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Guidance required regading OCD fears coming true


Guest OCD INDIAN

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Guest OCD INDIAN
I have OCD and I discovered it when I was 18. My biggest fear is losing my family members if I dont follow specific rules. Now I am trying to overcome it but I am in a dillema if my fears are indeed true and should I really give up following my compulsions? Please read my story for complete understanding and please suggest what I should do.
"It all started on the day when I was at home with my mother and brother. We were laughing a lot about something really funny. I was 12 at that time. Suddenly the news came that my Grandfather who was ungergoing an operation for Cataract, lost his one eye. I started blaming myself, and since then I think that whenever i am too happy, something bad will happen to my family. I used to answer calls or doorbells after praying four times. If during those four times something bad came to my mind, i increased it to 8, 16, 32, so on. I started praying a lot. I started noticing ants and insects, anything that came in my path, and I would change my path every time i saw even a small insect in a fear of hurting them. I stopped eating non-vegetarian food. All the other symptoms of OCD followed thereafter, like the need to touch something twice, need to wash my hands really clean etc. The strange part in all this is that things actually improved in my life. I was really weak at studies earlier, but suddenly I became the topper. I became very lucky and I didn't receive a single bad news in all those years. Whatever, i thought was tending to harm my life, I thought i was undoing it all with my compulsions. Only problem was that i could never make friends, as many people didn't understand my compulsions. Then when I was 21, I went to Training Program for two months and I made really good friends there. It was one of the happiest times in my life and I had the most fun there. I was already working on my compulsions from few years and I had overcome it to some level. I followed very few rituals and thought that maybe my fears of all these years were all wrong. Then one day when I was planning a trip with my friends to a beautiful place I always dreamt of going, I received a call from my father that my Grandfather has died. I was shocked and I blamed it all on myself again as I had stopped following my compusions.The happiest time of my life turned into a nightmare. My family was shattered by this news and then I was sure that I should never be too happy as my happiness would definitely result in something bad. Although I have not gone back to all my rituals, I still worry a lot about my family members. I think that if I worry, the chances of them being hurt will decrease and that’s why I am hardly ever truly happy. I am scared of letting go of these compulsions, as I am almost sure that there is some power, which has linked my happiness to the troubles of my family. Not only these instances, there have been numerous instances in my life when I was happy and I received a bad news about my family. I have also started getting suicidal thoughts as I have started feeling that I can no longer save my family by these compulsions. I get to sleep very less and constantly go to depression.”

Please guide me through this, as i feel that although i can control my compulsions, I still think they are logical. Please help

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Welcome to the forum.

Do you really think they're logical? Really? Isn't there a part of you that believes it's all nonsense?

What would you say if I told you that I will die tomorrow unless I rub the tummy of a teddy bear in a certain way? I can prove it works because I rub the teddy bear every day and I wake up the next morning. What do you think of that?

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I'm sorry to hear that you are struggling right now. OCD is a difficult disorder but it can be treated and with work you can get things under control.

The type of worry you are dealing with is known as magical thinking. It's a well known pattern that affects many OCD sufferers. You can overcome it, though it will take work and patience. In the end however it will be worth it.

One of the important steps in overcoming OCD is learning to challenge the faulty beliefs it causes. In your case for example, OCD has manipulated you into thinking that unless you do certain rituals bad things will happen. As proof you give the example of your Grandfather passing away. Now it's certainly true that losing a loved one can be a very painful thing, I remember well how hard it was on my family when my Grandfather passed away about 8 years ago. So yes, a bad thing DID happen, we both agree on that. But despite what the OCD is trying to get you to believe, it wasn't because of your rituals or lack of rituals. We live in an imperfect world in which bad things sometimes happen.

Ask yourself this: If you had performed your rituals perfectly, everyday, for the rest of your life, would your Grandfather never die? The reality is that at some point in time your grandfather would have passed away, just as we all will. No amount of ritual would have prevented it. There is a common, and faulty, logic that underlies much of the OCD fears out there. We say to ourselves "I am afraid of bad thing X. The only way I can stop worrying and feeling bad, is if I know that X will NEVER happen". Trust me, I'm guilty of this exact same faulty reasoning.

You say that you have multiple examples where bad things happened BECAUSE you didn't do your rituals. The reality is that bad things happened AND you didn't do your rituals. Yes both things are true but there is, in reality, no connection between them. For one, I'm sure that there are times when you haven't done your rituals and GOOD things have happened. I can be sure because you yourself have said so in your post. You reduced your rituals or stopped some of them and things were good! You were making friends, having a good time!

Human kind has an amazing ability to find patterns, it's an ability that has helped us do amazing things. The problem is we not only are good at finding patterns that exist, but at seeing patterns when there aren't patterns to see. In science and medicine these are called false positives. For OCD sufferers this amazing human ability can be a major problem!

So here's the hard part, even if everything I said makes 100% sense to you, even if you believe me know when I explain why your rituals and bad things happening aren't connected, your OCD is not going to just go away. I wish it were that simple, God knows I do. Unfortunately because of the nature of OCD you are going to feel doubt. You are going to feel that there still might be a chance that the rituals DO matter, even if it's a small chance, the OCD is going to make it seem like you can't possibly risk it. You could re-read this post over and over and still feel that lingering, nagging doubt. That's the bad news. The good news is you can still win. OCD is making you feel like you have to be 100% sure or else you can't stop. That's a lie. You can stop, though it will be hard. It requires taking a leap of faith, faith that even though you don't feel absolutely certain that you are going to not do the ritual anyway. You don't have to do it all at once, you can take small steps to get there, but the end goal is to be able to say, in the face of the OCD doubt, "no, I'm not going to do what you want me to, I'm going to choose to do something else instead."

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Guest OCD INDIAN

@dksea Thank you. This will help me a lot. I have overcome most of my compulsions, from past few years. My main problem is the thoughts that keep on coming into my head. I can't sleep because of them and nomatter how hard I try I can't get rid of them and since I am not following my compulsions, they become more severe. I am scared I might go into depression. Is it also a part of OCD. Have you gone through this phase?

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