad in the scheme of things etc. But I guess the crux was a fear a judgment, allowing others to dictate how I should be judged, a fear a shame. 

Weirdly I always hate when I run into anyone from my past and try to avoid it (yes a compulsion I know), as I feel it would cause me to freak out. But, someone did contact me out the blue a little while ago and actually it was really great to be all relaxed again - around someone who hadn’t judged me harshly back in the day and just like me for who I was. 

That was very long if it was completely irrelevant! I guess a cautionary tale in there about how quickly our underlying cognitive issues can turn really bad if we’re not careful! I would say keep working at being more comfortable being judged, and more confident in being able to say ‘this is how I was, so be it’ without relying on others to decide whether you deserve ‘judgment’ or not.

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Interesting - I just read what you said about your partner saving you from yourself by reigning in your behaviour. I also think this - if I were allowed to go running about like a teenager behaving stupidly my life would be a mess! So in a way the fear of judgement has served me quite well, but also made me mentally ill. Go figure!

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6 minutes ago, Franklin12 said:

Hi GBG. This has been an interesting thread to read. I wonder if my experience has any similarities with your dilemma: you may or may not remember that a few years ago I had a really terrible theme of being murdered. This theme was the most intense I have ever had but on the plus side is what prompted me to finally put into practice what I had learned. Anyway, it seems so implausible now and I will try to summarise really briefly how I realise in hindsight that it all came about. 

1) Ongoing rumbling source of anxiety relating to me being a bit adventurous in my late teens. I was fine about myself when I was a teen, but over the years I have settled down and become part of a  ‘respectable’ community miles away from anywhere I grew up or anyone who knew me in those days. 

2) The more years that go by with me as a respectable person, the bigger the gap there seems between the ‘old’ me and the ‘respectable’ me. 

3) The bigger the gap, the more anxious I have become about being ‘found out’ as a ‘non-respectable’ person. It feels like not one person around here has had any kind of adventurous past, and that they would look down at that type of behaviour.

4) The more I hang out with these kinds of people (bet they all have skeletons really!), the worse I judge my own previous behaviour to have been. Then the more it feels I have to lose if I am ‘found out’. 

5) Anyway, back to the plot - a house over the road came up for rent, and I had a classic sudden intrusive thought ‘what if someone from my past life moves in’. Cue spiral of catastrophising from my cover as respectable being blown right up until being murdered (I won’t fill in the crazy OCD fuelled blanks because they are all completely ridiculous). 

So really what had caused the episode was me trying to protect an image to prevent me from being judged harshly by others. I think the wider the gap between ‘my past behaviour’ and ‘others past behaviour’ was what fuelled everything, and felt like I had so much to lose. Of course there are loads of problems with my thinking - others past behaviour is purely my perception rather than realist, my past behaviour probably wasn’t even that bad in the scheme of things etc. But I guess the crux was a fear a judgment, allowing others to dictate how I should be judged, a fear a shame. 

Weirdly I always hate when I run into anyone from my past and try to avoid it (yes a compulsion I know), as I feel it would cause me to freak out. But, someone did contact me out the blue a little while ago and actually it was really great to be all relaxed again - around someone who hadn’t judged me harshly back in the day and just like me for who I was. 

That was very long if it was completely irrelevant! I guess a cautionary tale in there about how quickly our underlying cognitive issues can turn really bad if we’re not careful! I would say keep working at being more comfortable being judged, and more confident in being able to say ‘this is how I was, so be it’ without relying on others to decide whether you deserve ‘judgment’ or not.

Hi Franklin,

I do remember you saying about your awful OCD period about getting murdered.  And I know exactly how it feels for an obsession to feel totally ridiculus in hindsight, but deadly serious at the time.

What you've put above is so similiar to my experience it's spooky.  And I can totally identify with the gap getting bigger and bigger.  The more time that passes, and the less I identify with who I was back then, the more I worry about it.  There is also the fact that the passage of time leads to memories getting hazy etc. 

I also worry excessively about bumping into anyone I know from school.  Although not so much because of my drunken antics (which were worst at uni, and I still regularly see my friends from that time) but because I see myself as having been weird/a freak/annoying/ridiculous/horrible bla bla bla and I worry about someone bumping into me and thinking "oh god it's her".  To the extent that when I visit my home town I often wear a hat/sunglasses!!

I do know people in my life currently who've had an "adventurous" past, but I always think they can't have been as bad as me.  TBH I think I was unique in that regard - other people got drunk but I just got SO drunk, and emotional and sometimes horrid as well.  People commented that they found it offensive even if they themselves regularly got drunk.  There was always something about me that was just worse.  I look back at my behaviour and I cringe to my very core.

I can totally understand how this kind of thing can lead to a far-fetched OCD obsession occurring.  What prompted me to join this forum was I developed this idea that I'd sexually assaulted someone when drunk and would go to prison.  This was basically borne out of the idea that "my behaviour was the worst thing anyone has ever done, and I can't really remember it, and it seems plausible that I did something bad, therefore I must have".  Not helped by the many news articles at the time (and recently when it came back.)

I am hopeful that, as you said, this crappy relapse may have a silver lining as it may force me to deal with this properly rather than just bumbling along like I was before.

Thank you very much for your post, it's much appreciated and I hope you're well xx

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I don’t even visit my home town! I really should. Good luck - I know people who just talk about all the crazy stuff they did in their teenage years and I’m truly envious that they have no shame! They are as happy as Larry! 

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ha well my entire family still live there so I have to do the daughter thing and visit them occasionally... although if they were to all spontaneously decide to move away I wouldn't complain :) I do get really anxious though when I visit, especially if we go out for lunch or whatever and someone could be there.

I am envious too of people like that, and people who just don't worry about stuff.  Living like this is exhausting!

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I always used to have dreams about being back in my home town and in my dreams I would see people I knew and would hide and hope to not be seen. Now though, in my dreams I turn and face them and speak to them. I think this is definitely due to me trying to make an effort to change how I think about all this stuff. 

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This isn't about excusing your behaviour, it's about explaining it. Of course the most obvious explanation is that you had mental health issues as well as you just made mistakes. You don't seem to accept yourself making mistakes at all! 

Also, lots of people have worse problems and do act out, some people are privileged and act out, you need to moderate how you think about things, everything is black and white, right and wrong, good and bad. What if most people have done stuff they regret but don't act like it says something about who they are? 

You have to start deciding what you think is right and wrong (moderate rules) and start listening to yourself. You nees to be your moral guide, no one else. 

41 minutes ago, gingerbreadgirl said:

One thing I really want to stress is that I had an almost idylically pleasant childhood, my parents gave me a textbook perfect upbringing and sacrificed a lot in order to give it to me.  My brother is very well-adjusted and has no problems whatsoever.  So blaming any of this on my childhood feels far-fetched and frankly ungrateful. 

I don't believe anyone has had 'a textbook perfect upbringing' and no one is blaming your childhood. This is about explaining how you've learnt to think about yourself and the world. Whether you like it or not, most of where you have learnt to think about these things you learnt as a child. In my opinion this is a compulsion about not wanting to represent your family in the wrong way. 

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14 minutes ago, Gemma7 said:

You don't seem to accept yourself making mistakes at all! 

I guess I don't really see something as a mistake if it's done deliberately - if you know something is wrong, but you do it anyway, that's deliberate, not a mistake.  I could easily forgive myself if, say, I did something accidentally and it led to a bad outcome, even if it was really awful.  It's the deliberate intention, and repeatedly not learning from this, that I find hard to untangle.

16 minutes ago, Gemma7 said:

everything is black and white, right and wrong, good and bad. 

My rational, non-OCD self doesn't see morality like this, I might have said before that I don't really think there is such a thing as a 'good' or 'bad' person.  There's a saying that goes something like "to know all is to forgive all" and I do believe that even people who do really bad things are acting in a way which makes sense according to their current knowledge, resources etc. I can be quite forgiving and understanding of other people's bad behaviour, even really bad behaviour.  

I think this but I don't feel it, at all, certainly not in relation to myself.  And I can't just switch off my feelings in relation to this, as much as I'd like to. 

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A mistake is doing something wrong, doing something accidentally would be an accident not a mistake. You've learnt from your mistake now and you don't want to act like you did any more? If so, you're grown as a person and it's time to forgive yourself. 

8 minutes ago, gingerbreadgirl said:

I think this but I don't feel it, at all, certainly not in relation to myself.  And I can't just switch off my feelings in relation to this, as much as I'd like to. 

I agree you can't switch off emotions but you can target what it is that causes them. That's how you see things (the meaning) and how you act. They all feed into you feeling this way. If i were you I'd start addressing all my black and white thinking, coming up with more moderate versions, they don't need to feel right, but just base them on what you think are better ways of viewing things, they can be changed at any time if you don't think they fit. Then start applying them to your thinking and behaviour, letting day to day mistakes go for instance and see how you feel about yourself, your situation etc. :)

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2 minutes ago, Gemma7 said:

A mistake is doing something wrong, doing something accidentally would be an accident not a mistake. You've learnt from your mistake now and you don't want to act like you did any more? If so, you're grown as a person and it's time to forgive yourself. 

I agree you can't switch off emotions but you can target what it is that causes them. That's how you see things (the meaning) and how you act. They all feed into you feeling this way. If i were you I'd start addressing all my black and white thinking, coming up with more moderate versions, they don't need to feel right, but just base them on what you think are better ways of viewing things, they can be changed at any time if you don't think they fit. Then start applying them to your thinking and behaviour, letting day to day mistakes go for instance and see how you feel about yourself, your situation etc. :)

:WootSign::goodpost:

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16 minutes ago, Gemma7 said:

 

Aww shucks I'm going to get a big head soon :blush:

Far be it from me to give you a big head :lol: but honestly the time you've spent helping me these last few weeks has helped me so much, more than a bunch of theraapy and about a million self-help books put together.  You have a way of pinpointing the exact problem and untangling it.  I am really really grateful.

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4 hours ago, Gemma7 said:

A mistake is doing something wrong, doing something accidentally would be an accident not a mistake. You've learnt from your mistake now and you don't want to act like you did any more? If so, you're grown as a person and it's time to forgive yourself. 

I agree you can't switch off emotions but you can target what it is that causes them. That's how you see things (the meaning) and how you act. They all feed into you feeling this way. If i were you I'd start addressing all my black and white thinking, coming up with more moderate versions, they don't need to feel right, but just base them on what you think are better ways of viewing things, they can be changed at any time if you don't think they fit. Then start applying them to your thinking and behaviour, letting day to day mistakes go for instance and see how you feel about yourself, your situation etc. :)

sorry I think I missed this post before.  I've just read it now. This is going to sound dumb but I never really thought of mistakes like that.  I thought "I bought prawn cocktail crisps by mistake when I meant to get salt and vinegar" was a mistake, but "I got prawn cocktail crisps for my friend even though he/she hates them" is not a mistake if it's done deliberately and with foresight, even if it's regretted afterwards.  Like if you "mistakenly" do something, it's done by accident.

(What a bad analogy... I am hungry and have crisps on the brain :) )

I know I should target my irrational thinking with more rational replacements.  I do this a lot - I actually do (or attempt) written CBT of some kind almost every day.  It used to work pretty well.  But I can't seem to get a handle on it at all at the moment. 

 

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Doing something and then regretting it is what makes it a mistake. By seeing the behavior as wrong at some point after, you see the mistake you made. Picking up the wrong flavour of crisps unintentionally is an accident. 

Making mistakes is normal and is useful for learning and having empathy for others in similar situations, so shouldn't be judged as bad in themselves. Nor should making mistakes say anything about you as a person. The best anyone can do is learn from mistakes and move on. 

40 minutes ago, gingerbreadgirl said:

But I can't seem to get a handle on it at all at the moment. 

Start really really small and build from that. It's too much to take in all at once :)

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Roosevelt, I think it was, said that realistically the best we can hope to be is right about 85 per cent of the time. I simply aim to try and achieve better than that. 

So we will make mistakes, however careful or cautious we are. As Gemma says, we learn from them, then we must forget about them and move on. 

 

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4 minutes ago, gingerbreadgirl said:

How are you doing anyway? I know you were not having a good time recently.  I hope you are doing a little better.

I'm doing a bit better, but as you know it's hard to challenge the way you've thought and acted for a long time. So just fighting back as usual :)

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3 minutes ago, Gemma7 said:

I'm doing a bit better, but as you know it's hard to challenge the way you've thought and acted for a long time. So just fighting back as usual :)

glad to hear you are doing a litle better :) Keep fighting the good fight, and all that jazz! if you ever need any help or support we're all here to lend an ear x

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