Hi all,
First post on the forum, just thought that with the lockdown the waiting queues to get therapy help will be quite long and I know that one of the best ways to get help is to read others stories so I thought I would share what I learnt from doing CBT. First of all I am not a qualified therapist, I am sharing the advice I was given and advice from my own personal experiences, after suffering with OCD twice now.
This help is for Renumeration OCD (Where you keep worrying and overthinking about a thought/image)
> Thoughts are random, you cannot stop thinking about a thought, you need to learn to control your thinking as thoughts will randomly pop into your head and you need to choose to let them go
> Whatever has happened in your past or whatever you think may happen in the future that is causing your anxiety, most of the time will never happen, you are just worrying about the possibility of something happening more than whether it has actually happened. You need to accept that you cant change the past and you must accept whatever has happened in the past, present or what may happen in the future.
> All you can do is let the thought come and go, whether what you are worrying about has happened or it hasn't happened you mentally worrying about it isn't going to change anything physical that will happen, as a result there is no need to worry or overthink about it as this may be something embarrassing, but you will only let the embarrassment affect you if you keep worrying about it, if you let the thought come and go then you are not letting the fear of embarrassment make you worry or overthink. What I like to think is that a lot of times we worry about the mistakes we've made, but we're only human and humans make mistakes. You may feel that you are the worst person in the world, but think about all of the mass murderers, rapists and kidnappers just to name a few that are out there. The fact you are worrying about what you did means that you are a decent person because you care about your actions. I like to think of life like this, most people are going to be in a coffin by the time they are 80, do you really want to be on your deathbed regretting how much of your life you worried about whatever it is you are worrying about? When there was no reason to worry about it at all
> Repetition is a really big problem with this type of OCD, when you experience anxiety you cant think straight so you repeat yourself to try and make yourself feel better and try to and make sense of it. By repeating something this brings down your anxiety, but then when the thought comes back you have the urge to repeat yourself a certain amount of times, then you will eventually increase the amount of times you repeat yourself. For example when I had an anxious thought, I said to myself that "I don't need to worry or overthink about it, so I will let the thought come and go" however at the time I was just saying this I was not acting on it. So then over time I repeated this sentence/phrase thinking that I was lowering my anxiety but when I was anxious it was hard for me to understand what the sentence meant because my mind wasn't working properly as it was hard to make sense of it which is what happens if you are anxious, so then I kept repeating it, it started with saying it twice, and then went from 4 to 6 to 8.
Nowadays I say the sentence/phrase to myself once only and I don't just say it I act on it. As if I just say it then the thought actually isn't going in my mind I'm just saying a sentence. Letting the thought come and go means not thinking into the thought at all, this means that when you get the thought you should do/think about something else and if you are going to say to yourself that you can let the thought come and go you shouldn't just say it you should act on it. Believe me you can talk to yourself, worry/overthink about it, for half an hour, or an hour but ultimately it doesn't matter how long you think about it, the outcome will always be to let the thought come and go. When we constantly worry about something that makes it seem real and as if it is going to happen but that is our mind playing tricks on us.
There is a book called Breaking free from OCD that helped me, also I would advise that if you are getting therapy a lot of OCD suffers have complex OCD and you need to be honest with your therapist to get the correct help. The most important thing is having the confidence in yourself to know that you can get better, a lot of people develop negative thinking patterns without even realizing it so if you do suffer there's nothing that you've done wrong you've just developed a negative thinking pattern and its time to turn the negative thinking pattern into a positive one.
I may be about on the forum to offer my advice on any posts any other users make in the future, I will only post if I think I can help. Any questions ask below, if you haven't got any questions well then you know what you need to do to break free from OCD. Everyone in their life has a point where they are stuck in regret about the past, the most important thing is to find a way to move on, which is to let the thought come and go.
/Letsgetbettertogether
Hi all, First post on the forum, just thought that with the lockdown the waiting queues to get therapy help will be quite long and I know that one of the best ways to get help is to read others stories so I thought I would share what I learnt from doing CBT. First of all I am not a qualified therapist, I am sharing the advice I was given and advice from my own personal experiences, after suffering with OCD twice now. This help is for Renumeration OCD (Where you keep worrying and overthinking about a thought/image) > Thoughts are random, you cannot stop thinking about a thought, you need to learn to control your thinking as thoughts will randomly pop into your head and you need to choose to let them go > Whatever has happened in your past or whatever you think may happen in the future that is causing your anxiety, most of the time will never happen, you are just worrying about the possibility of something happening more than whether it has actually happened. You need to accept that you cant change the past and you must accept whatever has happened in the past, present or what may happen in the future. > All you can do is let the thought come and go, whether what you are worrying about has happened or it hasn't happened you mentally worrying about it isn't going to change anything physical that will happen, as a result there is no need to worry or overthink about it as this may be something embarrassing, but you will only let the embarrassment affect you if you keep worrying about it, if you let the thought come and go then you are not letting the fear of embarrassment make you worry or overthink. What I like to think is that a lot of times we worry about the mistakes we've made, but we're only human and humans make mistakes. You may feel that you are the worst person in the world, but think about all of the mass murderers, rapists and kidnappers just to name a few that are out there. The fact you are worrying about what you did means that you are a decent person because you care about your actions. I like to think of life like this, most people are going to be in a coffin by the time they are 80, do you really want to be on your deathbed regretting how much of your life you worried about whatever it is you are worrying about? When there was no reason to worry about it at all > Repetition is a really big problem with this type of OCD, when you experience anxiety you cant think straight so you repeat yourself to try and make yourself feel better and try to and make sense of it. By repeating something this brings down your anxiety, but then when the thought comes back you have the urge to repeat yourself a certain amount of times, then you will eventually increase the amount of times you repeat yourself. For example when I had an anxious thought, I said to myself that "I don't need to worry or overthink about it, so I will let the thought come and go" however at the time I was just saying this I was not acting on it. So then over time I repeated this sentence/phrase thinking that I was lowering my anxiety but when I was anxious it was hard for me to understand what the sentence meant because my mind wasn't working properly as it was hard to make sense of it which is what happens if you are anxious, so then I kept repeating it, it started with saying it twice, and then went from 4 to 6 to 8. Nowadays I say the sentence/phrase to myself once only and I don't just say it I act on it. As if I just say it then the thought actually isn't going in my mind I'm just saying a sentence. Letting the thought come and go means not thinking into the thought at all, this means that when you get the thought you should do/think about something else and if you are going to say to yourself that you can let the thought come and go you shouldn't just say it you should act on it. Believe me you can talk to yourself, worry/overthink about it, for half an hour, or an hour but ultimately it doesn't matter how long you think about it, the outcome will always be to let the thought come and go. When we constantly worry about something that makes it seem real and as if it is going to happen but that is our mind playing tricks on us. There is a book called Breaking free from OCD that helped me, also I would advise that if you are getting therapy a lot of OCD suffers have complex OCD and you need to be honest with your therapist to get the correct help. The most important thing is having the confidence in yourself to know that you can get better, a lot of people develop negative thinking patterns without even realizing it so if you do suffer there's nothing that you've done wrong you've just developed a negative thinking pattern and its time to turn the negative thinking pattern into a positive one. I may be about on the forum to offer my advice on any posts any other users make in the future, I will only post if I think I can help. Any questions ask below, if you haven't got any questions well then you know what you need to do to break free from OCD. Everyone in their life has a point where they are stuck in regret about the past, the most important thing is to find a way to move on, which is to let the thought come and go. /Letsgetbettertogether