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Therapist even said it


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Even my therapist said the thoughts wouldnt really go away. I felt like that was my only hope to getting better. Even learning all ive learned about ocd I still doubt when the thoughts come, thoughts that I feel silly describing with my solipsism obsession, what if ocd is just a product of my mind to keep me from learning the truth type stuff. I felt my only hope was to one day forget the thoughts as I cant reason with this solipsism stuff.

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Your therapist said the wrong thing.

Some of my obsessions have been vanquished to the netherworld. I don't suspect I'll hear from them again. Other obsessions are still with me but they're weak and pathetic and I'm strong enough to not let them bother me.

So the answer is, you might lose some or all of the thoughts. The trick is to learn how to deal with the ones that remain so they have no power over you.

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Guest jayjay89

Yeah, I agree with polarbear, some of my stuff is completely gone, I no longer think I am a pedofile for example!

Your therapist was definitely not on the right track there, could you see another one?

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Hosscat,

I agree you can forget about the thoughts, though you have to actively change how you react to them and the meaning you give them for the mind to forget. Your mind will forget about them once you stop caring and giving them meaning and attention. NO attention or meaning and they'll fade away into nothing. That is their fuel to keep going.

The mind runs on meaning and fear is the most powerful meaning to it. When you ruminate you never find the bottom of it, you just did a deeper hole with more attention. The idea that you need to know is false. All you need to do is see the dysfunction, and seeing it, easily drop it. You have a million thoughts and theories about your OCD and none of them have helped you one bit, but only made it worse, because attention grows the problem.

You want the thought to go away and be not there, though you keep thinking about it.

How can we make something NOT THERE, by thinking? Thinking is the opposite direction to what we want.

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Guest nervous

it doesnt feel encouraging to hear that but you have to understand what it means, my therapist said to me the best I could hope for is to be able to live my life like normal inspite of all the thoughts in my head. I thought yikes no thanks the idea living the rest of my life thinking all these things seemed awful, but i didn't quite know what he meant. The thoughts remain because as humans we all have all kinds of thoughts in our heads all the time but it is the emphasis on negative thoughts that is disturbing, I try and do meditation although I am not very good at it. What I found as I tried to prevent my mind from wandering all the time is that our minds are full of thoughts that constantly keeping coming up, the other is that they were about an even mix of negative and positive thoughts and not mostly negative like I had thought. This was a relief to me and I felt that maybe I was normal after all. I continue to try and do this allowing my mind to flow and not dwell on any thought negative or positive and I can see that spending too much time on a brief thought that pops into my head doesn't make sense. although easier said then done, like anything worthwhile it takes practice.

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We have about 60000 thoughts a day. Not all of them are good and that's normal for everyone. I think what your therapist meant was that by getting on with your life and by not responding to them they'll shrink away themselves. Easier said than done, that's what I've been doing the last while. Takes time I guess

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How exactly do you not give meaning to them once they have made you doubt and fearful? Ive tried saying its just a thought, but there is always the doubt about what if its true. Do I just have to get comfortable with the possibility that it could be true?

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Yes.

I hate to go Star Trek on you but resistance is futile. The more you resist and push against the obsessions the stronger they push back. Give them attention through compulsions and they are stronger and more frequent. Give them no attention and they whither.

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Guest nervous

Polar bear is right although when your in the middle of a bout of anxiety it can be difficult to see that. Essentially you have do have to get used to believing they might be true. For example my ocd focus on contamination and I have to accept that the things I come in contact with (furniture, door handle, money, bank machine etc.) could be contaminated. The more I try to hope that its not or try to screen what I touch the more unmanageable my life becomes. Trying to guess what is contaminated with invisible gremlins and what isnt is impossible so I have to accept that I will never know and that what happens is just a normal part of life. If I were to tell myself "I think a coat is unclean and then later try to convince myself later that it is clean i will only lull myself into a false sense of security (reassurance) that in the end I will only question again and again as I think of new reasons to believe that the coat isn't clean.

The doubt and fear that we feel with ocd is part of the disorder and has even been called the "doubting disease" People with ocd always want to be sure about things but in spite all the effort we put into it we still can't be sure. In short we yeah we have to live with doubt.

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As several people have said, the trick is not to try to out reason ocd. It's not possible. You have to resist the temptation to try and reason with your worries. When you do that and get used to doing it, your intrusive thoughts will become less frequent, but ironically only when you stop caring if they are less frequent. The first step is to care less if they occur and not react to them.

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I get brief moments of what I guess is 'clarity', where the idea seems so wrong. But it doesnt last for more than a few minutes before the idea starts seeming possible again. Im hoping over time I will keep getting longer moments where the thought isnt right, either that or I just forget about it. Im getting to where im starting to feel ok about not knowing if its true or not, but I dont know how to be ok with it always being here.

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