NotRock

Hello @MO6, and welcome to the forum, I hope you find good support and good advice here I am sorry to hear that you are living so difficult experience nowadays. Can you tell us how was your experience with medication and therapy? How long did it last? Was it recent or many years ago? Regarding intrusive thoughts I recommend you this video: I really love this channel, it has many good videos but definitely this is one of the best.

Good to read such positive vibes, thank you, I wish you the best

Distraction is not a good strategy vs OCD in my opinion. Usually distration (like shopping) is enjoyable. Your brain wanna feel as good as possible, if it knows that everytime it gives you worries you end at the shopping mall... what it would do each time it wants dopamine? exactly: give you worries, because it knows that you end giving it distractions and enjoyment. Your are feeding a pattern that goes against your interests. So what to do? Well... stand the anxiety doing nothing special, allow you to feel bad, OCD are fed when you cannot stand the anxiety and you try alternatives mechanisms (like avoidance, distractions or checkings) that at the end are not good. Checking allows you to feel an imaginary control over your world and that makes you feel better when doing. But it has tolerance, and you need more and more checking for feeling the same "calm" (exhaustion). What I learned is that, if you are focused in your mind processes, its very difficult to rumminate vs your will. Intrusive thoughts cannot be controlled, but rumination is a voluntary act. Try to stand the thoughts without reacting to them, instead think about what is the most important thing you can do for improving your life or others in that moment and do that, sometimes it will be resting, other it would be cleaning, others it will be reading, or calling a friend. I hope you get better soon anything you need, we are here

That is called Ironic process ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironic_process_theory ) The more you try to avoid thinking in something, the more likely you are of thinking it. The number of times you think in something is not important and, even if it would, it is out of your control. The important thing in my opinion is how much they affect you. As long as they affect you, you will have them in your mind from time to time. But you can learn to see them as simple worries with not more reality, and they will disappear if they see they cannot touch you.

Hello @RedPanda249 and welcome to the forums I think its quite common for mothers to have worries and intrusive thoughts about their kids safety. So you are not alone, and I am sure other people of this forum in similar situations could help you with more advice. With the introduction you made, it seems to me that you want to have everything under control (impossible target ), indeed I read now the exact sentence: This that you said is good and bad at the same time, I will explain myself: There are 3 main bad behaviours in OCD: you are already doing one (at least): checking and evaluating compulsively if everything is ok. The other bad strategy is avoidance, that is what you desire: not having more "triggers". But, at the end, not having triggers is like be in a jail with no sunlight, avoidance makes our world more and more smaller. So if you have triggers that means you are alive, living your life and working with your OCD. The third bad habit is coping (distract yourself when you feel bad). All these 3 behaviours make the brain feel a little bit better, and the brain recognices this pattern: for feeling a bit better-> the pre-requirement is doing compulsions-> and for that you need all that worries your brain is giving you, for, at the end, feel a bit better. We all know the global balance is negative, that is why OCD is not good for us, but it works more or less like this. You are identifying you are suffering OCD and you are waiting for help, you are making right decisions , I cant offer you feel better now, just say that in my opinion you are in the right path. In the meanwhile you can try to read and inform more about OCD (if you feel ok doing it) or sharing your thoughs in this forum. I really wish you are better soon.

I see it reasonable, although I think I would not do the hoover part, since I use carpet products one time per year, so low exposure. It depends in the use of each person I guess. Wearing feet gloves ¿? during one week for example is excessive in my humble opinion. I think the most important part in all of this is the mental time you spend in this and the stress it generates. Quoting again myself:

@howard I dont know exactly the type of cleaner she used, but I am quite sure 99% of people will only ventilate the room. And just, in the unluckly scenario of some sign of alegic skin reaction, they will think in doing something else. Imagine I clean my floor with water plus bleach, I am sure that if I read the datasheet it says no contact with skin etc etc (and a little of bleanch in my skin does nothing, in my case). So what should I do? not walking over the floor for days? Excessive in my opinion. I think the best we can do is trying to act as an average people. Maybe for my skin is 1% better take all that precautions, but in my case, that is maybe 10 or 20% worse for my brain.

Ruminating will not help your body, neither will help you in any other aspect. In my opinion, one logic approach is giving yourself compassion for the bad feelings that can come (mainly worries) without enter in ruminations. Take care of yourself during these days until everything clarifies. Best of luck

For this kind of doubts I usually think: What would do 99 people out of 100? I think they would not worry about it and they would not wash their hands more than normal. So in my opinion: yes, its OCD, but at least you are aware of it and you can overcome it

The behaviour you mentioned, as far as I understood, is only intrusive unwanted thoughts you have. Nothing real out of your head. Intrusive thoughts are quite common in OCD and usually they only show us our most terrific fears. What is the reason? Well, your overworried brain is trying to generate all the possible problematic scenarios beforehand, but you did it so often than your brain is more and more used to do it, and each time it goes more and more to extreme unrealistic scenarios. This video maybe is useful for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laeYq51SYA0 You are checking that everything is correct. But that (checking) is a mental compulsion that is not helping you. Check better this pattern: Intrusive thought --> anxiety --> checking mentally --> relief ---> dopamine Again, your brain loves dopamine, so if it wants more, what are you teaching him to do? -to give you more intrusive thoughts. You have to break the pattern. Easy to say, difficult to do. How it was? You feel now better?

Hi Izzy, and welcome to the forums, First of all, I hope other members here also write their points of view, because I am not english native and I didnt understand some words in the text, so maybe I just only understood 80%. In any case, I think you are doing several mistakes with you OCD: 1. Seeking for reassurance: you are asking directly to us if you are or not what you fear to be. 2. Discuss against your OCD writing "reasons" that justify that you are a good person with good moral. You will never been 100% sure doing that, because is impossible being 100% sure about anything for us. 3. Punish yourself for intrusive thoughs. You already may know that OCD attack us in what is more important for us. That's why some new mothers have thoughs of throwing babies to the window, although that is the last thing they want to do. Our brains have been over educated in looking for possible problems, and they generate lots of thoughts/scenarios to be sure that nothing bad happens. One "normal" person can just laugh about the most strange scenarios and forget them, but we normally are over aware and worried about any possible sign of problem. So summarizing: you are not chosing the thoughs you have, and they mean nothing about you except that they are showing your fears. All these "coping" mechanisms are giving you only temporary axiety relief. But they are not good strategies for long term. Were you in therapy before? You said you have been with OCD for ten years, so maybe its time to look for help, and if you did therapy, maybe its time to refresh some key points.

Hi there! overthinking can make you doubt about everything. Let my try to put an example: think about a song you love. ######### Now let me ask like OCD would do: WHAT YOU REALLY LIKE ABOUT THAT SONG!??! - is it the lyrics? think it well!! you must be very sure of your answer, that words are so special to you?? - is it the pace? its clear that you like it, but is it the key point? maybe you should repeat ten times the pace in your head in order to evaluate it properly - is it the voice, but what in the voice you like??? ######## As you can see, overthinking can quit fun and enjoy of almost everything, and can make you doubt all everthing. So dont evaluate yourself, just try to be in the present as much as you can.

Hi George, From my point of view, the only way to manage this is learning to deal with the anxiety without doing compulsions. Our brain (brain of OCD people) is like a broken alarm with artifical inteligence implemented . If each time it alerts you for no reason you give it importance and "mental time"you are reassuring your broken alarm that the danger is real (this is a new reassurance you have to be careful in OCD). The good news is that the same alarm can learn that those things and not dangerous and that are only random possibilities that the fear creates in your brain, how does it learn that? not giving it "mental time". You will feel bad (anxious) at the beginning, that will not change, this is not magic, but the thing is not feedback the broken alarm. I hope it makes sense to you.

Could be autosuggestion, let me ask you something: are you sure you have not lice? check your hair for itching, it itchs, right? thats autosuggestion Apart from that, I think you are focusing too much in the dog scenario, I am not doctor, but I would see any relation with your symptom very unlikely. The thing to have under control is the blood in the urine, but you already checked that with a doctor so i will try to relax. Dying is not so easy, kids touch and eat many "contaminated" things in the street every day and they are ok.

I think you have to catch OCD in the very beggining of rummination, if you discover yourself rumminating 30 mins laters, then its increidible hard to stop, at least for me. So mindfullness can give you some help, being focused in what are you thinking and cutting the useless thoughts as soon as possible. During the most part of my life, I was a fan of the "hard way". I mean "firm hand" therapies or advices, but with OCD I changed my mind, that type of thinking (which at the end is black or white) is part of the problem (dichotomic thinking) and with OCD we need to be flexible, so instead of that, I would rather suggest some self-compassion, there are a lot of books about the topic but my favourite is the Kristin Neff's book. Be patient, unfortunately, this is a long way, but you can do it. Now you are with a negative perspective, but, as you aforementioned you are doing progress, keep going, practice makes the master