Hi there
I’ve been struggling with what I think is OCD for many years. The specific obsession changes frequently (except a few that have lasted months/years), but I think the overall theme is the same, it’s the idea that I have possibly made a terrible mistake in something I’ve said or done, with possibly catastrophic consequences. I seem to think I can’t trust myself to be good enough, both in terms of being capable and being morally good, so I judge my ongoing behaviour constantly and review past behaviour to discover what might have been bad, how bad, and how I might be able to fix it now. When I have tried to fix it, it usually goes weird because I’m confessing something to someone who didn’t think it was an issue and now thinks I’m behaving weirdly, or else I’ve just stirred up something that really would have been better left alone, so then I have something new to worry about.
I think rather than tackling specific issues I need a way to deal with them all in a particular way that I can hopefully remember to use with every issue as it crops up. I’ve read a few OCD books and learned a huge amount from this forum but I’m not too good yet at the practice. I think I need to willingly give up the fantasy that I can go through life behaving “perfectly”. Although that looks stupid written down, I think that’s what I’ve been trying to do forever. I need to never let anyone down or get myself or anyone else into trouble by any of my actions or disappoint anyone etc. But I can’t live like this. It’s making me very sad and ill and I hate it. I think I need to get the idea that life is full of mistakes and my role in life is not to avoid or fix them all, but just keep moving on doing a reasonably good job and not keep looking back. It makes me anxious just to write that down though because I’m so keen to know that I’ve been good enough.
So I think I need to do the cognitive stuff to get me to the point of willingly giving up the perfectionism. I do see that I’m basically a good, nice person, and that when I do make mistakes I don’t necessarily need a whole load of blame for them because many things would have contributed that were not all entirely down to me, and that anyway, it is normal to make some mistakes, and I’m allowed to forgive myself for them like I’d forgive anyone else. I’ve made a start by reminding myself of these things when I wake up, whereas previously I’d have launched straight into a deep examination of my current obsession. So I’m not initiating ruminations myself as much as I was a few months ago. And when new issues hit, I seem to be slightly better at not letting them get completely out of hand … although that might be because I’m so consumed by my one major current issue that I don’t have time to create new ones.
I do still ruminate though, and beat myself up, and I can see that this needs to stop, this is no way to live, and nobody would think I should be doing this. The things that catch me out are the many things that crop up in a day that remind me of whatever I’m currently worried about. My current issue has been with me for months and has become a monster that I seem to be able to trigger with hundreds of everyday words or concepts that just crop up in life, on the radio, in conversation or whatever. Then the ruminations start and are away before I see them, and I’m back in the hole and digging it deeper. This happens a number of times every day, often with panic symptoms of racing heart, feeling sick, whooshing sound in ears etc.
I guess I need to notice the rush of anxiety when it hits, and let that be a signal to remind myself of what’s happening, then let the feelings happen and not fight them, and try to have trust in the more reasonable ideas that I tell myself in the morning, and trust that the anxiety will go away and that by doing this enough times my life should get better. Does that sound right? I am really miserable and out of energy with all of this but then again I feel so awful that it’s giving me some motivation to change, because I’m so very fed up of it all. I’ve had some CBT but it didn’t make a huge impact. I think I really just need to do a lot of work myself and it will take a lot longer than the few weeks I could pay for in therapy.
Thanks for listening.
