Franklin12

Thanks for this useful discussion. It does all make sense. I’m never sure where my self-esteem is. I think I actually think I’m great, but just that I do things that are bad, thus letting myself down. So for me, what is my experiment? My ultimate fear is feeling bad. So I only fear making mistakes because that leads to guilt and shame, and I don’t like those. I don’t actually really care about mistakes, and I know everyone makes them etc etc. I especially don’t like an unexpected short sharp shock of guilt and shame. That’s the reason I do my safety behaviours - to numb the potential shock - take the sting out of it. Logically I know that this is stupid and that I live my life with chronic mild bad feelings to avoid an acite episode of very intense bad feelings. So my experiment would be what? That I wouldn’t feel bad? Because I would. That I wouldn’t make a mistake? Well I do make mistakes like everyone of course. That it doesn’t matter if I do make a mistake? Or that I get over? I do know logically that I need to let go of trying to control this but of course it’s easier said than done. I have had success in other areas, by just letting go. This is my stubborn nemesis.

I think I’m doing something wrong though, because I do do my job, but through clenched teeth and fear a lot of the time. So I’m doing the exposure (albeit I do avoid some things that I can get away which I shouldn’t), but it’s like the fear gets worse, because if I do a good job one time, it just adds pressure that people assume I won’t mess up next time - and the more I do without messing up, the higher the expectations, and the more responsibility I get, and the more I freak out! I keep getting higher to fall!

Gosh this one has got me at the minute too - my oldest and most stubborn theme has reared its head of late. My fear is that my work has mistakes in and sometime in the future, when it’s too late to correct the mistakes, they will be discovered and I will be exposed as a complete fraud who everyone thought could do their job but actually they’re rubbish. All those tuts, sad faces and shaking heads. Anyway I really want to work on this because it causes me huge anxiety and prevents me doing a lot of things at work that I should, for fear I will be found out. But my dilemma - in an OCD way I should expose myself to the fear that yes, my work is full of mistakes, I am terrible at my job, and I will be exposed as a big fraud. But I don’t feel like this helps my self-esteem - shouldn’t I be thinking ‘no, I’m decent and capable at my job’? Shouldn’t I be starting to send my brain positive messages about myself? I really don’t know. It’s funny but it feels REALLY wrong and risky to tell myself I do a good job at work. I feel like if I let go, I won’t be prepared when things do go wrong. I think that’s my worst fear - emotional shock. If I constantly tell myself I’m rubbish then it won’t hurt so much when I fail. I know how ridiculous a strategy that is and it isn’t conscious, but it really does feel odd to allow myself to think positively about myself. Anyway im hoping someone has the answer - how to do positive thinking without it being reassurance.

You wonder if you are a bad person. You question who you are as a person, whether you are presenting a true image of yourself to those around you, and whether the way that you have behaved in the past mean you are irreparably bad. The way I see it, 1) Asking these questions is not OCD. 2) Obsessing over the answers to these questions is OCD. These are philosophical questions with no real answers. 3) Having OCD does not mean the answer to the questions is yes or no. 4) Thinking about these questions all the time is making you feel bad. 5) Is there any point questioning your goodness or badness as a person? 6) Is there any point trying to work on feeling better about how you feel about yourself? 7) Tricky but you need to separate the unhealthy thinking patterns from the need to be more comfortable with who you are.

Come on GBG! This feels really important to you today. But you won’t feel like this on a different day. Get yourself out and about and get busy doing something to try and break this loop tonight. This isn’t as important as it feels. Put it down today.

For me, I had literally had enough, I was sick and tired of the peaks and troughs, and then I was having a particularly severe episode and was constantly terrified so I thought what have I really got to lose by treating this as OCD.

But we live in social groups so to an extent we all have to fit in with certain norms. Maybe we want to take what we want but we don’t. Maybe we want to have an affair but we don’t. Maybe we want to be messy but we’re not, or be loud but we’re sometimes quiet, or tell someone to get lost but we don’t etc etc. Who gets to live exactly how they want? Maybe you need an outlet for your ‘other’ side, so that sometimes you can be slightly less constrained. What features of yourself are you hiding? Could you find an outlet for those things that’s safe and ‘above board’? I doubt you’re evil or totally bad so I think you need to be a bit less harsh on yourself. But it’s ok to not be Mother Theresa too.

Ha ha - ok just be normal then, and spend the time with the people you like! And have fun!

They are NOT better than you! It doesn’t matter what they think of your past behaviour. Try to turn around your anticipation of this, you are just in a rut of thinking these situations are a threat. This is an opportunity to have an enjoyable night out. Opportunity, not threat. And when you get there, be positive and proud - don’t shuffle about looking all ashamed and skulking in the shadows. Be pleasant and nice, show them the person you are now.

I’m sure you already have a vast library of self-help books but the compassion focused therapy one is really very good and targeted at guilt and self-criticism.

I agree that the everyone makes mistakes line is a bit simplistic. But you could start retraining your brain to start looking at the good in you as well as the bad. You could start working on accepting that you can’t find a line for judging behaviour as ok or not ok, so there is no point looking for one. You could start giving yourself permission to judge yourself and your own behaviour. You could live with knowing that you won’t always get it right. You could accept that you will sometimes do things that your partner doesn’t like, but you are not living to please your partner.

No you’re wrong - there is no line, and everyone doesn’t agree that there is one. We all would agree that murder is wrong. But that isn’t a line. That’s one act. Even wrong doing that involves death isn’t straightforward. What about someone who was looking at their satnav and knocked a cyclist off their bike and they died? How bad does that person have to feel? Quite bad? As bad as a murderer? Its a spectrum, there is no line. You will never find a line. You can have only name some extreme things that we would all say were bad.

But to answer Roy’s question - always remember your successes. For me it really helped get through a spike to remember that if I didn’t ruminate, I wouldn’t be bothered about that thing in the morning.

Also I bet you’re only seeing the bad things you’ve done. I wonder if you’re over looking all the nice things you’ve done in your life. I have this with work - I can only see the flaws in my work, and completely overlook any good aspects of the work. It makes me feel like I’m completely useless but I’m probably not.

Crikey you have gone down the rabbit hole with this one! Maybe you need a more simple cognitive message and then any leaching of that you can chalk up to OCD and apply those tools. I think looking at it from the perspective of someone without the theme - eg As Roy said above, is a good start, and the try to nip the ‘buts’ in the bud. Would you say your issue is with the grey area - so you’re remorseful about the truly awful things and probably won’t do them again, but there are things that you think other people would think needed remorse but actually you aren’t that bothered? Of course there is no blacks no white here so you can continue to beat yourself up forever unless you accept that we are all on a spectrum of this type of behaviour. It’s unlikely that you fall at the sociopath end, but maybe you’re not whiter than white either. I think it would help to work on accepting that being in the middle, in the grey, is perfectly normal. I am quite moral when it comes to things like breaking the law, but would I ALWAYS be kind and help people? Hmmm, I’m not sure, and sometimes I think I don’t always want the best for people because I’m a jealous person. Etc. This is too grey an area to ever find an answer to. It’s perfect fodder for OCD. Try to find peace with your own behaviour and not rely on others judgements of you.

Re. the immorality issue, I would say that the issue of remorse seems to feature heavily in society’s view of ‘offending’. We like to see that people are sorry for any wrong they have done and that they feel bad if they have caused someone harm. So whilst we do punish people if we think they have broken society’s moral code, we take it a lot more seriously if the ‘offender’ couldn’t seem to care less. So there is a place for forgiveness and rehabilitation in the justice system rather than simply punishing for punishing’s sake. So I think you can apply this to your own moral code. Mistakes are accepted so long as you learn from them and try not to make them again.

Im sure I have mentioned before, but I’ve had a few glasses of wine this evening, so sorry if I’ve forgotten, but if you haven’t then look up Imposter Syndrome.

Have you ever gone the ‘full fear’ with this obsession? Just given in and assumed it’s true, given up trying to fight it? Incidentally there is no straightforward dichotomy between a true thought and an OCD thought. OCD is where your thoughts spiral out of control. Most of mine are based in some kind of truth, but that get more and more warped. You need to get to a place where your OCD isn’t convincing you that a drunken pass is a crime. It isn’t. When you’re past this episode you still won’t know all the details of what happened but you won’t care about knowing.

Like I have complete intolerance to bad feelings and must avoid them. I’ve tried to make friends with bad feelings and accept them as part of life blah blah, but I’m still pretty rubbish at it. It goes: this thing doesn’t objectively matter, I know this - but it will make me feel bad - therefore it does matter.

I think this is the missing piece for me in this puzzle. I think I feel like thoughts follow feelings rather than the other way round - so x situation made me feel bad once, x is a bad thing to happen, x must never happen.

I feel like I have an issue with how I feel about things, rather than the things themselves.

I sometimes wonder on the same line, do we ever truly come to believe what we are retraining our brains to believe? I really know what I’m supposed to think about things and I can tell myself those things, but I don’t FEEL like I really believe what I’m telling myself. If I’m honest with myself those things still FEEL important. I don’t want to believe those things, and objectively they don’t matter to me, and if my fears happened to someone else I would say all the right things and truly believe what I was saying to them. But it just doesn’t feel true when applied to me. If that makes any sense.

I always used to have dreams about being back in my home town and in my dreams I would see people I knew and would hide and hope to not be seen. Now though, in my dreams I turn and face them and speak to them. I think this is definitely due to me trying to make an effort to change how I think about all this stuff.

I don’t even visit my home town! I really should. Good luck - I know people who just talk about all the crazy stuff they did in their teenage years and I’m truly envious that they have no shame! They are as happy as Larry!

I think you should generalise ‘trigger point’. You may have had an idyllic childhood but you have almost certainly experienced negative emotions whilst growing up. These can act as trigger points I think. I once got falsely accused of something by a teacher aged 9. It was rectified in seconds, but the awful feeling that I had left a very big scar, and a life lesson of ‘be very careful not to get in trouble, it feels dreadful’. I don’t think you need look for major trigger.