Need somebody's permission to stop thinking about it

[Guest anatta]

But I don't know whose.

I want someone to say "you don't have to think about this anymore. You're not morally or in any way obligated to ask or answer any more questions about it."

But I also suspect that if a friend said that, or anyone here, I wouldn't trust them. They'd just be saying that, or they'd be wrong. I feel like I need it to come from an authority I can trust, and then there'd be a great sense of relief.

I know that doesn't make logical sense.

Does anyone relate?

[Guest Gale1982]

Makes perfect sense, you don't trust anyone. Even worse, you probably find it hard to trust yourself. Tis the nature of the beast.

[Guest nervous]

Sure it makes sense, If we could give up responsibility for a decision to someone we trust then that would free us from doubting the decisions we make. At the risk of sounding like some type of corny public wellness message the only person who can give that is you. Ocd means doubt, doubt means not trusting your own opinion or abilities, not trusting your own opinion or abilities means endless questioning and endless questioning of ourselves leads to wanting to be free of it.

[Guest Rosiebella1]

I agree with what nervous said. Ocd makes us doubt our opinions and decisions. The only way to deal with this is to live with the doubt or as the saying goes 'feel the fear and do it anyway'. In a perfect world there would be one person we could ask who is very wise and makes every single right choice who can tell us what to do and relieve us of making a potentially wrong decision. But I think that's part of life and growing up and realising we have to believe in ourselves ❤️

[PolarBear]

anatta, the only person who can give you the permission you seek is you.

[Guest anatta]

You've all pointed out rightly that I don't trust myself.

I can't trust my own judgement just some of the time and completely dismiss it the rest, i.e. whenever it feels like I ought to think about my theme. The same flawed brain is coming up with the suggestion that I don't need to think about it, so it's not a reliable source. Although I know I have OCD, that doesn't mean that the feeling that I ought to know the truth is wrong, it just means that it's more persistent and emotionally amplified than it would be for people without OCD. The OCD could be wrong, and the opposing thoughts could be wrong, but I don't know which, because just as my OCD inevitably distorts my perceptions of the situation, so will my desire (and that of people without OCD) not to think about it. So I can't trust any of my feelings or judgements about the situation, either for or against thinking about it. And I can't trust other people because they don't know enough about the subject to know whether there really is potential benefit to the world of me knowing the truth, and they're not objective observers of the situation either, as they too will have emotional biases and ulterior motives. "Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you." The OCD could be right. I need a truly objective and highly knowledgeable observer to confirm that there's no net benefit to me ever knowing the truth. I don't think such an observer exists.

Sorry this seems like a pointless moan that's not going anywhere, but I've been trying to work out what's really going on under the surface and I didn't realise before that I feel guilty about the idea of not searching for an answer anymore, and it's a major contributor to my difficulty stopping. That guilty feeling will be obvious to people with certain types of obsession, like harm OCD, but due to the nature of mine, I hadn't ever consciously verbalised and noted it after feeling it, as I suppose I was too busy instantly jumping from thought to thought to escape it, and I wonder if other people are unaware of it, too.

Edited October 31, 2014 by anatta

[Guest nervous]

Hi Anatta, It is an excellent point you bring up about there being no benefit to knowing the truth, sometimes there are questions that we don't need an answer for. We can spend our lives endlessly calculating and figuring but it will only leave us with a miserable life and an unanswered question. If we spend all our time trying to figure out something we do not need to figure out we are missing out on so much more of our life because we spend all this time inside our heads trying to figure one thing.

I will apologize ahead of time for the rest of this reply because the only way to explain this is kinda long, if you dont feel like reading it don't bother. but if you got some time to spend have a look

there is something to say for thinking about what is lying underneath the ocd, Even though when it comes to OCD thinking usually doesn't get us very far. Recently my wife had gone with the kids to visit the grand parents and which is a long way away and they were gone for nearly 2 weeks, during this time my ocd got worse even though I thought I would be more in control of my surrounding. What it did give me is sometime to think and what came out of that is a realization of what was also behind my ocd. A bit of my story, I am 45 and only developed ocd 3 or 4 years ago, it got worse extremely fast and for almost 2 years I have not been able to work and the last 6 months I was basically housebound any time leaving my house was a terrible experience. I did have ERP a year ago and it helped a bit but I just kept sliding down lower, I wont bore you with any more details but I was in bad shape.

Mostly I blamed the job I had at the back then for this, I worked at a company that used hazardous materials and it developed into contamination ocd and became fear of just about any mysterious substance, especially ones I couldn't see. I blamed society because they allow this to go on, I blamed my lack of education for sticking me with crappy jobs, I blamed my being a man because I was expected to suck it up and go to work, I blamed the recession because I lost my really good job that I had for 14 years, I even blamed my family because I felt they must not love me because they never told me to to quit this horrible job. I did the job for a year and half before I got help for ocd but by this time I was well involved with it.

During the time when my family was away and I had time to think I decided I would trace back when I first started to have these thoughts because I knew had some fears before as well just it wasn't ocd yet. I started typing as far back as I can remember having thoughts like this and at one point I just stopped typing because I looked at the page and realized that all though I did not yet have ocd all the factors were already in place when I would be in my mid 30s. It wasn't ocd, just some worries but I realized they were the same worries and I had already started to look doubt and risk the same way I do now. I didn't really obsess about it and I didn't yet do compulsions but I was already off course it was only a matter of time.

Why does this matter you might ask? It matters because this was at a time where I felt everything was good in my life, I had a great job, lots of friends, plenty of hobbies and it had already begun, It hit me hard, I had been blaming all these things for me developing ocd but really it had started when there was nothing wrong in my life. My whole belief in what was to blame for my ocd collapsed and I realized there was nothing to blame, it had not been some crappy twist of fate that I got stuck with, It was just a strange mix of events that led me to a series of conclusions that made me fear any sort of risk. My own thought process had created this mess and not some outside influences. It was depressing and it took me a couple days to get over it even though I felt it was a good thing that I realized this.

In the past 6 weeks I have made a lot of progress the reason I said that thinking doesn't really get us far is because this isn't really about our thoughts but the emotions we attach to our thoughts that make them seem like they are so important. Logic can never win against an emotional feeling no matter how much you tell yourself that it doesn't make sense, if you feel it you will think it. I remember when I first started I was checking I would lock and relock the door so many times, I could see myself doing it and saying to myself, this is crazy I have to stop but I couldn't because the door still didn't "feel" like it was locked. By the time I was into contamination I was in full denial. At this point I did all my compulsions without question and then tried to figure out after how I could sort all this out. I thought and I thought and I thought. I only got worse.

Most of us with ocd waste a colossal amount of time trying to resolve some issue but we really have to ask ourselves are we spending time on the right things? Sometimes I think we just have to move on, there are some questions where the answer just doesn't matter.