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Hi Laura, That would be incredibly helpful. Ever since I have been diagnosed with OCD, I always find myself researching about it to find out more. It’s reassuring to see other people feel the same way I do, it makes me feel less isolated and gives me hope for recovery. - JA

Don't think I can offer any specific tips, but good luck!

I get this without any meds and wish I knew how to manage it. It's completely different to managing the daytime thoughts. It's getting to the point where I'm really struggling to keep believing that one or two of the themes are OCD!! Mine seem to have got much worse in the last few months or so. I have had a few bad events in real life in that time which will almost certainly have fuelled it. But as you say, there seems to be no control over dreams so you wake up feeling awful.

This happened in my case. I was on fluoxetine and had some dreams as you describe that were really vived and frightening. I reported this to my GP and we agreed to a dose reduction for the medication. The dose reduction did help. When my mood had improved the medication was stopped. I have been off medication now for 4 months and I have had no further episodes of those scary dreams. I also reported this on the MHRA yellow card scheme. Here is the link if you need it: https://yellowcard.mhra.gov.uk/

Hi everybody, So I’m doing 2 big exposures (well 1, but another is something I’ve been struggling to be consistent with.) I’m going to a big shopping centre with my Nan, to get some lovely clothes to treat myself for being at my job for 1 month If anybody has any tips or advice, I’d be so grateful so so scared, yet excited at the same time I’m also going to my boyfriends house, which is out of my small village where I work and live. It’s always quite a big task for me to go round there, yet I’ve done it so many times I still have the OCD and anxiety ruminating about? If anybody has any tips on how I can help that side, I’d also be really grateful. I keep focusing on the sensation I’m going to throw up but I know I won’t so it’ll be ok Ok so here we go, the morning starts ….. I’m ready for this, A big FU to OCD

Thank you very much It helps me not to feel so bad about myself

Hi guys I thought I’d open up a discussion about OCD and dreams. Ever since I started medication for my OCD, my dreams have been really intense. By that I mean, really vivid and really extreme. My intrusive thoughts have started creeping into my dreams too. Sometimes they’re really disturbing and it means I’m waking up with a horrible feeling straight away. I keep trying to tell myself that I can’t control my dreams, but it’s almost every night and it’s really hard not to ruminate on it. Anyone got any advice or strategies to cope with dreams? thank you 💗

Sometimes it's not possible to 'push through the pain'. I wish it was! But that's not what I've been suggesting, so my sincere apologies for the misunderstanding. I'm talking only about mental resilience here. How does a person stay hopeful when life is intolerable? How do you make life purposeful and meaningful so you can face another day/night of torture? How does changing your thinking change the practicalities of living a life fraught with the kind of difficulties and challenges most people can't begin to imagine? Those are the things I've found answers to over the years and hope to share with you so you too can build your resilience. I'll write more tomorrow... my back muscles keep going into spasm tonight and I know you of all people will understand what that's like!

Skirt

tights

I would like to explain more but dont think i can. Thank you for your thoughtful and caring reply As well as being unable to use my arms to do anything much due to repetitive strain injury making my upper back hurt, anything sitting, standing or walking for me is a nightmare, due to feet problems and lower back disc and soft tissue problems though I look normal and walk seemingly normally. I am ridiculous. I don't fit into either the normal or the disabled category. I can avoid pain most of the time, but only because I can't do anything normal like sit in a car for 15 minutes or stand still without a lot of pain which lasts for a long time and this has been going on for 40 years with devastating consequences on my whole existance. I'm trying to avoid my body getting weaker and weaker but it's so hard. I'm sorry if you and others suffer a lot of pain that cant be avoided Snowbear, i know that's hellish. I don't have pain that just comes in from nowhere when i am lying down but when I am in pain because i've been from doing something normal and unstrenuous it's tortuous and then I have a reason to lie down and do nothing which is psychologically sometimes easier than when I'm not in pain and can do nothing which is the norm. I hope you see what I mean. I know you suggest I should work through the pain but I if I were to carry on doing things the pain would just get worse and i cant recover. I desperately want to work hard physically and play hard physically like i did when i was a child. There is no one around who knew me then (when I was a child) and who knows me now. Nobody knows who i am or what i am, including me. I tried to get help privately for my back again last year, but was let down. I feel absolutely useless, floppy and powerless and i've nothing to fall back on. I needed to get some of this out and i thank you again for your trouble in reading and replying to my posts, I appreciate and do take to heart the last one knowing that you have a lot of insight from your own very difficult and challenging experiences. I want to permanently change my thinking too.

Too expensive. I priced it at $35 Oz in California. It would be cheaper for me to eat an apple & it’s our most nutritious fruit.

Hi! I’m from America and I’m 27. I have ROCD and my situation is that me and my partner are doing an open relationship. I didn’t really have many friends my own age but when and where I met my girlfriend, I ended getting friends that were around 21 and 20 and 22 and 23. I went into college at 23 and left at 27. so because my mind over thinks and because I worry, I tell my girlfriend to flirt with more people so I don’t feel guilty flirting with people myself. She mentions this girl that she wants to flirt with who is 21 and small. My girlfriend is 5’7 and the girl is small and young looking. Months before, I was talking to this dancer who was 20/ 21 years old. And she looks small herself, she looks young. my girlfriend got bothered by that and I respected her wishes and never spoke that person again in that way. But I bring that girl up again to her because she said she thought that the girl she was talking to was cute but to me she looked young and small, like the girl I was talking to before. She got mad at me and said that I never said I didn’t want you to talk to her because she was small, I didn’t want you to talk to her because she looked young. She looked at me like I was a pervert or something and the only reason I brought it up was because I don’t like when people tell me not do something that the other person will end up doing. like what would be the point of that, but I realized that she is right, it is weird that I would do that because even though she was 20 or 21 she still is young and doesn’t need an older man to come and bother her. With my ocd, the Open Relationship intensifies my intrusive thoughts. I feel like I’m a pervert and I feel like I’m a monster. Am I a monster? What do I do to not make myself not think too much.

Absolutely. We've talked about it a lot but what do you know about the need to have absolute certainty and the role compulsions have in maintaining the OCD cycle?

I get it. Maybe not every nuance of what your life is like or how it feels to you to live it, but we're not that disimilar in many ways. And I agree that outsiders look on people like us and haven't a clue. I get that your current thinking means you feel barred from doing many of the things that would make your life better. And that separate to that there are many things you can't physically do which makes life hard. I understand how utterly draining of joy and soul-destroying it can be to exist day to day and year after year when life is both physically and mentally hard. I've wanted to give up sooo many times. Genuinely believed my life wasn't worth it sooo many times. And yet, by learning how to changing my thinking I've been able to move past that. You will too. Hang on in there and stay hopeful. Things can change.

I'm sorry Snowbear, but i'm glad that u know you will feel better. I'm wishing you strength through this. 🙂 However, i am very serious. I am barred from everything, everything that i need and i look on my life and it is horrific in a way nobody understands. People always get the wrong impression of me and also find it very difficult to understand me and I can't really do much to make them understand and quite frankly why would they want to when they're just getting on with their lives? All this said, it doesn't matter because I don't want this life.

So my son goes on holiday tomorrow early hours. Half of me is dreading it and half of me wants it over with as it's been in the back of my mind for months. What's complicated my emotions further is that my auntie has had covid and after complications has been in a coma for 2 weeks. I have visited her twice and it was horrendous. I have had to try to be strong as my mum and cousins are in pieces. This has added to my fear for my son as he goes off on holiday. I feel so out of control and afraid 😪

I think what snowbear just explained to you, is the actual core of what I'm trying to tell you the whole time - you make all these nothings, into somethings. I shouldn't have referred to these nothings as "incidents" in the first place, because as snowball said, that in itself is giving them some kind of meaning. You should just dismiss them, because it's all in your head and how you interpret these moments. You can always choose to not give them any meaning and thus, making it not only objectively meaningless, but also for your subjective perception of them. I like to give examples, so here is one - which is actually something I've seen a sufferer suffering from: "If I would be single, I would definitely fall for this man, because he looks super hot" → "Oh god, what was that thought? Did I just cheat on my husband in my fantasies? Does this mean I could cheat on my husband, if a good-looking guy was right here? Would I cheat on him, and I was just lucky enough to not encounter a guy like that in real life? Yes! I'm a cheater! I would cheat on my husband! Help!" Do you see how ridiculous this conclusion and interpretation of this is? Do you see how something so pointless got blown up into something like cheating? Now guess what you are doing the whole time.

Ladders

Both of these are points where you give meaning to your thoughts/feelings/ experiences. This is an important area of intervention as in OCD the meaning given to things is typically unrealistic or false. Try to identify what it is you tell yourself 'being unhappy' and 'what somebody not liking my partner' means for you. Chances are you've imagined some catastrophic and totally unrealistic consequences in your mind. Aim to get a grip on these imaginings and make them more realistic. For example, 'I'm not happy' and that means... Life is over, I'll never be happy again And you support these exaggerated beliefs with ideas such as 'I ought to be happy all the time, shouldn't I?' and misunderstandings like 'I'm not in control of my own happiness, it depends on external factors like...' (Happiness depends on internal factors - learn what they are and how to control them and you can create your own happy feelings no matter what you were feeling initially.) Now it's your turn. Try 'Somebody not liking my partner means...' and work out what catastrophic imaginings and false support beliefs lie behind that. Then you can reassess your thinking and come up with more realistic and genuine outcomes.

I'm not great physically at the moment, and can relate to 'my life is not worth living'. But at times like these we have to be resilient. 'My life doesn't feel like it's worth living right now, but I know from experience this feeling will pass. Just have to hang on in there and better days will come again.'

Oh my gosh you do like to dramatise don't you? (We need a 'drama queen' emoticon ) They are not 'incidents'. Talking about this to yourself in that way keeps you thinking that any of this is important when it isn't. You're obsessing over meaningless moments, meaningless thoughts and actions. You give them meaning they don't deserve which turns (in your eyes at least) these nothings into 'somethings'. It's not the 'incidents' you should be trying to stop. Your aim is to stop giving the moment any meaning. Stop obsessing about it as if it mattered. Part of the meaning you attribute to them is 'these thoughts are wrong'. That's a problem. Because no thought is 'wrong'. All thoughts are just thoughts. Meaningless in themselves. You can carry on with these actions if you want. Nobody has ever told you not to. They are meaningless, harmless and of zero importance. It's only in your mind, how you think of them that they have any significance. That also includes 'the worst ones' you haven't told us about. We don't need to know because NONE of it is important, deviant, bad or damaging. They are thoughts. And feelings which arise from your thoughts. That's like saying every drop of rain that falls is evil because it once passed through a black cloud. Next therapy session you should talk to your therapist about the way you assign meaning to your thoughts and feelings, and how this makes insignificant things seem terrifyingly evil to you.

Thank you 4 yr reply Snowbear. I've got such a bad headache again. Im trying to carry on but my life isnt worth living. I hope you are doing well.

Hi :] I do understand how you feel. Many times I have had the opportunity to expose myself when I go outside but I don't do it. "You have to go ahead. Just keep going, don't think too much about what you're doing. Then one day you'll realize you've drastically changed." I know it's hard but I think this advice can help you.

Discipline, desire to see recovery and determination are indeed good attributes to have as you move along the road to recovery. If each day on your journey is better than the last one then that is a positive step in the right direction. It does not matter about the size of the steps so long as they are forward.