Ryukil

Well, I have the saved game now. My fear is that God will punish me, or that I'll start insulting God in my head. Fudge it though, this is like the 5th or 6th attempt today.

I say one thing but of course it's indicative of a larger problem. I've started this game over multiple times today. It gets "contaminated" by various thoughts so I start it over to de-contaminated it. Inevitably it gets contaminated by another thought, but that thought may be easier to deal with than the previous one. I think that's a flaw in my logic though - I'll "de-contaminate" something saying this thought is too bad, I'll re-contaminate with a less difficult one. But that's...I don't know. Flawed logic I think. There shouldn't really be any excuse to give into compulsions. Basically, I just need to start the game, and keep it no matter what it's contaminated with. What usually happens is I'll commit to that, but then restart several times until I get frustrated and give up. Which happened like an hour ago. So yeah. Need to just *@!$ing do it.

I tried to set up an appointment for next week, to which he replied: "You don't need a session. Make the account and deal with the fallout. I'm around next week if needed." I made the account like 30 minutes ago. I thought of God and farted while doing it, so pretty sure he's offended, and the only way to show I'm contrite is too delete the account. Ah well. I'm going to keep it now, and try to make it a couple days. My goal is to make it to like May 3rd (week from Monday) before considering going back to therapy, if the anxiety doesn't lessen.

Yeah, the decision-making thing is definitely a huge problem.

Thanks.

So, I should at least give it a shot on my own? I mean. I guess waiting for him to do it with me in the hope that I don't feel as anxious about doing it is a pretty clear compulsion.

I did a few months of therapy since January. I did do exposures, but I also "half-assed" it at times. Overall, I would say I definitely improved. Eventually, it got to the point where we were just saying the same things every session so I decided it made sense to take a break. I thought, and he said, that ultimately it was down to me to do the work, anyway. He agreed with me that it made sense to take a break, and I stopped. However, now I'm trying to do exposures on my own and one is particularly troubling me. Should I go back? I'm worried I can't handle it on my own. One thing I do is wait for sessions to do exposures - that kind of insulates me from some anxiety. I wrote him this: "I feel like I need to be in therapy in order to start a certain thing, but I guess that's basically reassurance. Sort of an attempt to not feel as much anxiety from the exposure." He responded: "Exactly. You need to blow up that logic by starting things ASAP regardless of the circumstances, intrusive thoughts or anxiety." I thought it made sense to at least give myself a week or two to habituate to this difficult exposure. And if I'm not feeling less anxious about it, I'll go back to him and work through it with him. The fear, though, is that because I didn't do the exposure in therapy, the anxiety will never go down because if I had started it in therapy the thing wouldn't be as "contaminated." Which means, in a way, waiting to start the exposure in therapy is a compulsion. Does that make sense? I guess posting this at all is a compulsion.

Well, I met with him today and made a commitment to stick with that contaminated account. So. Here we go ? It'll be rough but hopefully in a week or two I'm not so concerned about it.

Agreed.

Is it possible for the anxiety from an obsession to NEVER go away though? That's kind of my main fear, that by taking on too much I'm setting myself up for failure.

So, I'm back in therapy. Just had my second session last Tuesday. The first week was kind of a mixed bag as far as ignoring compulsions, but this one has been better. One of my problems is that...sometimes obsessions just seem too terrible to ignore. I have the attitude of...ok...I'll expose but not to THAT ONE, that one is awful. My obsession/compulsion thing now is...things get "contaminated," like an account I made. I'll get a thought like...if I do this, God will punish me by making me do this terrible thing. And then I sort of nervously laugh at that thought - possibly because I know it's ridiculous. But the fear is I'm laughing at God which means he's even more likely to make me do it. Know what I mean? Bleh... Don't know what advice I'm looking for. No one's going to tell me to give into compulsions. Haha. But has anyone had this experience? Where they feel that, ok, I can ignore this compulsion, but this particular possibility (in my case God making me harm a loved one) is too much to handle, I'm going to make a new account and contaminate with a different, less severe thought. I really want to be done with OCD already.

Yeah. You're right. Thank you.

I think I have an obsession that I can't do it without a therapist. But I suppose the only way to know if that's true or not would be...to attempt to do it without a therapist.

I set that appointment but canceled it. Now it's Monday. I don't know whether I should do it on my own or not. I would save like $1000-$1500 if I did and I don't have that much income. I feel all over the place. I definitely don't want to set up an appointment with him and cancel it again. Don't want to bother him.

Yeah. I've set up an appointment with him on Friday. Tired of going around in circles.