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Mmmmch

Bulletin Board User
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  • OCD Status
    Living with OCD

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    Male
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    United Kingdom

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  1. Hi Caitlin sorry to hear of your struggles. I can’t really comment specifically on your GPS decision to suggest 60mg. I work in the medical field. My understanding is the usual upper dose is 40 mg and theoretically above this dose the extra 20 mg is likely to increase the risk of side effects without necessarily increasing the benefit. GPS will sometimes go outside of exact guidelines on a pragmatic basis if they feel it is genuinely in the interests of the patient eg in your case perhaps the GP surmises that 60 mg helped you in the past etc. All this is complicated by the difficulty in knowing exactly what is helping or making things worse in any individual situation. Medication is only one possible line of treatment and psychological support, CBT, ERP also have a role. It’s also well known that stress worsens symptoms and like you I found working from home very difficult. Fewer contacts and different experiences to balance my life increased my tendency to rumination etc. Not sure if that helps but I wish you well in your recovery
  2. Hi I have OCD and depression as I guess many people have. When my mood dips and I slide into depression my thoughts centre around ‘here we go again’. I think about previous episodes of low mood. I also become preoccupied by thinking about certain people, either say on TV or people I know who seem to have lives untroubled by mental illness (I know I’m making assumptions here). I think about the seeming injustice and struggle I’ve had and continue to have with mental illness (again I appreciate others have much worse lives than me). These thoughts go around and around in my head. I guess all this is rumination and compulsive thinking and I should somehow let it all float by but it’s hard, very hard. The low mode itself may also be an obsession and somehow the rumination may be perpetuating it. Any advice?
  3. That’s so helpful malina, thanks. I agree that exposure to these fears is problematic. It’s top of my hierarchy so I need some exposure to it as avoidance perpetuates OCD. Exposure is meant to cause anxiety of course and eventually habituation occurs. I have done a detailed script of the different potential forms of torture/physical pain I could face in the afterlife (if there is one etc..). I actually don’t seem to get a lot of anxiety when I’m reading the script even when I dwell on the suffering. I think when I add the question ‘could I cope’ this is probably a compulsion-trying to figure it out, so I think I need to stop that. I finish my script with: ‘this is definitely going to happen’, ‘maybe it will happen’, ‘maybe not’. I also completely agree with your point about my ability to live with uncertainty in this world. The hardest part in this is letting go of trying to figure it out, and just getting on with life. Michael Greenberg uses the analogy of trying to hold onto a basketball when we need to let it drop. Thanks again, so helpful. Mmmmch
  4. I have ruminations about dying and going to ‘hell’ ie being subject to all the different types of suffering people can experience in this world but for eternity. And I’m convinced I would not cope with it based on my experience of suffering physical pain in my life. i practice ERP by imagining e.g torture but I’m not sure if I then move to imagining about what the pain would be like and trying to convince myself I could cope. I suspect this is simply compulsive thinking. But if I don’t think about the pain and suffering deeply and by investigate it in my mind and how I might cope with it I worry that I am not properly exposing myself to my fears and therefore ERP is unlikely to work. Any advice?
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