gingerbreadgirl

Hi cub I'm sorry to hear you're struggling still. Hang in there and keep curbing those compulsions. Have you ever done graded exposure around your fears? Gbg x

Hi Gérard I'm sorry to hear you're suffering again. Ocd is rotten. You know what you need to do though. You need to allow these thoughts to come and go, shrug your shoulders and let them do their thing - they're just thoughts. Thoughts can't do anything. Don't try and figure them out, don't do anything to try and prevent your fears. Think "OK maybe i don't love my wife" and just get on with your day. You can do exposure by making sure you do as many normal this as possible and resist the urge to say "I love you" for now (as I imagine this is a big compulsion for you). Good luck, you can do this. Gbg x

Phil you're not listening. Go back and read dksea's excellent advice again.

Hi Paul I know it's incredibly hard when you're in the trenches. It is so difficult to step back and see it for what it is. Which is why you have to take a leap of faith and trust that you don't know right now - and leave it alone anyway. You are doing a lot of ruminating. Eg: These are classic examples of ocd style ruminating. What if? Why? These are questions you can't possibly answer and the only solution is to stop trying. You will feel enormously anxious at first but if you stop feeding it, it will eventually fade, I promise. But one thing that is guaranteed is that you can't think your way out of it, the more you think about it, wrestle with it, dwell on it, the more doubtful and anxious you will feel.

Thanks dksea, I will give this a try. My concern with taking it at night is that it may make my insomnia even worse if the levels are highest during the night (the NHS recommend taking it in the morning for this reason). Although tbh it can't really get much worse haha! So it's worth a try!

Good luck Lost!! I can imagine you are nervous but you can do this, you're stronger than OCD and we're all here for support if you need it xx

Hi Linnea welcome to the forum A great place to start is the book "Break Free from OCD" by Paul Salkovskis - this breaks it down really simply, what OCD is, how it is perpetuated, and how to treat it using CBT. I would really recommend it.

Hi Paul You are massively ruminating right now, trying to figure it all out, and it's keeping the subject front and centre in your mind. The more you go over it, the more doubtful and anxious you will feel - that is guaranteed. You will never get certainty over this, that's just not how it works. The only answer is to park it and leave it alone and allow it to fade.

Thanks all hope you're all doing OK x

Thanks both. That's a good idea lost I will try it

Can I ask, anyone who has taken fluoxetine, how long did it take the insomnia to wear off? I am otherwise having a good experience with it, but my sleep is absolutely abysmal, I am hardly sleeping at all and it is becoming really difficult as I'm so sleepy in the day! just hoping it is temporary!

Hi Paul At risk of reassuring you, what you describe is completely normal. The human brain is a hot bed of random thoughts and musings and wonderings that we'd never tell anyone else. The difference is that people without ocd don't give them a second thought. You are free to think whatever - thoughts mean absolutely nothing. If you could have a recording of my thoughts throughout the day you'd hear the most unbelievably random stuff. That's life. It happens to everyone. Sometimes you might think something that makes you cringe or think wtf - but then most people just move on. It doesn't get "stuck in the filter" because they don't have ocd. Put this behind you, enjoy your friendship and don't give this another thought.

Thanks all x

This kind of thing is so incredibly infuriating I feel that understanding of mental health has come a long way but for some reason ocd is still treated like a quirky joke.

Hi all Just wanted to give a quick, mostly positive update. Hopefully it might give a little hope. So as some of you may know, I suffered a huge huge relapse around 2 years ago. The worst I had ever experienced. This was triggered by the Harvey Weinstein stuff which was all in the news at the time. This triggered a cascade of OCD which really just snowballed massively from there - I became consumed by a huge number of themes, all related to my big fear of "what if I am a monster". I did so many compulsions just desperately trying to "fix" this awful feeling I had. I think I probably was also depressed for a long while. I felt completely stuck, and any progress I made was quickly lost as I kept doing compulsions. My quality of life was very low. I had periods of progress but these quickly unravelled as I did compulsions thick and fast. I was also very harsh to myself, a bully in my own head really, and it wasn't a nice way to live. Fast-forward to now and I am doing much better. Which I think is down to a number of things. I have been doing a lot of exposure on a daily basis. That gives me a sense of momentum and achievement as I can see things which used to make me scared no longer do. I have also done a lot of cognitive work - which you guys on the forum have massively helped me with (particularly Gemma who I really have a lot to thank for). I have been looking at my cognitive distortions, a big one of which is binary thinking. I have been challenging my perfectionism around moral issues by allowing myself to do little "wrong" things which make me nervous, or doing things which I think others might disapprove of, particularly those close to me. I have also tried to just generally be a bit nicer to myself, give myself a bit of a break, and appreciate the good things about myself which I was never able to do before. I have also given up caffeine, which I think has made a massive difference - I feel much more stable and calm. I have also started taking meds which I do believe have made a bit of a difference. It's hard to know how much is due to giving up caffeine and how much is due to the meds, but my baseline anxiety is much lower for one reason or another. This in turn has allowed me to dramatically curb my ruminating, which has freed my brain up to think about other, more positive things. I have been enjoying my hobbies more and focusing more at work. I think it's important to have things to fill the void which OCD can leave. All of this has combined to put me in a much, much better place and I am enjoying life so much more now, it is a huge relief. I am not out of the woods but I am in a much better place than I've been at any point over the last two years. So I just wanted to say - hang in there, have hope, keep working CBT, things really can get better and the view is so good from the other side. GBG x