PolarBear

Look, doing nothing means doing nothing, except to get on with your day. It means don't react to the thoughts. No freaking out. No rumination. No Googling. No contacting doctors or scientists. No compulsions. No just sitting there. Get up and get on with your life, even if you don't feel like it. You've spent a year doing it OCD'S way. You relentlessly did compulsions. How did that work for you? It didn't! You spent likely hundreds of hours doing compulsions and for what? Well, thankfully you're starting to figure that out. Now you are willing to try a new way. That is a fantastic first step. I will warn you that OCD will get mad when you stop paying attention to it. It will fire all sorts of doom and gloom at you. Your first instinct will be to hit those compulsions. Don't. Resist. Do something else. It will be hard but the more you live and stop giving the thoughts attention, the less they will bother you. You get stronger, OCD gets weaker. It's really hard, at first. But it's no harder than the hell you've been through this past year.

The reason it seems worse is because you are experiencing it NOW. Whatever obsession you have right now always seems worse than last week's. What you do is nothing. Leave it alone. Get on with your day.

What do you think you should do?

See, Fred, I don't know where my hand is from one minute to the next either. What you just described as a memory problem (not knowing where your hand was) to me is not a memory problem. No one would remember. It's way down on rhe bottom of the list of things for your brain to remember. You THINK it's a problem because part of your mind is telling you that you did something inappropriate and you can't remember where your hand exactly was. I'm not convinced this is a memory problem as much as it is just OCD.

Most welcome.

Fred, are you actually sure you have memory problems? That may seem like the dumbest question but hear me out. There is a type of OCD where intrusive thoughts are mistaken as memories. The thoughts can be vague, like I did something bad, to more specific, like I murdered someone at the bar last night. Sufferers of this spend inordinate amounts of time trying to remember specifics and trying to prove or disprove the thoughts. This can result in a sufferer believing their memory is poor because they have a strong, real feeling thought that something happened but they can't remember it all. The reason they can't remember is because the event never actually happened. Just a thought.

I concur. We've heard it all. You can't phase us. And posting on the open forum opens up your problem to many people and their knowledge and experiences.

BONUS! I know I can be a pain sometimes, not dealing with your current concern and dragging your attention to what's underlying the problem, but I know it works. Proud of you!

I feel bad for you that you are so csught up in your own mind that you can't see you're living in your own version of the movie Groundhog Day.

Then you will be basically stuck forever. No amount of ruminating will bring you the answer you seek. You'll just go round and tound in your head, like being on a merry-go-round.

Ma, are you going to post an exhaustive list every time you experience an obsession? You've done this a number if times. Is this OCD? Is this still OCD? Can OCD di this? It's all about uncertainty and your need for reassurance. Try to ride these things out.

You beat it the same way you beat any other type of OCD. Do nothing about the thoughts. No reaction. Don't get drawn into ruminating over questions. Leave it alone.

Why are you posting this HERE? For what purpose? This is not Dentist.com Besides which, you haven't asked a question. So ask yourself, why did I post (twice) about a sensitive tooth on an OCD forum? I'm not being obtuse. This is a pattern, dare I say compulsion, with you, where you jump to the worst conclusion, then post about it here like the forum is a diary. You rarely ask for help. You rarely ask us a question. You just throw your current worry out... and I'd like you to think about why.

Cora, this is just more of the same. You've got to start recognizing that. Something happens that makes you feel bad about yourself. You come here and confess. You want our reassurance. Round and endlessly round you go.

And you are posting this here because...