Jump to content

snowbear

Moderator
  • Posts

    8,480
  • Joined

Everything posted by snowbear

  1. CBT isn't really a matter of acceptance. It's about challenging your current thinking and looking at valid alternatives. For example, if you often think 'I'm a bad person' then the CBT would be about asking yourself why you believe that, challenging the belief, and ask you to consider the possibility that you aren't that bad after all. You might look at evidence that you're actually a good person. You'd be asked to listen to how you talk to yourself and challenge it when you put yourself down or say nasty things about yourself. Simply accepting something without thinking it through isn't going to teach you to think differently.
  2. Because it's a normal biological function. You can stop it when you're awake by consciously intervening and mentally killing the arousal, but you don't have that ability to intervene when you're asleep. Which is why the content of dreams doesn't reflect 'what I want', indeed it often reflects 'what I least want/ find disgusting/ would never do in reality.' These are interpretations - a function of the conscious mind. How we interpret something is a matter of free choice. You could as easily choose to interpret the rush to ejaculate as 'I wanted to get it over and done with quickly so I could get back to my normal, wakeful self' and 'It's because I hate the thought of anybody having sex with their family members that my subconscious mind tried it out in my dreams. The fact it disgusts me when I recall the dream is all the proof I need that I'm not that kind of a sicko.' Two ways of interpreting the same experience. There are hundreds more ways you might interpret it, but you've chosen the one that fits best with your current (OCD) thinking. So choose a different interpretation! Kick the OCD thinking into touch and try out different ways of thinking about your experiences until you find one that fits with 'the kind of person I truly am.' It's that simple. Choosing may feel impossible, but that's just habit - you're so used to opting straight for whatever fits with your OCD you've forgotten that it is a choice.
  3. If I had a pound for every time I've felt like this I'd be extremely rich. You must learn to dig deep, find your 'Sisu' , your second wind. Sisu is a Finnish word and deeply embedded in the culture of Finland. They must survive intensely cold, severe winters. Hard enough in the modern world with our warm clothes and insulated homes, but imagine getting through such difficult times in historical days when the only thing you had to rely on was yourself, your grit and determination. Hence the word 'Sisu' was born. We are all a lot more tough and resilient than we give ourselves credit for. That feeling of 'can't fight any more' is normal. Fine - listen to it for a moment. It's your mind and body saying 'I need a battery recharge.' So pamper yourself, take a break. Tell OCD ' I'm on OCD holiday, can't think about that worry just now' and refuse to get drawn in. (Which is actually what you're aiming to do 24/7 eventually, so it's good CBT!) Then dig deep, regroup and come back fighting. But remember to put your renewed energy into fighting against OCD, not into 'Finding answers or getting rid of uncertainty/ anxiety.' Think of it like a closed door. You get to choose which side of the door to push against: - the side that keeps it shut, sapping your energy as you push harder and harder to appease your OCD OR - the side that swings the door open and sets you free. OCD recovery is a marathon, not a sprint. Unless you're a world class Olympic athlete there will be periods within a marathon where you jog along, catching your breath, easing some energy back into your exhausted body. It's called pacing yourself. So practise the skill of pacing yourself - perriods where you slow down a bit, recharge your batteries, find your Sisu and come back fighting.
  4. Congratulations on moving out! It's great to hear you've not allowed OCD to get in the way of living your life. What you're describing is normal even for people without OCD. Anything new, whether exciting or terrifying or both, will always bring up doubts and unsettled feelings. Expect to feel like this many times through your life as you take on new challenges and reach new milestones (everybody does!) Then you'll settle in and be fine until the next challenge comes along. It's just a matter of learning to respond to that turbulence in a non-OCD way. When the going gets tough, focus on the nice bits like choosing stuff for your new home and decorating it how you want and so on. Exactly! So there's no decision to make - you get offered the flat you go for it. Practise saying 'Yes!' to the universe. Grab opportunities whenever and wherever they present themselves and don't let OCD get in the way.
  5. Good way of putting it. I agree with deValetin's post in general, but think this part needs a warning attached. When you're thinking obsessively, paying 'reasonable' attention can easily become an obsessive focus on what you're doing. That can leave you open to doubts that maybe you weren't focused 'enough' at the time. They then assume that 'not paying enough attention' was the cause of the unsettled feeling, blank memory and doubts. But our brains aren't designed to remember every moment of life exactly or to be permanently focused on the moment. Not being able to remember many of the ordinary moments of your day is completely normal. Your brain is designed to do most routine activities on autopilot without thinking about it at all. This enables us to be thinking about more important stuff while still carrying out everyday tasks. If something out of the ordinary happens your attention is immediately drawn to it - the autopilot temporarily switches off to allow you to switch focus from whatever you were thinking about to whatever the everyday task is so you can fix it. And that system works! When the unusual event is the bathroom flooding or the toast burning you need to focus on that and fix it, not be thinking about next year's holiday. People who don't trust their memory focus on the feeling there is a 'missing memory' instead of recognising that they were going along perfectly smoothly and safely on autopilot and that's why there's no detailed memory. The brain's equivalent of the black box recorder wasn't switched on. In OCD the 'unusual event' is an intrusive thought, which immediately draws your attention to the 'missing' moment in exactly the same way a disaster like a flood or burning toast would have done. Except all that's happened is a thought , the action was all going along perfectly ok. The worrying and checking that follows is the person with OCD trying to work out what 'disaster' switched off their autopliot and gave them that feeling of discomfort. Finding nothing recorded in their memory banks they invent or imagine a 'disaster' to fill the blank - typically assuming it must have been whatever it is that they least want to happen. (Catastrophic thinking, assuming the worst case scenario.) Recovery is about realising that the fact you can't remember is your proof that your autopilot was functioning happily, no disaster switched it off, there's nothing to fret over. Not being able to remember = nothing worth remembering. So don't interpret 'nothing to remember' as 'OMG, the worst must have happened!' Then get on with your day, knowing that should something real actually happen some day, your autopilot will alert you in plenty of time to deal with it. There's absolutely no need to try and stay focused on every detail of your routine day. And absolutely nothing to 'fix' when an intrusive thought temporarily switches off your autopilot system and leaves you feeling uncertain. Recognise it as a false alarm and get back onto autopilot as quickly as possible (get on with your day as if the intrusive thought never happened.)
  6. Eric, you have until midnight to post this nonsense. Come the new year - for your own good - we're going to have to remove these kinds of ruminative, repetitive posts. You're just going over old ground, ignoring all the advice you've been given and going round in circles.
  7. Treat it as a learning experience. Yeah, got it wrong that time, didn't need to do it, now I know better, will do better next time - then let it go.
  8. Exactly what I would have said myself.
  9. It's so typical of OCD I didn't realise you were asking if it might not be! Shrug off the thoughts and images as meaningless 'mind fluff'. They only have the power to make you anxious if you buy into them and react as if they mean something. Allow them to pass through your mind without reacting and then they are just normal, random thoughts, and harmless.
  10. No. OCD is absolutely NOT a devil witrh its own mind. People sometimes talk about it as if it was because it can feel like there's a demon or bully living in your head, but it's just you doing some peculiar thinking. Having OCD means you have a thinking disorder. If you eat dodgy chicken you get a tummy disorder and vomit until you've got rid of the bugs in your gut. If you think about things obsessively and do compulsivve behaviours then for as long as your thinking remains disordered you'll have OCD. OCD is a condition, not an entity. 'It' isn't showing you images or making suggestions - that's just you, thinking about things in a way that makes you anxious. Like imagining ghosts hiding in the cupboard or monsters under the bed had the power to scare you as a kid. But this is good news1 Remember how you overcame those feelings of fear and uncertainty as a kid? You learned to say, 'I don't believe in ghosts' and the ghosts disappeared. You learned that there are no monsters under the bed - it was just your imagination, so you stop behaving as if they're going to grab your ankles unless you jump out of bed and run. Getting over OCD is the same. You recognise that the thoughts have no power (they're just thoughts, even when they're scary ones) and you learn to stop behaving as if they were real monsters (stop doing compulsions.) If you're riddled with anxiety 30 hours after the panic attack, most likely you've spent a lot of that time ruminating - going over it in your mind, thinking about it like a puzzle you're trying to solve. This obsessive thinking feeds the anxiety and keeps it going. Ruminating is the biggest compulsive behaviour, but there are others. For example, you might be trying to neutralise the scary thoughts or deny them and push them away. Trick is simply to shrug them off. ('I don't believe the rubbish my brain is suggesting to me. I'm going to act as if the thoughts weren't there and get on with my normal day.)
  11. I bought some mini sausage rolls and cheese and onion rolls. And I've got a box of Turkish Delight cubes in icing sugar as a treat for xmas day.
  12. Very common, this idea of being 'let off a hook'. Utter nonsense, of course. The only hook is the OCD fear of being punished (or for some people, the fear of escaping punishment.) The universe doesn't punish us. It has no sense of good and bad, no concept of right and wrong. These are human ideas. You are the only person standing in judgement here. You deserve happiness and freedom, but you're holding yourself back from achieving it. Most common reason is the crazy belief that punishing yourself and witholding happiness is somehow 'good' or 'moral' or 'right'. A belief that comes from parents saying (or implying) 'I'm punishing you for your own good.' What they meant was 'I'm punishing you because it's easier than sitting down and talking about it and teaching you how to deal with your enotions.' Which was in turn most likely because they were never shown how to deal with their own emotions. And so it goes on - generation after generation. Already you're teaching your daughter (by observing you) that good people (like mummy) for some unknown reason 'deserve punishment'. A confusing message for a child. Which later develops into 'I know (or feel) that I'm a good person so I must deserve punishment too ' And the whole cycle of 'can't be let off the hook' thinking continues for another generation. So, one way to escape the cycle is to become your own parent. Give to yourself the proper parenting you didn't receive. Set out on a mission to teach yourself how to deal with difficult emotions. Just think of the benefits - far from being let off some crazy hook, you'll be able to teach your daughter how to cope with emotions and life and difficulties in a healthy, self-healing way instead of through self-punishment and misery. Right, let's start there. Feelings are not facts. This feeling that you have to know you're good enough before acting as if you are - that's putting the cart in front of the horse. You have to trust that you're already good enough in order to learn how it feels to feel that you are good enough! So, time to put on our big girl knickers and take a chance on trusting yourself. Let the 'knowing' come afterwards. (The proof is in the pudding as the saying goes.) Changing your thinking starts with being willing to try out new ideas. Think playful, experimental. Be child-like again. Be curious rather than afraid. As you say - OCD thinking is circular. It has you believing that the way things are is the way things have to be and that changing the way things 'are' is morally wrong. Catch 22 - damned if you do and damned if you don't (change). So start by chucking out the judgemental thinking (right/wrong, good /bad) and the black and white thinking (everything is one or the other with no room for grey areas) There are lots of other ways of thinking - open-minded (see what happens, be an observer without trying to control anything) non-demanding (no 'should' or 'ought' or 'must' sentences) curiousity (explore, try things on for size, don't reject anything until you've tried it) and so on... These alternative ways of thinking (ways of approaching life) have freedom and joy written into them. Unlike the OCD, catastrophic, black and white, judgemental and blame thinking styles which are restrictive by nature and leave a trail of misery in their wake. How to think is up to us. It's a choice. A choice we are always free to make. The universe isn't standing on guard like an angry parent saying 'This misery is for your own good.' So choose today as day 1 of learning how to think differently.
  13. Oh but you are strong enough. The beauty of the things I've listed above is that they are the building blocks you need when you are crushed and broken and feel beyond repair. Each of them is very gentle in approach. Start with self-acceptance. 'I am good enough as I am.' 'Even broken, crushed and helpless, I am good enough as I am. I can build on it from here.' What is it about the idea of thinking differently that scares you? Can you put it into words? (Not for me, but for yourself. I have a pretty good idea already what it might be.)
  14. Suggesting OCD can't be stopped is the same as saying 'I am only able to think of the colour green and refuse to contemplate thinking of the colour blue.' OCD is a thinking disorder. It is overcome by choosing to change the way you think and behave. There are many reasons - typically subconscious - why a person chooses to continue thinking in an OCD way rather than change. If standard CBT hasn't worked for you then it's worth spending a little time asking yourself why that is and looking at the reasons you have for and against changing your thinking (and/ or behaviour.) Mindfulness is one of those terms that's been hijacked by the trendy bandwagon folk. Properly taught and used in it's correct form it is an excellent adjunct to CBT and a useful approach to overcoming OCD. Whether the site you mentioned is any good or not I can't say. You'll need to learn about mindfulness and make that decision for yourself. Coming back to your original question ; hypnotherapy is NOT a treatment for OCD. How could it be? It doesn't change the way you think. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a useful adjunct to CBT (really it's just one aspect of a comprehensive CBT package.) If you struggle with self-acceptance then it's a helpful route to explore. But if you want to overcome your OCD completely then it will always come back to choosing to change how you think and behave. Which is best learned through applying yourself to the CBT.
  15. By regular therapy, do you mean CBT? Why do you think it's not had much effect as yet?
  16. Hypnotherapy doesn't work for OCD. Hypnotherapy is about relaxation, so it may temporarily reduce anxiety. However OCD is not an anxiety disorder, it's a thinking disorder. Anxiety is merely a symptom of the disordered thinking. OCD therapy is about learning to change how you think and choosing to change your behaviour.
  17. Sorry to hear you're stressed at the moment, Malina. In situations like these it's best to let go of the things you don't control, and put your energy into dealing with the things you do control. So - you don't have control over: -the deadline -how this other person copes/ deals with things -anything that's been said or done in the past You can control: -do your own work, trust that other people will do theirs. If you think they need help - and its appropriate to do so - offer to help -apologise to family and smooth things over -looking after your health - go to bed and relax! Even if you don't sleep it's better than staying up ruminating -you do control your thinking (even though it can feel like you don't) So choose not to ruminate, choose not to castastrophise. Recognise that doing those things is a choice, not an inevitable result of stress/OCD. Been there, got the t-shirt! At least you know you're prone to castastrophising. So you have to catch yourself on as soon as it starts and nip it in the bud. Tell yourself, 'There I go again, making mountains out of mole hills! But I'm not going there. I'm just going to breathe. Calm myself down.' Get busy (in the daytime) as distraction from the urge to ruminate. At night, go to bed and have some relaxation and distraction tricks up your sleeve ready to use if your brain starts buzzing. I use mindfulness meditation and making up stories in my head until I'm relaxed enough to fall asleep mid-plot. But whatever works for you. And if you catch yourself thinking/ ruminating/ worrying about anything on the list of stuff you don't control - intervene with a memo-to-self to focus only on the things you do control.
  18. As I've said many times, sadly you will be like this until you change your thinking. Nobody's asking you to accept that you're gay. Just to change the way you think. You seem afraid to even try to change your approach. As if asking you to think differently was some sort of compromise. All it means is like saying yes, 2+2 = 4 but 3+1 = 4 as well And 6-2 = 4 In fact there's lots of ways to end up with the number 4. But you insist on seeing ONLY 2+2 and ignoring all other ways of 'solving the problem'. So little wonder that you're unable to 'solve the problem' of whether you're gay or straight when you go round and round in circles thinking the same way over and over. Anyway, I'll leave it with you. Hopefully your therapist will be able to help you where I have failed. Get you to see that changing your thinking isn't about accepting gayness or compromising who you are, or any of that rubbish you use as reasons not to change. It just means looking at things from a different angle, to gain new insight into what the problem actually is. Good luck
  19. I'd say that wound must run pretty deep. Certainly deep enough to fuel this level of fear. Thing is, as has been explained before, if you keep testing yourself and trying to prove you're not gay what you actually do is keep the unwanted sensations going. You need to go cold turkey with the self-testing - maybe for months, just to let your body get back to neutral. YOU are far more than just your sexuality. That's like saying a christmas dinner is a plateful of sprouts - ignoring the turkey, potatoes, gravy and stuffing that also go to make up the plate! This way of thinking... 'If I'm gay I'm a fraud and the only way to be who I thought I was is to prove I'm not gay' is keeping you stuck. Try, 'I am more than my sexuality. Whether I'm gay or straight doesn't matter because all the other elements that make me who I thought I was will still be intact.' Can you see how even just that tiny shift in thinking could reduce the fear you feel? AFTER you change your thinking, AFTER you change your behaviour, then if you still want to know if you're gay or straight you'll be able to work it out. But where you're at now it's like sitting in a car spinning the wheels - digging yourself ever deeper into the same flawed thinking rut. All I'm saying is switch off the engine for a bit, let the mud settle. Get your THINKING sorted - stop those wheels spinning. THEN this will all look very different and be much easier to solve.
  20. OK. Time for a different approach... Let's say the 'worst' happened and somebody somewhere along the line confirmed that you were gay. Then what? You'd not be any worse off than you are now. You'd not be living any differently. You claim women don't attract you any more, so no problem there. Perhaps you'd finally stop testing yourself with porn all the time - advice you've been given many times but have ignored. Whether gay or straight, you are under no obligation whatsoever to act on your sexual feelings. Don't want to be with a man? Then don't go there. End of. No big deal. Why are you making a big deal of it? Nobody will ever force you to act in a way that goes against what you want. You've avoided answering questions that try to probe deeper into what drives your thinking on this topic. Or maybe you struggle to answer them because you're not aware yourself why this scares you so much. A therapist will be able to help you work it out, and maybe then you can start to challenge your thinking. Setting aside whether you're gay or straight for a moment, if you want this misery and uncertainty to end you need to change your thinking and change your behaviour. That means talking it through with someone so you can challenge the idea that you need evidence and reassurance to feel better (beliefs that keep you stuck in the OCD cycle) And STOP TESTING yourself with porn (a compulsion) Thing is, Eric, in all these years you've not managed to move forward with this by trying to fix it on your own. So talking to the therapist is your best option. Stick with therapy. Give it a chance.
  21. Yes. Take all the judgement out of your thinking. Ditch the whole idea of life being about good versus bad. I am what I am. The universe doesn't pass judgement on me, nor do I pass judgement on it. We co-exist in harmony and acceptance. Good and bad do not control me or define me. There is no law in the universe which says I must be good or do good. My aim is simply to grow in heart and mind. Striving for personal growth makes me worthy of my place in this world, and the universe will never ask more of me than that I try to grow. I belong. I have freedom. I am guided by love. When I am kind to myself, I finally understand the meaning of unconditional love and unconditional forgiveness. And I am in total awe of their power. I am at peace with myself, and within that I can find peace within the universe no matter what happens. I have choices. I choose to think about things in a way that does not distress me or make demands on others. I choose how to respond to the challenges life puts in my path. I choose what to believe. I believe that what I am is enough. That it's ok just to be. The way I think about the world doesn't crush me - it lifts me up and makes me strong. It is a non-judgemental way of thinking.
  22. Yes! Yes! Yes! Perfect! Funnily enough, I often say the exact same words 'So sue me!'
  23. Hi ecomum, Maybe the trick to cioping is NOT to put things you find upsetting down to OCD. Try accepting that you might have caused something bad for real - so what? Nobody's perfect. We all get things wrong from time to time. Trying to be perfect and avoid ever doing anything wrong is feeding your OCD, giving it something to latch onto. By accepting your possible imprefection it makes the uncertainty of not knowing less intense because either way (you were the cause or you weren't) you accept your possible flaws, it's ok. That mindset leaves OCD nowhere to go and nothing to latch onto, so bringing peace. Believing you need to avoid anything bad guarantees peace will forever elude you, because none of us can live a life that perfect. There may also be some truth in that. Having the OCD take up all your time and energy - especially if you know at some level that it's not a 'real' worry - is great distraction from the genuine stuff you ought to be dealing with. Maybe another way to cope would be to tackle the 10 big things instead of putting your energy into the OCD thing, taking them on one at a time. What do you think?
×
×
  • Create New...