PolarBear

Therapy teaches you how to fix yourself.

Robin, think of this. What good has a year and a half of worrying and ruminating done?

Hello, Alex. Welcome. For someone who is new to the OCD world and undiagnosed, uou have a lot of insight into what's going on with you. That's a good thing. We don't know what really causes OCD but for some there seems to be a correlation between a past trauma and current obsessions. At first glance, it seems your hyper responsibility is in line with being abused when you were younger. I know you don't have a therapist but at any time did you seek help dealing with that childhood trauma? I'm wondering if that would be a good place for you to start.

Or, it's all OCD and you're fixated on this feeling thing as sure as someone can get fixated on something else. There are many sufferers who get intrusive feelings. We've had scores of people here who get fixated on the feeling they get that they 'like' their thoughts, whatever those thoughts are. Very common. It's just OCD sucking you back into endless rumination and compulsions.

I don't know your system over there. You have to be your oen advocate. Send emails. Make phone calls. Talk to the folks at OCDUK. Don't just sit there and wait.

Robin, this is just another thread on the same subject. You need professional help. You are consumed by this. It is causing real problems in your life. How you have been handling it clearly is not working.

Back to the basics. An obsession is an intrusive (thought, image, feeling, urge, impulse or sensation) or combination thereof that causes distress. Everyone knows about intrusive thoughts but sufferers get intrusive feelings too. That's what is happening to you. You are experiencing an intrusive feeling. Clearly it is causing you distress. No doubt you are doing compulsions as a result.

Gotcha. I thought you were referring to OCD.

Oh it most certainly can happen. Replacing one compulsion with another does not help a sufferer, except in extreme cases where the previous compulsion was causing physical harm (such as washing hands so hard they bleed.)

Heh, not bad. Except it's not a scary creature. It's your own mind.

Hypnosis is not recommended for OCD. Nowhere is it medically suggested for OCD. In 8 years on this forum, I can't ever recall a single person who said hypnosis helped their OCD.

What OB1 said. Exactly that.

That won't fix the problem. A sufferer could end up checking their phone repeatedly to ensure the door is locked.

Agreed, snowbear.

Are you getting any help for your OCD? Your posts are consistently about perceived harm coming to you. New obsessions often several times a week. If you don't learn a new way to deal with these obsessions, you are bound to keep running around in circles.

Perhaps you could expand your knowledge base to include the fact that reassurance seeking is a well known and detrimental compulsion when done excessively. Just a thought.

Not to the experienced users/mods on this forum.

I shall henceforth use the term repetitive reassurance. And it's the repetitive nature of reassurance I'm talking about. Not one-off situations.

Oh, yeah. If you get down to the nitty gritty, a lot of what sufferers ask can be classified as reassurance. On the other hand, sufferers, especially newbies, need to learn.

It's a fact. Reassurance seeking is a compulsion, as sure as washing your hands repeatedly or ruminating. Compulsions are the fuel that power the OCD engine. They only offer temporary relief, at best. They do cause more obsessions, anxiety and doubt. Ergo, reassurance seeking is bad.

Cora, go back and read my post, several posts ago. This all comes from a core belief where you think you are a terrible person. Hundreds of obsessions that told you that you abused your brother. Then a dog. Then some other kid. Now cheating on your boyfriend. THEY'RE ALL THE SAME!!!! And you keep reacting exactly the same way. You wonder why this keeps happening. It is because you react the same way. You come here and confess. You tell us what a vile, disgusting perdon you are. You challenge us to agree. When we don't, you explain it again, expecting us to agree. We never do. Not once, in all these years, have we agreed you are disgusting or that you did anything wrong. I know why you do this. Your mind, by way of obsessions, is constantly telling you that you are a bad person. If we agree with that, at least it confirms what your mind has been screaming at you for years. We aren't going to agree because we know better. We know that all those thoughts you are assaulted with, including this current one, are all OCD lies. Every one of them. You never abused your brother or any other child. You never abused a dog. And you aren't now cheating on your boyfriend. All you need to do to start getting past this is to change the way you react to the thoughts. Call their bluff. Don't just believe them because that's what you did yesterday. Change.

Of course that's what you do, Cora. See, you know what to do. You just have to do it. OCD keeps tripping you up, making you think today is something new. But it never is.

It is incredibly common to doubt you have OCD. One of the reasons is that many sufferers believe OCD is not bad enough to explain them. Fits your situation, thinking you must be a narcissist or psychopath. OCD is plenty bad. It was rated as one of the most debilitating disorders there is. It screws up lives, makes having relationships difficult, is isolating and frustrating interferes with social situations, work and just plain living. Another reason sufferers doubt having OCD, especially newbies, is that they can have an unrealistic and wrong opinion of what OCD is. They think it means one thing that has no bearing on the way they are. Stick around and you'll find you fit right in.

Same old, same old. All of your obsessions have a common root; that you've done something that makes you feel bad about yourself. It's common with every single obsession you've had. And you react every time in a pedictable way. You ruminate constantly over it. Then you come here, confess, tell us what a rotten person you are and ask us if we agree. Same old, same old. You think this is new, different. But it's not. The exact thoughts might vary, but how you react is precisely the same. Given that and based on all the advice you've received, what do you think you should do?

Ah, but you didn't have to. This material has been covered previously. Many people have told you how to handle obsessions. You've raised many specific examples and we've always told you to do the same thing. This time, like all the other times, doubt crept in. OCD led you to believe that this time is different. So you asked. In reality, it's the same old **** that OCD generates. You still deal with it the same old way. Part of recovery is learning to stand on your own two feet. Don't worry, we'll be here if you fall. But you should be making some of your own decisions, like, this feels different but I'm just going to treat it like any other obsession.