hetty

Hi, I do see what you are saying here. In my experience, hypochondria and OCD was very different. With OCD, reassurance that 'nothing's wrong' helps me. With hypochondria, it made me feel like people weren't listening to me. I can really see how people still care about me; I was just referencing what I was feeling when in the very midst of the hypochondria, which was that I felt I wasn't being listened to. I think there are ways of communicatng to a health anxiety sufferer that they're being irrational, whilst also not acting like they're being silly or stupid for being so anxious. I think there's a difference between a response of 'I can see why you're anxious but I do think you're not thinking about this clearly', and a response of 'you're being so silly nothing's wrong'. One is putting the sufferer right whilst also being understanding, the other seems really dismissive. Does that makes sense? I think we both actually agree here that what the sufferer thinks is happening isn't always the same as what's actually happening. My point was more that even though it's not actually happening, you still need to empathize that the sufferer thinks it's happening. I hope I got that across clearly in a way that makes sense since even typing it I can see how it could be confusing. I have (generally) recovered from my health anxiety thank you I actually have been diagnosed as having the possibility of having quite a serious health problem later in my life (heart condition) and am dealing with that okay, albeit with a few issues sometimes where I get quite upset over it. But in general I am coping with it far better than I ever would have done during my health anxiety times. Also managed to get through the pandemic without freaking out so success there I suppose ?

Yes, it's very difficult, isn't it? But usually I can tell when a thought/feeling is OCD and when it's not. You are completely correct that sometimes guilt is right to feel. Like all emotions it has a place! If we didn't feel guilt, we would just keep doing really bad things. It's entirely possible, for example, to commit murder and get away with it without any punishment; but most people don't because they know it would be wrong anyway, and they know it would be wrong because they would feel guilt. Same with sadness...there's depression, which is a mental illness and irrational, and then there's perfectly normal times to feel sadness, like when someone dies. All our emotions have a place, even the scary ones.

I like the way you phrased that Yes, you are right, I get uncomfortable with the phrase 'trust your instincts'. Well, one time my instincts were screaming at me that the perfectly nice waiter in a cafe had poisoned my Fanta because it was a bit more orange than usual. Should I have trusted my instincts? No. Of course if it's a man coming up in a dark alley looking weird and with something shiny in his pocket, yes, trust your instincts and run. But that's rational. Mental illness is not. I honestly didn't realize you can have intrusive feelings. That explains a lot. Thank you.

Yes, I see what you mean. Perhaps 'your feelings are valid' is just a happy-go-lucky way of covering up our worst qualities. Say a racist is angry that they're sat at a restaurant and on the table next to them is a Muslim. The racist doesn't do or say anything, just eats and leaves, but they are angry the Muslim is in the restaurant. Is that feeling valid? Well, of course not. Being angry that someone of a certain race is eating out isn't valid at all. It never will be. Or say an abusive husband is angry his wife is wearing an attractive dress because he's scared it means she's going to flirt with other men. Is being angry your wife is wearing a nice dress valid? Of course not. That's ridiculous. I guess the 'your feelings are valid' shtick helped me through some really tough times but now I'm out the other side I can see its flaws. I agree with you, I think. Thank you for your input. Our emotions are not completely out of our control. Even with mental illness. We can use coping mechanisms to help ourselves feel better.

I have always quite firmly believed in 'your feelings are valid'. I have never taken it to mean 'it's okay to hurt people because you feel bad', but rather that you cannot control your feelings and that how you feel is always valid, but how you act is not always valid or okay. But lately I've been questioning that. When I am in an OCD spiral my OCD tends to attack guilt. I've read that people with OCD have something wrong with their brains that produces an excess of guilt. When I am in an OCD spiral I feel extremely, horrifically guilty over something I've done, even when other people tell me I haven't done anything wrong. I just can't stop feeling guilty. I will always remember one day years back I was discussing this guilt with someone and they said 'how you feel about this is valid'. And that just made me feel so bad...like it was okay that I was feeling guilty? But it was hurting me badly. I don't really know what to think about this and am I suppose poking my feelers out to get other people's opinions.

This was 14 years ago...your memories of it are going to be fuzzy. Maybe it didn't happen the way you fear. I think you're not looking at this rationally because if you we're, you would realize this girl was actually doing wrong to you by still kissing you when you were with someone else. If the roles were reversed and you had done that you would probably be obsessing over it. You have quite a bit of evidence that this girl doesn't hold any grudge against you; she still wanted to be with you, she's never accused you of anything, and she's even reached out to you on I presume friendly terms. Messaging her with the intention of eventually finding out if she thinks you raped her is absolutely a compulsion. Of course it's ok to communicate with her if you genuinely want to be friends with her, but doing so just to get the reassurance your OCD is seeking is just not going to help you. I'm sorry you're going through this. It sounds awful and I hope you feel better soon.

It's difficult to resist compulsions Cora, but you can do it!

I'm sorry to hear this woman hurt you. However it makes me sad to read that people are bullying her and using her psychosis as entertainment. You can't change what this woman did to you but you can control how you react to it. Stop reading her posts. I know it's hard but it will just make you more upset. At worst it would make you a bystander to the bullying and that is not a good thing to be. If she is as psychotic as you say she will need help rather than people using her as a punching bag. I don't know what the lines on the doormat are but testing them isn't helpful for you. I know it's hard but you can't test what the lines are. At the end of the day whatever they may be they aren't hurting you in any way and whatever they are they will dry out and fade eventually. It's okay to accept that you don't know for sure what the liquid lines are, and move on with your day. I do hope you recover from this obsession soon, it sounds like it's causing you a lot of distress.

Hi, I was able to follow everything in your story up until the lady with psychosis, would you mind explaining that a bit more please? I didn't really understand that part. It sounds like this incident with the people at the door really shook you up. It sounds like they may have been teenagers? In that case they very likely are not bad people and likely didn't even know this would upset you so much. Young people do things without thinking sometimes. However that doesn't change the fact that they did do something wrong and made you feel really unsafe. Do you know for a fact they did those things to your door handle, or did you just hear them talking and make that assumption yourself? I think it's okay to have cameras and things for security reasons but you can't let it become a compulsion to check the cameras. Cameras are only there for in the very slim chance something very bad happens. 99% of people with cameras outside their house never have any need to really use them. I hope you recover from this soon.

Yeah, you're right. Lots of social media is toxic but there's just something particularly bad about Twitter. I suppose places like 4chan, Parler, etc, there's kind of a general understanding that those websites are really bad? So lots of people avoid them, and it's just quite a handful of people who actually use them. Whereas Twitter is just kind of a part of life now.

I have seen more and more awful takes on Twitter about OCD. Particularly people admitting to paedophilic/racist/bigoted intrusive thoughts, and everyone piles on going 'Why would you admit to that??', 'nobody needs to know', 'why would you admit that in public?' Because I thought we were supposed to be in the time where mental illness is talked about ? Apparently you can only talk about your severe mental illness if it makes other people comfortable to read about. I'm not upset, I know these people just don't know about OCD, but it does infuriate me because I know full well there will be people with OCD who do internalize these messages and decide never to talk about their thoughts again. It is so angering to me that people preach 'mental health awareness!' but the moment your mental illness gets scary or disturbing you're meant to shut up about it. People are free to find discussions on OCD disturbing or upsetting, of course they are, and they don't have to understand it, because it's confusing and difficult to understand! But you can also just accept you don't understand whatever's going on in this person's head, that they are clearly very ill, and just scroll past. Not grab your online therapist diploma and start telling them how to deal with their severe illness. ?

Yes. I've had obsessions and intrusive thoughts where I've legitimately thought to myself 'I'm being absolutely delusional right now'. All mental illnesses overlap to some degree, and OCD just so happens to overlap somewhat with paranoia/delusions.

Okay...well first of all you need to determine whether he's manipulating you, or whether he legitimately believes he has a serious health problem. I don't doubt your friend has OCD but hypochondria (health anxiety) is classed as a different illness. People with hypochondria legitimately believe they are dying from a health issue. From what you have written I don't think he is lying or manipulating you. I can understand how to you saying 'no there is no danger' is reassuring, but health anxiety is different from OCD. Saying there is no danger feels to somebody with hypochondria like you aren't listening to them, you are dismissing their concerns, or even that you don't care if they die. I've had hypochondria before and it drove me nuts that people didn't listen when I genuinely thought I was dying. It's also possible your friend legitimately has chest pains caused by his rising anxiety. I have heard that panic attacks can feel like heart attacks.

I'm still stuck on this I'm obsessing. And I know that this is OCD but its so difficult. I'm worried people will think I'm transphobic because I defended someone who has said some things I disagree with before. Things are like that online, it's like a 'you're either with us or against us' type thing. I feel bad for what I did and what I said. Logically I know I didn't do anythingw rong but emotionally I feel guilt. I keep obsessing over Did I suicide bait? Was I being a bully? Was I being manipulative? Was I in the wrong? I'm struggling with the urge to not seek reassurance because I know that will make it worse but I also need to get my thoughts and feelings out. I hate the fact that I let people upset me so easily. I hate the fact that I just believe any negative thing someone tells me. I feel so stupid. Especially when they said things like 'people dont just kill themselves at the drop of a hat', 'you're running out of ideas to defend her', I felt so stupid. I feel like I overreacted over everything. Just struggling.

Good luck, throwaway. Racism OCD is such a difficult obsession, because we all want so deeply to be good people. I have no advice because I don't want to feed into your compulsions or give you too much reassurance. But you will get through this, and you can trust what the people on this forum say.

I'm trying to let it go, but it's difficult.

I like to help people. And I could see this all going horribly, dreadfully wrong. People just don't seem to have any understanding of what words they post on the Internet. I wanted to try and stop them from doing this and just...stop. To just stop. I'm trying to cope and tell myself I didn't do anything wrong. Thank you.

Hello everyone. I have OCD. A big problem of mine is obsessing over guilt, and obsessing over if I did something wrong. A year ago a group of users made a 120+ page document of all the reasons they dislike another user. Basic points were: a) this user was rude to them sometimes b) it was a toxic online server c) user said some transphobic things 2 years ago d) user massively overreacts over situations and then Tweets that overreaction For a year now, the people who made this document have been encouraging everyone else to not support her, not interact with her, don't let her come back without repercussions etc. People have been posting on social media horrible things about her. Typing her name into Twitter comes up with lots of things like 'I hate her' 'she's a piece of ****' 'she's a dirtbag' 'don't interact with her' 'if you follow her block me'. Also keeping tabs of other users who still interact with her. They accused her of stealing (from my view she clearly wasn't), and people have been making videos calling her a bad person. She broke job guidelines apparently so they went behind her back to tell her funding board and try to get her money taken away. They've been going into her online servers to report back on what's happening in there, and then making videos laughing at her when she realizes who's doing it. They took a private conversation where she said how upset and paranoid she was that she can't say anything to anybody because it'll be leaked on the Internet to criticize her for; they did just that, leaked it on the Internet, and then claimed this was her guilttripping them and playing the victim card. Now, don't get me wrong, the woman they're targeting doesn't seem like a saint and she has certainly done stuff I disagree with. But she also has the ability to change and move on. It's been going on for a year and escalating. I caught somebody telling this woman's fans to die for supporting her. I was open and honest in saying that this has gone way too far, and that this is dangerous now, and that the words you type on the Internet are not a game and could seriously hurt someone. I said that cyberbullying like this can end in suicide and that if it does, it's on everyone involved for not stopping, and that they need to take accountability for pushing someone to this point. They said I was bullying them. That I was guilttripping them. That I was 'halting accountability'. That this isn't bullying, this is just the consequences of her actions. That I was transphobic for defending her. That I was suicide baiting them. Lots of likes and retweets agreeing with them. That one really hurt and I can't shake the guilt off. I have PTSD from a suicide-related incident and would never want to suicide bait someone. They also said 'she would never kill herself', 'someone who is suicidal doesn't do the stuff she does', 'you're running out of ideas to defend her', and heavily implied she was too happy to ever kill herself. Ever since I have been knee-deep in guilt and obsessing over if I did something wrong. What if I DID suicide bait them? What if I was being abusive to THEM?