Franklin12

I have always noticed a real down after the anxiety has gone. My (totally made up) theory is that your serotonin is severely depleted during an episode, but that it’s easier to get rid of the intense fear. Once the fear is gone, you notice your down mood that probably came with the same serotonin dip as the anxiety. But it was being masked by the intensity and urgency of anxiety. Depression, on the other hand, has the opposite feeling. I think as you feel well for longer your brain will balance out. Get outside, get some exercise, try to ignore the depression telling you to stay in watching boxsets and eating chocolate biscuits.

Hi Headwreck - just to say, what Jennie said! I think you have truly made some progress and that’s evident with the types of questions you’re posting. Ruminating is incredibly difficult to stop so don’t feel bad that you haven’t instantly been able to. You may find it takes a lot of effort at first, but then over time you will notice it gets easier and easier to gently resist the lure to try and start working it all out. I think reading all the posts on the forum is a bit of reassurance seeking - I know I did it, and it was so comforting when you found a fear similar to your own. I would think ‘aha, someone else with OCD and a fear of HIV - that means I didn’t get infected by my manicure’ or whatever. But maybe that’s part of the process. I learned so much through this forum, a lot from reading other people’s posts, so as long as you take on board the advice that is being given out I wouldn’t worry for now.

I totally get this! One of my worst ever episodes spiralled to me being convinced that the man over the road was going to murder me and my family. It completely took over my life in many ways and was completely terrifying once my imagination has been running wild long enough. But it got so bad that it culminated in me finally putting my foot down am standing up to OCD. I 100% stopped all compulsions cold turkey (ruminating mostly but also not letting my kids out to play, not going out in case he came round murdering whilst we had a babysitter), and then I allowed myself to accept as true that I was going to get murdered. Terrifying but worked a treat. I have never looked back and dismiss all subsequent imaginings of potential feuds that end in murder.

It is definitely interesting. It highlights that the line between being a human being with particular needs, preferences and fears, which we all do, and being a person who is experiencing suffering of a type which has been given the label ‘OCD’ is not at all straightforward. Often on here we see people asking ‘is this thought OCD? Is that fear OCD? Is my behaviour OCD?’. But there is no easy way in my opinion to ascribe each and every thought, feeling or behaviour to ‘OCD’. We are still people too. Sometimes our thinking becomes disordered and causes suffering, and we need to work on improving how we think and act so that we give ourselves the best chance of feeling well. This probably involves tackling particular problem areas as well as learning general ways of approaching life experiences that will lead us on a healthy path.

I wondered the same after reading Snowbears post. I’m guessing you don’t sit around at home worrying about whether someone is going to call round and borrow your laptop so it’s not really affecting your life? Should we do everything that scares us? I agree we should constantly push our comfort zones, but to what extremes? Must I eat sandwiches with mayonnaise everyday until I like it? Should I leave my job and go travelling? I feel like the laptop issue is beyond trivial because it is your expensive laptop and there is a likelihood that it will get crumby. Should we tolerate everything and everybody that annoys us? I don’t know, maybe we should!

I don’t think it’s that big of a deal to say no. There’s all sorts of excuses you could use. Work/data protection etc.

I think it’s not so much ‘out of order’ - after all it’s your laptop and you have every right to lay down any rules involved in borrowing it. However, by saying those things out loud implies that you think that the friend is not going to respect your laptop as a matter of course. I would find this a bit insulting. I think if I was worried about how someone would treat my laptop I wouldn’t lend it to them, and would find an excuse to say no. I have a friend who likes all his books to be kept pristine. He famously won’t lend them to anyone, and makes it clear why. However it’s all done with good humour - so we do rib him a bit about it but we never ask! I don’t think you have to lend someone your laptop if you don’t want to just as some kind of challenge to your OCD.

Hi Battelthrough. Maybe mention to your partner that you’re having an episode of OCD and it’s getting very intense and so you’re are going to the doctors. At the doctors you could say you have OCD and seem to be having a flare up. You don’t have to go into the detail. You could say you’ve had it before, you recognise the symptoms, and you would like to be referred to a therapist.

When I read the post I did think it would trigger you so I was pleased when you replied that you were ok! I’m sure PB would be happy to edit if you were too distressed though. But you didn’t flip out straight away so I think that’s progress!

Really well done Saz for not flipping out at what Polarbear wrote. I’m totally impressed. It’s a really important step. One day you will hopefully be able to write your fear down, say it aloud, hear it said to you without needing to run away or panic. Once you can do this is will start to loosen its hold over you.

Amazing, well done Phil!

And also you can wind this back further - I mentioned in one of your other posts that I was once in the throws of a terrible obsession after I had made a mistake at work. In the thick of it, it felt like a genuine mistake was a fraud, and would have terrible consequences. But the problem wasn’t actually this belief - of course I didn’t really think that, in my normal state of mind. What I had to work on was my thinking around mistake making - that making a mistake makes you a complete failure, that if you make a mistake you are useless, that making a mistake causes everyone to permanently change their whole opinion of you...etc etc. All of your original fears that sprang from that mistake at work need to be addressed by therapy - have you got a therapist? Are they working on this?

I agree with Gingerbread - sometimes distraction (from compulsions, not from the fear), is necessary to get your head back to a place where you can think straight.

I personally think that trying to figure out how bad it is to utter bad words is not helping at this stage. At the moment, you are so far into your obsession that it feels very important, and none of us will be able to persuade you that it isn’t. In fact it’s just feeding the obsession. You have to set that aside for now and resolve to stop trying to work this out, stop your ruminating, and to start work on the cognitive side.

Hi Battlethrough, I hope you’re feeling a bit better now and that you have managed to find some headspace. Like everyone has said, try to get to a place where you can relax and calm down. This spike will pass, try not to let it take hold.

Paragraph 2 is the where you need to put in the cognitive work. This is the seed of your years of mental torment. Have you started chipping away at this yet in therapy? You may find that as you work on this side, the obsessive thinking (what we all see as nonsense but to you seems very urgent and important) will start to fade. Everything from paragraph 3 onwards is you disappearing down the OCD rabbit hole. None of it is important, although it seems like it is. You need to use all the tools you have learned to snuff out an obsession. This is mainly starving it of attention. It is absolutely not trying to think it through, or work it out. Can you allow yourself to stop trying to figure this out?

Jennie I think your advice is great. I used to do a similar exercise - you had to look at yourself through the eyes of someone who loves you unconditionally. It was a self-hypnosis CD actually, and I still remember the soothing voice saying ‘look through their eyes, see what they see’. It made it feel really ridiculous to judge yourself so harshly. Good luck GBG, I’m sure you’ll come out the other side of this soon, and when you do you will be stronger for it.

Or, just choose to be whichever sexuality you want to be. If you want to be straight, be straight. If you don’t want to be gay, don’t be gay. Then, whilst you get on with living the life you choose, work on quitting your ruminating, googling, reassurance seeking etc.

Hey GBG, I wonder if firstly you are physically run down, and that’s caused the flare up. Are you getting enough vitamin D? Sunlight? Exercise? Sleep? Are your hormones balanced? Secondly I wonder whether you have done enough cognitive work over the years? If you had success snuffing our flare ups in the past by stopping compulsions you may have neglected the other side - working on changing how you think about your past. It’s easy for people to say forgive yourself, we all did bad things in the past, etc. but it takes time and repetition to change the messages you tell yourself and to finally believe what you say. Finally have you done much on the emotionally side? Learning to accept feelings of cringe, of guilt, of shame? Whilst you try to fight against those feelings you keep yourself tangled up.

You may eventually figure out what you were wearing, but then you will come up with something else to try to remember. The only way out of this is to do the absolute opposite of what it feels like you really should do. Do nothing. Do not try to work this out. Go out, get some fresh air, get busy, finish up your Christmas shopping. Wrap some presents. Go into nature if you can. Take a dog for a walk. Every time you feel yourself trying to work something out, just gently remind yourself that you’re not going to do that right now and get back to your activity.

Hi David, I’m so sorry that you are so poorly at the moment. I hope that you get the care that you need soon. Please believe that things will improve once you have the right care in place. Wishing you all the best.

Hi Oceanblue - I fully appreciate how distressed you must be having these thought whirling around your head. But please believe me that if you take action now you can stop this torment. You must stop trying to work this out. Every moment you try to work this out you are adding energy to the thoughts and fears and the worse they will get. I completely understand how difficult it will be to NOT try to work this out, but this is the road to peace and freedom. Use every tool you have to try to starve this of oxygen. Do not engage with this thought. Wishing you all the best.

The model is all well and good but fear of negative emotions may be a big driver in some people’s OCD. So the ‘misinterpretation’ is that the feeling of disgust/guilt/shame/fear is unbearable, can not be tolerated, and must be avoided at all costs. By being mindfully aware of the feeling of these emotions without judging them as completely terrible, a person can learn that it’s not the end of the world if something momentarily disgusts them, or makes them feel ashamed or guilty. They come to learn not to fight or avoid those feelings. There isn’t always a straightforward cognitive reason behind some people’s obsessions, that sits nicely in a box to be dealt with. A good therapist will explore what is driving a person’s OCD and use whatever tools are deemed useful. It’s wrong to suggest that mindfulness is some kind of deviant therapy that is being offered ‘instead of’ CBT. Many third wave cognitive behavioural therapies incorporate mindfulness. It really isn’t one or the other.

Not confusing at all. I agree and I did similar to you - I quit ruminating, totally cold turkey, so that the obsessive loop ended, and then I worked on how to deal with those worries in future, ie the cognitive work. I’m glad it worked for you too! It’s been really slow but I really have completely turned around the worry cycle. I try to focus on reinforcing my emotional coping now rather than trying to plan for every potential fear. I think often GAD can go alongside OCD and it’s important to address both.

Hi Saz, of course people on here can’t tell you what happened. But they can and have shown you that the way you are responding to your initial trigger is making you ill, and is keeping you trapped in what is essentially a ‘what if’ thought. Instead of trying to work out if your thought is true, you need to do the opposite. Stop trying to work it out and you will eventually get clarity. You are keeping yourself stuck by not following the advice that you have been given, by people who have been in situations similar to yours. You need to take a leap of faith and let go.