Ram

Ashley, I had registered for this as a Member but will unfortunately not be able to attend. Please withdraw my registration so the slot can be offered to someone else. Thanks - Ram

Not that I can add a whole lot to what these wonderful people {snow + polar} bear have already said, but I just wanted to recall what the Break Free book clearly says - that you WILL feel the anxiety rise the moment you decide not to do a compulsion and you will feel the urge/need to relieve it. If you don't do anything to relieve it by trusting your judgement that you are not "hiding any secrets" from your loved ones, the anxiety should fade. It may fade in hours or it may fade in days. It generally takes longer to fade away when somewhere in the corner of your mind you are arguing with yourself or trying to justify your decision to ignore it! Hope that helps a bit and good luck!

Yup that happens to me for sure. I think it's just that when a real problem occurs I know it's certain - there is 100% probability around it, so my mind is able to deal with it calmly. When I am gripped with an OCD thought that may or may not be true then what obsesses me is the desire to prove it's either true or that it is not true - which of course is rather difficult and often impossible. It's that uncertainty and the desire to get into a zone of certainty either way (100% sure it is a problem or 100% sure there is no problem) which gets me crazy. So I think OCD is a problem not because we cannot deal with stressful situations but more because OCD keeps us in a zone of uncertainty which we find very difficult to accept and live with.

I have been through very similar struggles, both with medical matters as well as non-medical matters, when I consulted an expert. Let's for a moment assume that you were merely being cautious by going to your doctor that one time. So don't fret about going once. Let's look at what's happening now. From what the doctor said, how could you proceed to be "reasonably not be worried"? By recognising that the doctor has a lot more knowledge than you and also knows how things generally work at nail salons. He has a world view, and is also a person with a sense of responsibility. With all of that, he felt there was nothing for you to worry about. That is the overarching statement. If there was a reasonable possibility he felt you should worry about he would have told you without your getting into fine-grained scenario analysis. He is never going to be able to explain exactly why HE was not worried because you and I do not know enough about the medical field. Your picking apart what he said is a case of OCD wanting "certainty" in a way that feels "just right". "Certainty" and "Just Right" are hallmarks of OCD and you will never get them. In fact as the Break Free book says "Certainty is a feeling". So my suggestion is to just absorb the "spirit" of what he said and trash the details. If you can do that with a doctor you trust, that's probably the best way to stop picking apart his statements. Furthermore, that is the reasonable way to accept any uncertainty.

That we are talking of intrusive thoughts is obvious. I too was talking of intrusive thoughts. "Did I lock the front door?" and "Have I contracted H1N1?" are thoughts. Are they intrusive thoughts? A thought is intrusive if it intrudes and causes distress. Sure, both do so they are intrusive thoughts. But to me they cause distress for valid reasons. They are not a figment of my imagination or due to my mind making a mountain out of a molehill.

Yup, that's a great one, thanks! I now recognise that I used this same judgement a few years ago to dismiss silly fears, before I knew the term OCD. I'm glad you revived it for me. On the "smacking of overthinking" bit, hmm....maybe you're right, but I will disagree for now, preferring to opine that I am only "thinking", and that thinking is vastly preferable to [over]simplification . Await more healthy and helpful discussion!

Sarcasm welcome. If your sarcasm of my input actually helps someone, I'd happily consider my post to have served a most useful purpose .

I feel your pain phillev, it's very very difficult when confronted with a situation such as yours. You will definitely struggle to make a choice, but once you decide what's right, your decision will stay with you forever. What is important is that a value system is NOT absolute. Many people are quite comfortable not confessing certain things which is perfectly OK. You did not harm your wife in any way. You feel overpowered by guilt which is about doing something that actually caused no harm. Do not forget that. That comes first. The value system is simply something you decide whether you want to adopt or not. Just as "vegetarianism" is a value system some people adopt and some do not, "belief in God" is another one. Does that help?

Let me sound controversial. Confession is not necessarily a compulsion. When Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi once ate meat as a youngster, which was against his religious beliefs, he could not sleep in peace till he wrote a confession to his father. When I fantasized about another woman after getting married I confessed to my wife and we had a good laugh over it. Sharing "secrets" between us (or rather, not having any) is a part of a value system that my wife and I are intensely proud of. Confessing repeatedly to overcome guilt may be a compulsion but "not having secrets" is a value system that you may or may not choose to subscribe to. You need to make that distinction.

Yes, this is the real issue - the grey areas. Let's take three categories of illness: (a) The symptoms are obvious enough and if they occur, then a visit to the doctor, some treatment and you're done. No long term effects. No motivation in my mind to ruminate about possibilities. Example: diseases you can get from a toilet seat. H1N1. Plenty of others. (b) Symptoms may or may not be obvious but the probability of contracting the disease is considered by the medical community to be low enough to create a list of "people at risk". If you do not fall into that list, to hell with it. No motivation to get obsessed. Example (for me): HIV, cancer. (c) Symptoms are not necessarily obvious and probability of contracting it is not negligible. Example: Hep C? Is that why you see so many people worried about Hep C? What should they do? Just dismiss the thought as OCD? Or study risk factors on Google and learn more about it to see if they fall into the low risk category? Can Googling about an illness automatically be classified as a compulsion? Sure, I may not spend time on Google to proactively learn about all possible diseases, but if I did not do any homework about an illness after reading about it in the paper or news and educating myself about whether it is type (a), (b) or (c) would I not be a careless person? Just yesterday I deliberately decided to read about Hep C knowing I am not OCD about it. Some advisories say that salons who accidentally do not sterlise a used implement can cause it to be transmitted, other sources don't say this. OK, I am still not OCD (wow!) I shared the info with my wife, we're now better informed about what "some reliable sources say". We'll ask our doctor next time whether this is really a practical risk factor. If he says "Pooh" we're done. If he offers advisories we are done. No obsessions. No OCD. However would I have been careless if I merely dismissed the thought of Hep C as an intrusive OCD thought and my Googling as a compulsion? I think I would...I would be happy to stand corrected.

Do normal people really do that if they actually do not remember locking their front door? To be precise, let us understand how each of the following categories of normal (non-OCD) people would react: (a) Normal, careless (b) Normal, cautious (c) Normal, overcautious (but not OCD)

I don't believe, PolarBear, that when you say "let the thought go" it should be taken literally. I think there is a context. Say I read a newspaper report about H1N1. I take care to note the symptoms. My son has similar symptoms. The thought will cross my mind "Could this be H1N1?" I will not let the thought go. I will consult my trusted physician. My trusted physician has examined him and said "this is not H1N1, it's just a harmless viral." After that I will dismiss the thought. I may get an intrusive thought "What if my physician did not examine my son properly?" That is the thought I recognize as trash, and dismiss from my mind immediately. It is important to understand the distinctions between being careless, cautious, overcautious and OCD.

This is a mighty useful guideline and seems a very foundational skill that strikes at the very root of OCD thinking. Very timely for me as I have been re-reading the first few chapters of that great book Breaking Free to understand exactly when I can recognize that basic devil - the intrusive thought. It seems obvious in some cases (e.g. feeling guilty about something 20 years ago that I have scant memory of and which actually did not cause harm to anybody) but I am confused when I try to apply it to certain thoughts that seem very rational. Let me just take the example from the Breaking Free book on page 55: Intrusive Thought: Have I left the front door open? In my case I do not have this specific checking issue but I am taking this deliberately so I can have a rational discussion . Now how would I recognize this as an intrusive thought worthy of dismissal and dismiss it in a few seconds if I actually do not remember for sure if I left the door open?

I was about 16 when I started to worry incessantly about various diseases and imagine I had them. I lost out on lots of things for over a decade because I was thinking about my obsessions daily. Age 27 I got married, my wife helped me out of my worst fears - not because she knew about OCD but because she just constantly pooh-poohed my fears and slowly helped me understand they must be inflated. I continued to live with some mild obsessions till I moved into my new house 3 years ago. I was 47. It is a lovely house with doors, windows and a clay tile and wood roof made entirely of recycled wood. Then I panicked one day when a broken tile fell from a height of 20 feet and started to worry about the wooden framework, the quality of tiles etc. Then looked for other things that could have gone wrong. Soon enough I was finding a dozen things that all shouted at me with "Look, if they have not done this properly then someone can get killed". Those included electrical connections, metal weld joints holding up a gazebo etc. I felt I had to move out of the house of I'd go mad. Then there was an article in the newspaper about OCD, at which point I decided to consult my physician who referred me to a senior psychiatrist. The psychiatrist opined I was a textbook case and referred me to the OCD Clinic at the National Institute of Mental Health where one of the country's renowned experts on OCD sits. I am lucky to be in a country where I do not have to wait days for appointments or shell out a fortune, or need insurance, to get the best medical attention. I walked in, got myself diagnosed in a day as a confirmed mild case of OCD, needing no medication. (Fee: 10 Indian Rupees, no insurance needed). Looked around for a sane and balanced book in the ocean out there and narrowed down on Break Free...That was an eye-opener. This forum was another. I still struggle to make sense of some of my fears but I think I see some light now. The book is being re-read and many things fall into place. I am trying hard to arrive at a framework for understanding when [reactions to] my thoughts are inflated so I can confidently judge for myself that a particular thought can be dismissed. Sometimes I feel I get it, at other times I don't.

I've been struggling to find an answer to his question myself, and so far I have not really succeeded. When I read the advice above (which of course is fantastic advice) I'm left feeling it is relevant when you are engaging in compulsions about the past about which you can do nothing. What if there happens to be a legitimate concern that can potentially affect the future and that you can do something about? What if I perceive a risk in the way an electrical contractor fixed an electrical fault and am able to imagine a specific kind of failure (because I have knowledge about electrical wiring) that may surface a year into the future and cause an electrocution? Then is it not my responsibility to investigate that possibility? Yes, it's a thought that popped up from nowhere so it's an intrusive thought, it's causing me distress, and sure, no one else around me is worrying about this specific possibility, probably because they do not know as much about electrical wiring and the myriad ways in which things can go wrong. But it's not about the past and my mind says there is indeed a point in acting if something can go wrong and if I can imagine specific risk-mitigation steps I can take (e.g. reroute that wire this way instead). So can I say "it must be OCD and I should just ignore it"? This is the kind of situation I get stuck in very often. Some tell me I just need to trust the contractor and not suspect everybody. Perhaps there's a clue. Snowbear recently said "relinquish the desire for control". Another clue. But my mind tells me "Aha - you've thought about a specific failure scenario, you might as well reduce the proability of that if you know how to do it, no matter how improbable others think it is".