PinkPrincess1981

I understand, thanks for explaining ?

I've just downloaded it ?

This is something I've always wondered.... I've learnt a lot through this forum and reading the advice given to people and I know that the most important thing with intrusive thoughts is not to engage with them. I've also learned that ERP is the best therapy for OCD but isn't exposing yourself to your triggers/intrusive thoughts going against what you are meant to do with intrusive thoughts and won't that cause you to go down the rabbit hole again?

Thanks for the recommendation, will check it out ?

Thank you for this ??

One of my obsessions used to be that my hair was going to fall out. I don't know where this came from as my hair is healthy but I would spend hours studying it in the mirror, counting how many hairs came out when washing my hair, googling different things. My obsession got so bad I actually got my shoulder length hair cut into an extremely short pixie cut because I was convinced it was going to fall out and I figured it would be less noticeable if it was really short. That was 4 years ago and it's grown back now and I no longer suffer from this obsession but plenty others have taken its place instead! What I have realised over the years is that the actual topic of the obsession is irrelevant - the physical sensations that accompany them are the same for me whether I'm worrying about my hair falling out or I'm worrying that I might have killed someone and blocked it from my memory.

I'm glad things are improving for you. I just want to get back to enjoying life instead of feeling like there's a big cloud following me around tainting everything. One thing I struggle with is the thought "what if it's not OCD?" Sometimes I think what if I'm getting these thoughts because I have a guilty conscience and it's not OCD? Ugh, wouldn't it be amazing if you could just switch your thoughts off? Even for a day.

Thank you both for your replies. It's frustrating because I know what I need to do but it's just being able to take that leap of faith and trust that this is just OCD and I'm not some secret psychopath. When I am really bad I can spend up to 7 hours a day going over and over the thought trying to make sense of it, looking for evidence, reassuring myself, it takes over my life. My sleep suffers, my work suffers, I can't enjoy anything - it's a miserable existence. IrishOCD have you been able to overcome this? Do the thoughts still bother you or are you able to dismiss them?

I'm really struggling with a stuck thought at the minute. All my obsessions revolve around being a bad person and causing harm to people either deliberately or inadvertently. My past obsessions have included: "what if I passed a horrible illness into my friends baby and the baby gets seriously ill or dies?" "What if I committed a crime and blocked it from my memory?" "What if I accidentally ran someone over and didn't notice?" Usually eventually I am able to reason my way out of the thought by accepting that it's unlikely that I would have no memory of committing a crime and that I'm a good person so I would be against my nature to do something bad. Once I manage to overcome a thought through logic my mind just throws up another one for me to obsess over and this latest one has me stuck. The latest one is: "what if I committed a crime when I was drunk?" When I was a teenager and in my early 20's (I'm 39 now) I would go out partying every weekend and quite often drink to excess and sometimes there would be gaps in my memory of nights where I had been drinking. This never bothered me at the time, in fact my friends and I used to laugh about it at the time. Well now my mind is saying: "what if on one of those nights you can't remember everything that happened you did something terrible or hurt someone?" I can't reason the thought away with the usual response which is "it's unlikely I would do something bad and have no memory" as if I had been drinking heavily it's feasible that I might not remember. I also can't use "It would go against my nature to do something bad" as when I've been drinking I have done things out of character and things I usually wouldn't do sober due to alcohol lowering my inhibitions so my mind is telling me you can't say you know for sure you wouldn't act out of character when you are drunk so now the thought has me stuck. I know that I should leave the thought alone and just be ok with uncertainty but how can you be at peace with not knowing if you did something terrible or not? Does anyone who has been through similar obsessions have any advice? Will I ever get to a place where my mind doesn't throw up these thoughts or is it something I'm going to have to just learn to deal with? I no longer drink and haven't done for years because of the way it affects my mental health.

I pay for a prepayment certificate, just over £10 a month for unlimited prescriptions.

Prescriptions are free in Scotland. I only know because my family live there ?

I've been watching a lot of YouTube videos by sufferers and ex-sufferers which I find helpful. Chrissie Hodges has some really good insights. I just find it hard taking that initial leap of faith - my brain keeps saying "well what if this is the one time it's not OCD and it is true?" and I find it hard to let go.

How do you get to that place? Is it just not giving the thoughts your attention and not ruminating?

Yeah it does. I know what you mean, sometimes it's about having perspective. If your worst fear came true would it ruin your life? Probably not but you always perceive it will which keeps the fear and worry going. I saw a post on Instagram that really resonated with me, it said "99% of the harm is caused in your head by you and your thoughts, 1% of the harm is caused by reality, what actually happens and the outcome. Most of the time the problem isn't the problem. The way you think about the problem is". It's so true.

I've just realised I said my OCD symptoms only started within the last year but my wedding was 4 years ago. I guess they have been creeping up on me for longer than I thought. ?

With most of my obsessions I am eventually able to reason my way out of them, ie by accepting that it's unlikely that I would do something bad and have no memory of it but then my mind throws up scenarios where it could happen and the 2 I get stuck on are the thought that I don't remember because I was drunk at the time or I don't remember because it happened when I was a kid and I don't remember because it was so long ago. I try and tell myself that even if I did something terrible while drunk it's still unlikely that I would have zero memory of it. I mean your memory can be patchy when you're drunk but is it likely that you would have no inkling at all of having done this terrible thing the next day when you woke up? When I got married, the night before the wedding my sister in law (brothers wife) and I were sharing a room and I don't usually drink much these days but I'd had 3 glasses of wine and I would say I was "tipsy". Anyway, this is the reason why I don't drink anymore. When I woke up the next day (my wedding day) my first thought was "gosh I was a bit tipsy last night, I hope I didn't say or do anything I shouldn't have". So then I started trying to remember what we had been taking about and a thought popped into my head that I told my sister in law my mum didn't like her. I felt such a jolt of panic - could I really have done that? The more I thought about it the more I could imagine it and the more I convinced myself it was true. My mum and sister in law get on but they have had their moments over the years. This thought plagued me for months. I was thinking about it on my wedding day, I was thinking about it on honeymoon. I became convinced that my sister in law was going to tell my brother what I said and he was going to tell my mum and I was going to cause a big family rift and everyone was going to hate me. I became obsessed, I would spend hours every day going over and over it in my head, it was constantly there in the back of my mind. When I spoke to my sister in law on the phone, if she was a bit quiet I would think: "this is it, she's getting ready to tell everyone". This went on for around 6 months before I finally got to a place where I could see that this hadn't actually happened but what a waste of time! I went through 6 months of mental torture for nothing. This is what I find so frustrating. Everytime it happens I tell myself I'm not going to let it happen again but then when it does I can't see the thought as just an intrusive thought - at the time it feels real and this is what I struggle with. I guess this is where the leap of faith come in. I have to act as if I know the thought isn't real even though it feels like it is.

My intrusive thoughts are all about things I "might have" done in the past. I am terrified at the thought I might have caused harm to someone in the past either indirectly or deliberately. When I was a teenager and in my early 20's like a lot of people I used to go out partying every weekend and would quite often drink to excess and I get irrational thoughts that maybe one time when I was drunk I might have done something completely out of character and committed a crime that I don't remember. It sounds crazy but it genuinely feels like this could have happened and the more I try to examine my memories for such an occasion the worse I feel. I feel like I have to be 100% sure this didn't happen before I can move on with my life as I could never live with myself if I had done something. How can you be 100% certain though? You can't remember something that didn't happen. Then I think why am I getting these thoughts if it's not true? Maybe it's my subconscious telling me I did do this. It's exhausting and terrifying.

Caramoole can I ask, if you start resisting the compulsion to ruminate will you eventually get to a place where you will see that the thoughts are nonsense? I can't bear the thought of always wondering if they might be true.

You might find this one helpful, I did

I have always suffered from anxiety and have been diagnosed with GAD but it's only the past year that I've developed symptoms of OCD. I thought I was going crazy at first until I started to read about different types of OCD. I didn't have much knowledge of OCD and like a lot of people I associated it with checking OCD and contamination OCD. I had no idea about all the different ways it can manifest. Have you heard of Ali Greymond and Mark Freeman? They are both ex-sufferers who now help others and I find their videos of YouTube really helpful.

I know what you mean. I am always consumed by fear of something terrible happening but when things happen in real life, like you say, I deal with them just fine. I get really frustrated because like you I have a good life and I should be happy. I've got an amazing husband, a good job, a lovely family. What upsets me is that I know when I'm old and at the end of my life I'm going to be so annoyed that I wasted so much of my life worrying about things that didn't mean anything instead of just enjoying life. I also tell myself if I was a bad person I wouldn't worry about being a bad person, I just wouldn't care. Isn't it crazy that your mind can make you feel guilty for something that in all likelihood you haven't done?

This is what my obsessive thoughts focus on too. I am probably the gentlest most law abiding person ever yet I have obsessive thoughts about having committed a crime in the past that I've blocked out and I have an obsessive fear about being arrested. Like I say, I'm the most law abiding person I know, I don't even like breaking the speed limit. I guess it's true that OCD attacks your values and what's most important to you. Just before xmas last year I went to visit a work friend who had just had a baby. I'd been off work ill for a couple of days 2 weeks before, there were a lot of bugs going round work at the time. I'd been there for a couple of hours and we'd had a nice catch up and I was holding the baby and my friend mentioned that one of her friends hadn't seen the baby yet as she was ill. A throwaway comment but that's all it took for me to get an irrational thought - "I was ill 2 weeks ago, what if I'm still contagious and I've passed something to the baby?". That was it then, I started obsessing about having passed something to the baby and convinced myself the baby was either going to be seriously ill or die because of my actions. It was horrific, I literally felt like I wanted to kill myself. I couldn't sleep, I could barely function, it completely ruined what should have been a lovely xmas with my family who I only get to see a couple of times a year. I spent hours googling incubation periods of viruses trying to reassure myself that I couldn't have passed anything on but the relief I got from that didn't last long. Obviously nothing happened to the baby and looking back now I can see how irrational my thinking was but at the time it felt like a genuine possibility. I also have a fear that I've committed a crime in the past and I've blocked it out. I can spend hours searching my memory for "evidence" which is dumb as you can't remember something that didn't happen. The rational part of me knows that it's pretty unlikely you would commit a crime and have no memory of it but the voice in my head is always there saying "yeah but what if?" I hate what OCD has taken from me, I used to be a confident and happy person and I used to like myself. I wasn't arrogant but I always felt like I was generally a good person but I don't feel like that anymore, I constantly feel shame and guilt and for what? Something that probably didn't happen! It's crazy. I'm trying really hard to get my life back. I've been reading loads of self help books and trying to follow their advice. I read "Break Free From OCD" recently and found that really helpful. I know the worst thing you can do is give the thoughts attention and start ruminating so I try and dismiss the thoughts when they come which is easier said than done!

I can definitely relate to this. I can have an obsession that has been consuming all my waking hours for months then I get a different one and the previous doesn't seem that important. It seems that my mind can only deal with one obsession at a time! You need to catch yourself before you start ruminating and just dismiss the thought as OCD and nothing more and don't analyse the thought but it's very hard, most of the time I've fallen into the trap of paying the thought attention and then your mind thinks it's important. I wish I had some better advice for you but this is something I really struggle with too.

So I've managed to not do any ruminating today. The thought is there and I can feel the anxiety but I'm trying to just sit with it and not engage with the thought. It's so hard though - my brain is screaming at me that I need to go over the memory so I can make sure once and for all that I'm not a bad person so I can stop feeling guilty. I know this is a trap though as ruminating will not make things any clearer. I was just wondering how others with an obsession about a real life event deal with it? I keep telling myself that I know it's OCD distorting things and if what happened was so bad I would have known about it before now. It would not have taken me 25 years to realise. But then my brain is like: "but what if you've only just realised it was a terrible thing?". Ugh. In your experience if you start obsessing about an event from the past which has never bothered you before, is it safe to say this is OCD and not something I need to pay attention to? I've just realised this is asking for reassurance so I might not get any replies but I would appreciate anyones input if they have dealt with a similar obsession.

I believe that if you are deemed fit to work you would be expected to do any job that was available to you. I'm not sure how they assess fitness to work with regards to mental illnesses such as OCD. Perhaps someone with a bit more insight on this will be able to advise.