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Franklin12

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Everything posted by Franklin12

  1. Hi GBG, sorry to hear you've been struggling lately. Here is my take on ruminating - my biggest compulsion, and although my method goes against what some others recommend it totally worked for me. So - your mind is a raging torrent of hideous ruminating and you are racked with fear. It's completely impossible to 'let the thoughts pass and get on with your day', 'imagine your thoughts as clouds, drifting by' etc. The reality is that you just can't do that, any more than you could ignore someone smashing you over the head with a frying pan repeatedly. In this situation, I prioritise calming down over long term cognitive change. Distraction is the only thing that works - find a critical activity that works for you, something mental that takes just enough effort that you simply don't have any cognitive room to ruminate, but not too hard that you give up. The key is allowing the fear to be there, ie the obsession, but not the ruminating, ie the compulsion. The only way this works for me is accepting the fear as true. Yes I will be murdered tonight, this is the end of me. Full stop. The fear surges, and without the reassuring ruminating, it stays. This is what you 'sit' with. Then if (and I really mean when) the ruminating starts, I take a dog training approach, and strictly tell myself not to ruminate, and remind myself that the fear is true. Then back to distraction. And repeat. Eventually the spikes gets less, you start to calm down and then you realise it was all silly. Once calm, it is much easier to work on the cognitive side: 'where did that fear come from?' 'Why do I mind if x?' 'Is that reasonable? Does it make me happy to think that way? Can I change the way I think about that?' Etc. But Its very hard to do that in the throes of a huge spike. I know distraction is supposed to be bad but I guess for me it was my 'medication' that helped me work on the cognitive side of things.
  2. In real life I bet they wouldn't have even registered the touching of the tea towel with the unwashed part of the hand though. That's the difference. In the real world, people without OCD go around not washing their hands, not rushing for medical tests every time they brush up against a sharp thing, not driving back over the route they took home to check if they ran anyone over, not watching gay porn just to see if they get turned on, etc etc etc. 99% of the time nothing bad happens. In the other 1% of the time, where something bad happens, it probably isn't the end of the world.
  3. I think so. If you hadn't have done any googling/ruminating/reassurance seeking after you were triggered then I'm sure this fear would have passed and been filed away under ridiculous by now. It's not nice when a new fear strikes and feels completely real. But you need to ignore the alarm, no matter how real or plausible it feels to you, and this will soon pass.
  4. You are obviously extremely anxious at the moment. Why don't you try to trust what your therapist is advising for now. You have beeen diagnosed with OCD so try to go along with the treatment for OCD. Trust that your therapist has listened and understood what you have told them. Also trust that we have read and understood what you have told us. Try to take the burden off yourself for now by following the advice you have been given. Give it some time. Look after yourself. Get some sleep and some exercise and distract yourself with activities. Give yourself a bit of TLC.
  5. The horrible thing about OCD is that you will never 'know' that it is until you start to treat it as OCD and implement the advice. You have to take what we call a 'leap of faith'. One day you will look back and see things differently. I would trust your therapist, try to fully throw yourself into following what they advise, and see how you get on.
  6. Hi OCDsufferer, nobody is angry with you, we know that you're feeling bad right now. Have you tried to implement any of the advice that you have been given yet?
  7. The specific dilemma posed by OCDsufferer as I read it was that they understood a compulsion as something that was done to reduce anxiety, whereas in this case, what was the potential compulsion (checking to see if they were really going to say the word), was in fact causing an increase in anxiety. I explained how this could be the case. I doubt that there is any one single 'problem' that if it were fixed is some kind of magic bullet that fixes the whole disorder. OCD is complex and multi-faceted. One of my worst episodes centred around an obsession about having made a mistake at work. At the time that I was at my worst with it, in my head I believed that mistake = fraud = prison. If you asked me before or after the actual episode whether I believed that making a mistake at work was fraud and would result in a person going to prison I would have said don't be ridiculous. Of course there was a root to the fear - perfectionism, not liking getting in trouble etc., which needed addressing. But I needed to tackle the fear first because it was completely skewing my entire belief system. There is no point only addressing the obsessions any more than there is no point only addressing the compulsions. So I agree that OCDsufferer needs to address whatever underlying beliefs are causing this extreme response to saying bad word, but it's not the only thing they need to address. Getting a full understanding of how to tackle the problem from all sides is needed. I am honestly baffled why on the one hand a key piece of advice that is given out is to identify your compulsions, yet when a person asks what their compulsions are we are told we shouldn't answer.
  8. OCDsufferer also asked what their compulsions were, which is the part of the question that was answered. There is a difference between saying 'it's all OCD' and pointing out (for the first time as far as I can see) which part of the cycle is a compulsion, which is what was done by 'people' here.
  9. I agree with Bodger. The first thought is your obsession. Then you start ruminating and checking, both compulsions.
  10. It looks like a compulsion to me. But it raises your anxiety because you are checking and by doing so you run the risk of finding out that your fear is true. Examples would be the person who fears they have hiv and goes for a test. Going for the test is a compulsion because the person is doing it in the hope that they don't have hiv and this will make the anxiety go away. But going for the test is anxiety provoking because it may turn out that the person finds out the fear is true. I feel for you because I know how awful the anxiety can be. But unfortunately you need to do some hard work to make this anxiety reduce for good. This would involve tackling some difficult issues that you say you don't want to address - for example your extreme idea of the consequences of saying a bad word. All this ruminating about the exact specifics of what you did or didn't do and why aren't helping you.
  11. Exercise - burn off some of that cortisol. I always find exercise in nature/the outdoors especially good for a boost in mood.
  12. You're also responsible for making decisions about which therapeutic approach you will take. You can read all the books, speak to a million world reknowned therapists, but at some point the responsibility falls to you to take a decision and get on and try it. Is it really the end of the world if you try a technique and it doesn't work? If it doesn't work for you, try a different way. Take a risk and have a go.
  13. I haven't read the book and can't comment on it, but it seems to me that you are responsible for attaching the meaning to your feelings. You have to allow yourself to let go of that meaning - you can decide to believe that physically arousal is not always associated with your real preferences.
  14. Also it depends what you mean by 'practicing therapy'. Do you mean seeing a therapist, or doing exercises? If so then yes it sounds like the problem is still there. But to me, 'therapy' involved learning how to think in a healthy way. If your natural instinct your whole life is to, say, avoid fearful thoughts, then even after formal 'therapy' ends, you may need to remind yourself every now and then to face your fears. I would call that part of personal growth, which everyone should be doing their whole lives. I personally wouldn't get hung up on definitions of 'recovered'. If you still feel your life is under a cloud of OCD then I would say keep on working, because you can get to a stage where you forget what that was like. And like Snowbear says, it's about how you respond to thoughts/situations/emotions that counts - are you going to spiral into an anxiety cycle if you go on holiday and have a sudden thought that you might have left the door unlocked? Or can you get on with your holiday? No human will ever be at a stage where thoughts don't pop into their head. But you should be aiming to be able to be responding to each thought without a whole lot of effort and anxiety.
  15. Well I still have an obsessive personality, I just know how to not indulge the 'bad' obsessions. I would say that the vulnerability will always be there, and because I always got triggered by a million different things it's not like I have overcome one big fear and that's the end of it. I wouldn't be 100% certain that I will never get another episode again, if circumstances came together (life stress, new surprise fear catching me out). But I'm in a good position now and I have learnt the tools to deal with things if they were to flare up again so I'm hopeful that I wouldn't let it get so crazy out of control again.
  16. Here is my timeline: Since childhood had definite tendencies toward overthinking plus anxiety but didn't recognise it as seeds of OCD. Early twenties started to have mild checking tendencies, also thinking about certaIn anxiety provoking issues got quite distorted. 15 years ago - pregnant with first child, first major OCD episode. Terrible checking, constant 24 hour per day racing looping thoughts, sky high anxiety. First thought this is OCD. The following 10 years - not constant OCD but several major episodes, one that lasted a good couple of years. 5 years ago - very stressful time at work, OCD flaring again. Found this forum. Started learning about how to get well. Started to try to care less about the things that were triggering my anxiety. Managing ok to start challenging thinking that was triggering my OCD. OCD gets angry at lack of attention and ups it's game. Still unable to commit to not doing my compulsions as found it too scary to sit with anxiety and the awful thoughts. But doing ok with not getting triggered by more minor things. 4 years ago - OCD goes on MASSIVE offensive. Makes up worst fear ever that I could no way say 'oh well' to. Utterly terrifying. Still reading the forum and knew I had to resist my compulsions but far too scared to do that. Feel very jealous seeing people on the forum get better before my eyes and leave whilst I'm still too scared to stop my compulsions. Things getting really bad, more and more ruminating and avoidance. Terrifying thoughts. Reach my lowest ebb and decide it would actually be better for my fear to be true than to live like this any longer. Commit to stop ALL compulsions. 1 week later felt 80% better. No longer worrying that the man over the road is coming to murder me and my children. Realise it was all a bit silly. Spend the next year working on not doing compulsions when I get triggered. Gets easier and easier after each time. Also keep working on trying to be less bothered about things and changing my old bad cognitive habits. 3 years ago - noticing that I don't worry about my next trigger any more, and whether or not it will spoil a big day like Christmas. Now - still get the odd trigger but find it easy to nip it in the bud. Find it hard to remember the bad old days of having to live around OCD. Still have general anxiety about certain issues but continue to try to work on those, although I can be a bit complacent. Never did medications and glad I didn't. So I guess it's a slow old recovery timeline, but the actual breaking of the worst of it was surprisingly quick once I had fully committed to stopping compulsions.
  17. Yes you don't have to 'so what' incest. You 'so what' that you felt physical arousal on an occasion that your brain says that you shouldn't have. You don't try to work out whether that means something, what that means.
  18. You have a random (what you are calling intrusive) thought, something weird, or unpalatable, that maybe conflicts with values that are important to you. This triggers your anxiety and you start to overthink the meaning of the thought - or that there IS a meaning to the thought. Why did I think that? It must mean something about me. What does it mean etc etc etc., ever increasing anxiety, ever more thinking/trying to work out why you had the thought and what it must mean about you. You have attached meaning to the having of the thought, when actually, the brain produces a gazillion random odd thoughts. Of course you don't want to be a paedophile, or a murderer, or fall down a well, or catch the plague, or whatever. You don't have to 'so what' your fear, you 'so what' the having of the thought.
  19. It's not the thought that's 'an OCD thing'. It's the response to the thought. Having an OCD response to the thought does not mean the thought is either true or false. However, the OCD response is likely to exaggerate/distort the consequences/meaning of the thought. It's comforting and reassuring to think that if the thought is OCD then it isn't true. Because you fear the exaggerated and distorted consequences/meaning of the thought. However if you can focus your energies on trying to work on your exaggerated and distorted thinking, you will probably see more progress than focusing all your energies on trying to work out if something is true or false.
  20. The feelings are convincing and the anxiety is horrible. You will feel bad when you resist your compulsions, but once the anxiety starts to die down you will feel better again, and every time you resist you will reinforce that the alarm bells that are ringing in your head do eventually run out of batteries (so long as you stop charging them by ruminating/going back and checking etc.). Once you have experienced this a few times it gets a lot easier to ignore the alarm, even though it always feels real.
  21. I think this is a really important thread. One of the goals of therapy I think should be learning that you can cope when things go wrong, rather than simply 'stop your compulsions and learn that actually nothing bad will happen'. Whenever I fill up my car with petrol I always check excessively that I have my purse with me, before I put any petrol in. Without fail, I check and check my pocket that my purse is there. One time - and I mean literally one time - I didn't check, I filled up, went to get my purse, and realised I had left it at home and had no means to pay. It was all fine though, and although I was mortified, there is a procedure (form to fill in etc.) as it turns out that these things do happen and it's not the end of the world. I do always think it's funny though that the one time I didn't check was the one time I'd left my purse at home. Stopping compulsions is no guarantee that bad things will never happen. But doing compulsions is no guarantee that bad things won't happen either, and in fact being mentally tormented with the constant fear and worry of OCD is pretty bad in itself. Might as well live with risk like everyone else does and deal with problems as they arise.
  22. I'm pretty sure that can't be right - people with OCD may have a higher risk of suicide (as is consistent with people with other mental health disorders), than those without, but as OCD is one of the most common mental health disorders I'm pretty sure it would be massive news if the most likely cause of death in all people with OCD was suicide. Can you link to the source?
  23. Hi OCD plumber. I'm not a plumber or electrician but certainly my OCD got triggered at work. Mine was checking data. It's not so much the nature of your job I don't think, but the theme of your OCD. Sounds like you fear making mistakes, so will check obsessively to try to prevent any mistakes happening. Have you done anything therapy wise? If you haven't, it would probably involved both exposure - or desensitising yourself to the anxiety you feel when you think 'what if', and also the cognitive side, so working on why you are so worried about making mistakes - training yourself to realise that you would cope if you did make a mistake, mistakes are normal etc. I'm so much better at it now - I do get slightly uncomfortable if I have a sudden thought that there may be a mistake in something I've done but mostly I accept that yes, it would feel bad for a bit if i made a mistake, but that's normal, I might even get in trouble, and people might be annoyed at me for a while, but actually everyone just gets over it and gets on with things. I've even now made a couple of howlers and had to fess up and I didn't have a nervous breakdown like I always used to think I would! It takes lots of work but you can get better!
  24. I find enforcing a 'cooling-off' period is very effective. So trigger strikes, anxiety sky-rockets, you lose all ability to see reason and you start compulsing away.... When this happens, I tell myself that I will not engage in any ruminatung even though 'whatever' feels completely 100% real, until the next day. By the next day, if I haven't done any ruminating, I can always see things clearly. I had one the other day and got triggered just before I embarked on a one hour drive. That driving hour is my real nemesis when it comes to ruminating - I find it incredibly difficult to not do it. I was so annoyed because I knew every second I spent ruminating in the car was embedding the fear. By the end of the journey I had convinced myself that the fear was highly likely to come true, I had made dozens of plans as to what to say and do if it did come true etc. Luckily I managed to reign it in as soon as I got home and got it snuffed out. True enough, the next morning, even though the fear is no more or less likely to come true, it felt really unimportant and a bit ridiculous.
  25. I had multiple themes and fears. In the end what helped the most was a general letting go of trying to prevent any bad things from ever happening and therefore never having to experience a negative emotion. I had a very happy childhood with few upsets or adversity and ironically that probably didn't help toughen me up for the real world! Letting go of the need to control everyone and everything in order that I should never feel pain was a huge step. Negative emotions are part of being human, and learning to cope with those feelings is actually a lot less hassle and more straightforward than trying to never feel them in the first place. You could start with some desensitisation exercises - like next time you feel hyperresponsible for something, don't try to make that ok and feel better by trying to ruminating away the guilt - feel the fears and negative feelings, explore how they feel to you.
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