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dociw

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  1. Better thanks @NotRock got a bit more clarity on my thoughts now. It's a bit easy now to have faith in the idea these intrusive thoughts are false memories, they just feel so real sometimes which of course is very distressing. I called my local mental health team Monday was lucky to be assessed on Tuesday. Just waiting to hear back from them.
  2. I've had to call in sick to work today, I'm feeling so terrible. It's getting worse and worse.
  3. Thanks for your reply notrock, I appreciate it. I see a private counsellor for issues with my self esteem and have mentioned it to him. This is a private counsellor I pay for but I'm getting to the end of my budget to be able to afford that. When this potentially false memory came up after ruminating on the event for a few weeks I was very very distressed and had to tell him about it, we've discussed my ocd before which he attributes to my lack of self esteem and self worth, which comes from my parents and how they raised me. Knowing a lot of people in my family have OCD makes me think it's hereditary. He made me acknowledge it came up at a very stressful time for me and wanted me to see the relevance of that, but I wonder if stress can bring up repressed memories as much as false memories. He tried to make me see just as I was getting more of a life, leaving the house more and thinking of the future this thing came up to self sabotage me and keep me locked away in the house not wanting to be around people again... Which really I don't. Because I was very distressed he tried to get me to see they were infact false memories but I didn't find that very helpful because it was reassurance so I told him not to. I think he was just desperate to reassure me because I was so distressed. He's a proper accredited counsellor but I don't think he's dealt with an OCD patient before... Or at least it's not something he seems that equipped to do. We're not doing CBT just talking therapy. I've been offered anti depressants/SSRIs before when I've gone to the Dr and explained about periods of anxiety I've had in the past but always declined but I think now I really need them, I've just always been scared of the side effects. I'm reading brain lock too but because it seems more focused on physical compulsions I'm not sure if I'm really getting the most out of it.
  4. I've never been diagnosed with OCD but had CBT twice for what I thought was GAD... I never was given a diagnosis and as all the compulsions were mental and I didn't know enough about OCD at the time I didn't realise I probably had it (Even though I have family history of it). But looking back at all the obsessions I had over the last 20 or so years off and on I can see now how they were all OCD but just obsessions which came with mental Compulsions (pure O if you accept that terminology) My compulsions became physical after losing my dad to cancer and then going into lockdown whilst living with my elderly mother. I developed contamination worries and started (and still do) wash my hands way too much as a compulsion and generally avoid touching anything anyone else has touched. It got to the point I didn't leave the house for months for fear someone was going to give me covid just from walking past them in the street and then I was going to give it to my mum and she would die, there was probably some trauma mixed up in there too from losing my dad quite suddenly. I've made some progress in the contamination OCD and do not feel the need to do the compulsions quite so much. But then came on a thought one day out of nowhere that "I'm not a good person" this was coupled with some thoughts about religion and God. I'm an atheist and never thought like this before. For the first time in my life I saw the appeal of religion and surrounding yourself with people who believed you were a good person. Like someone with OCD I looked through all my memories to find evidence I'm a bad person. This brought on firstly some real event OCD then potentially some false memory OCD. I went through a few events and was able to reassure myself that they were at best embarrassing but didn't make me a bad person. But then I got stuck on one event from 15 years ago I felt uneasy about looking back and I couldn't put my finger on why. My mind had glanced over it several times over the years and didn't pay it any attention I didn't feel the need or desire to explore it. I ruminated about it for weeks till the point I kinda lost track of the part of it which I was meant to feel guilty and shame about, even though I felt so much guilt and Shame. I eventually felt at best I acted a bit like a sh!tty person (probably like a lot of men in their early 20s) but had done nothing illegal but the guilt and Shame was still there. Then about 2 or 3 weeks after ruminating constantly another "memory" came back which felt so real which confirms I did actually do something illegal and very very bad and potentially ruined someone's life. I'm purposely not going to say what because this post is already really long, I feel like it would be seeking reassurance and also I'm still really worried it is real and will have trouble typing it all out. I have since had more "memories" which back up this intrusive thought the more I ruminate about it. I know rumination is not something I should be doing but as this feels so serious I can't help it. I know morally this isn't something I would do now as a man approaching his 40s but I worry about the person I was in my early to mid 20s, I worry about how depressed and therefore potentially reckless I may have been or just simply I wasn't a good person then, didn't care about others or didn't really realise the problem with what I had done at the time, only now do I realise. This is the only way I can think I hadn't really given it any thought for 15 years and I lived my life feeling like I deserved good things during that time because I felt like a good person when now I feel like a terrible person who isn't worthy of anything. The only way that seems to make sense to me is I didn't know what I was doing or I didn't realise at the time what a terrible thing I had done. Anyway, my mum had noticed how down I have been recently and asked me what was wrong. I didn't want to tell her but she kept asking and asking. Asking if it was to do with work, money etc etc. She just wouldn't accept when I didn't want to tell her she just kept asking questions so I told her what it was. There are two contradicting "memories" from this real event, one which puts all the responsibility on me, that I knew what I was doing (this is the most recent one I've had but feels more hazy maybe just because it's recent), and one which takes off some of the responsibility that I didn't fully know what was going on at the time but still means I committed a very shameful serious crime (this was the initial memory which came after a few weeks of ruminating on the event). I told her both. There is a part of me which thinks maybe I'm just remembering a "what if" thought I had at the time but I'm not remembering it as a what if thought anymore, I'm remembering it as if it might have happened, because of so much time passing. The more I ruminate the more I do seem to remember worrying about this at the time but was quickly able to put it out of my head. I remember having obsessive thoughts before and after this event about other things so do know I was showing signs of having ocd around this time. But who knows, I find it very hard to know what's real or not real about this event anymore and of course the more I ruminate the more seems to come up, I just don't know if they're true or false anymore. I didn't want to confess to my mum because I didn't want reassurance, I read about how reassurance just keeps you in the loop. She didn't believe I'm the sort of person who would do the one which puts all the responsibility on me, but of course who really wants to believe that about their son? I agreed it's not something I'd do now, the thought makes me feel so shameful and guilty I obviously know it's seriously wrong now but I don't know if it's something I would have done then and not feel shame or guilt about because I didn't see a problem with it at the time. She said if the one which removes some of the responsibility from me happened it was a mistake, you didn't know what was fully going on and you shouldn't beat yourself up about it, it's in the past and you need to find a way to let it go. Which is all good advise but I can't seem to get over it and let it go because I'm confused about how I couldn't have been worried about it at the time and what that meant for me as a person then. It feels like I was living a lie all this time thinking I was a good person but only now realise the truth. She quite rightly acknowledges I seem to need something to worry about constantly and now contamination and leaving the house is less of an issue this has taken it's place, but that's not to say that it's not true though. I hate having told her, I didn't want her knowing this about me eventhough she doesn't seem to believe it anyway and I didn't want this sort of reassurance. I keep trying to stop the ruminating by saying "maybe it did happen, maybe it didn't" but it's impossible when "maybe it did" makes you feel like a terrible person and the police are going to turn up at your door one day. I just don't understand if it's true how I didn't see the problem with what I had done before now, it took 15 years. It's on my mind constantly, I'm constantly doing mental compulsions and I'm worried everyone knows what going on in my mind or worse one day I'm going to come across the person who's life I might have ruined. I don't know why I'm posting really just really struggling with this, it's making me feel so low, sometimes I feel like I wouldn't care if I didn't wake up. I'm not suicidal, I don't think I could end my life. I just don't seem to care about living when I feel this low I feel so undeserving of everything.
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