Core beliefs, OCD and self-esteem

[Franklin12]

You seem to have some pretty good insight, maybe what is needed now is practice in changing how you are thinking about this. You’re not going to be able to snap your fingers and think differently, but if you decide how you want to be able to think about this, the rational dose you mention but that you can’t quite believe, and just practice and practice thinking this way. Eventually you should catch up. I mean I say that - I do sometimes wonder whether the way we feel about things ever can catch up with how we want to think about things. But I think it can, it just takes perseverance. 

[JennieWren]

35 minutes ago, Franklin12 said:

Eventually you should catch up

I’m afraid I’m not sure.

GBG you could have been describing me and however much I rationally practice thinking differently about myself I am still totally stuck.

Ashley was talking about understanding our ocd compulsions like layers of an onion. Maybe there is something below this belief you have feeding it. I may be off kilter, but if you rationally know what people are like, why can’t you apply it to yourself? Why do you have to be judge and jury? What’s driving that? What would happen if you didn’t? If you let yourself get away with it?

So in my case:

thought: I am a terrible person who has to be ever watchful that no one sees the real bad me

question: why?

answer: because if they do they won’t want to know me

question: why?

answer: because I am repulsive.

question: why?

At first my next answer was all my bad points that make me unloveable. But then I realised lots of people I’ve known in the past who acted badly still had friends and boyfriends etc, so I dug deeper and my answer became...

i don’t know why I am repulsive. Other people have acted like I am in the past and I think that was my fault in some way. If it is my fault I must try and be a different person. One that people find loveable and likeable. I must suppress the real unacceptable me.

[Orwell1984]

5 minutes ago, JennieWren said:

 

i don’t know why I am repulsive. Other people have acted like I am in the past and I think that was my fault in some way. If it is my fault I must try and be a different person. One that people find loveable and likeable. I must suppress the real unacceptable me.

 it's like looking into a thought mirror

[JennieWren]

i only just worked this out about myself as I wrote it. I'm feeling devastated.

So I'm sending you a hug, Orwell. This belief about ourselves is messed up. I hope we can make it right for ourselves.

10 minutes ago, Orwell1984 said:

it's like looking into a thought mirror

 

[taurean]

This just goes to show how absolutely abhorrent all and any themes of OCD are. 

That technique mentioned looks like an update of the "downward arrow" method clinical psychologists use to discover the OCD core beliefs. 

I had it applied to me in therapy - it came up that my real underlying fear was that of losing control - which is quite a common one in harm OCD. 

Once we had that established in therapy, we were able to challenge that core belief. 

Edited January 30, 2018 by taurean

[taurean]

Now that we know you three have a similar problem, let's turn that knowledge into power. 

Look for the deepest to the shallowest elements of OCD core belief - out them so they can be challenged. 

Share information and strategies - turn around those fears, see them for what they are. 

[Franklin12]

A lot of my fears are about not being in control - fear of heights (falling), fear of flying, being the passenger in a car that’s near water/heights etc. How did you turn the fear around? I do still like to be in control, did you just ‘let go’? 

[taurean]

3 minutes ago, Franklin12 said:

A lot of my fears are about not being in control - fear of heights (falling), fear of flying, being the passenger in a car that’s near water/heights etc. How did you turn the fear around? I do still like to be in control, did you just ‘let go’? 

I realised it was an OCD distortion based around the harm theme. 

My therapist B was herself a recoveree from harm OCD. 

We talked around why that core belief could hurt me, make me feel anxious. And that the OCD was targeting my true core values of care love protection. 

Once I fully understood that I managed so much better. 

[Franklin12]

So was the therapy aiming to stop a fear of ‘not being in control’, or more to see that you would be unlikely to lose control? If you know what I mean?

[taurean]

The latter. 

[gingerbreadgirl]

9 hours ago, Franklin12 said:

You seem to have some pretty good insight, maybe what is needed now is practice in changing how you are thinking about this. You’re not going to be able to snap your fingers and think differently, but if you decide how you want to be able to think about this, the rational dose you mention but that you can’t quite believe, and just practice and practice thinking this way. Eventually you should catch up. I mean I say that - I do sometimes wonder whether the way we feel about things ever can catch up with how we want to think about things. But I think it can, it just takes perseverance. 

Hi Franklin,

I think you're right and I've had some success with this in the past. The insight you mention has come about as a result of doing a lot of cognitive work on this.  It has all fallen apart these last three months though - instead I have this strong sense of "oh my god how did I never realise how rubbish/bad etc etc I am? I was obviously kidding myself, cognitive work is just trying to make excuses for myself" and so on.  Even as I write this and I am trying to be rational and fair towards myself, I am being tugged at by this feeling, that I am kidding myself.  It's tiring.

[gingerbreadgirl]

8 hours ago, JennieWren said:

if you rationally know what people are like, why can’t you apply it to yourself? Why do you have to be judge and jury? What’s driving that? What would happen if you didn’t? If you let yourself get away with it?

Hi Jennie,

Many thanks for this.

Honestly I'm not sure.  I've been thinking about this since you asked the question last night.  I'm not totally sure what drives this.  I could have a stab at a number of things:

- I feel that if I stop examining myself for bad tendencies or bad behaviour, I will let my guard down and revert to type, i.e. being selfish, arrogant, entitled, lazy, etc.

- I don't want to "let myself off the hook".  I feel like if I do "let myself off the hook" I am being deluded, I am using CBT to sell myself a fantasy about my own acceptability.

- Having understanding for other people feels "right", it feels fair and compassionate.  However feeling this way about myself feels "bad", like I am making excuses for bad behaviour. ( As an aside I think this is very ingrained in western society, the idea that it is somehow noble to sacrifice your own happiness for others.  I am trying to adopt a more Buddhist approach of being kind to self and others, and seeing them as part of a bigger whole.)

I can see in some ways that these are irrational and contradictory, but even as I'm writing this I feel that I am trying to argue black is white, that I must accept my own horrible tendencies and make amends for them and stay on guard for them etc. etc.

I find it hard to return to the cognitive work I did before all this because I do feel like I've had a "revelation" about my own bad behaviour and I can't just unthink it no matter what I do.

 

[gingerbreadgirl]

8 hours ago, Orwell1984 said:

 it's like looking into a thought mirror

Sending you a hug too, Orwell, and Jennie.  It is horrid xx

[gingerbreadgirl]

8 hours ago, JennieWren said:

Other people have acted like I am in the past and I think that was my fault in some way.

I'm sorry you've had people act like this towards you - it must be very difficult to deal with.

Part of the guilt I feel over all of this is that I have never had anything bad happen to me.  I had wonderful parents who loved me so much (and if anything they pampered and molly-coddled me too much), I have never experienced any trauma or neglect or anything of the sort - and yet here I am, feeling like a mess.  I feel like I have no right to be like this, that I am just naval-gazing or being dramatic and I just need to pull myself together and grow up.  Just... aargh

[Gemma7]

3 hours ago, gingerbreadgirl said:

Part of the guilt I feel over all of this is that I have never had anything bad happen to me.  I had wonderful parents who loved me so much (and if anything they pampered and molly-coddled me too much), I have never experienced any trauma or neglect or anything of the sort - and yet here I am, feeling like a mess.  I feel like I have no right to be like this, that I am just naval-gazing or being dramatic and I just need to pull myself together and grow up.  Just... aargh

It sounds to me like you feel shame not guilt. How can you feel this way when you can't justify why you do? My answer, because you do. You say that you are your own judge and jury, how long have you been that and why? What is the purpose of your self-criticism? Did it once have a use? 

I think you are absolutely right to try and deal with this. It clearly prevents you from moving forward, brings on relapses and is definitely part of your OCD cycle. I don't have the answers but i think you need to do a lot of self exploration ideally with a therapist but if not i would recommend CBT for OCD. It's the therapist's version of Break free from OCD and has a section on shame/self criticism and it is full of references. Some of the references will be free to read and maybe some might help. It also talks about various techniques borrowed from other therapies to help with problems of shame/self-blame etc. 

[Cub]

7 hours ago, gingerbreadgirl said:

Hi Jennie,

Many thanks for this.

Honestly I'm not sure.  I've been thinking about this since you asked the question last night.  I'm not totally sure what drives this.  I could have a stab at a number of things:

- I feel that if I stop examining myself for bad tendencies or bad behaviour, I will let my guard down and revert to type, i.e. being selfish, arrogant, entitled, lazy, etc.

- I don't want to "let myself off the hook".  I feel like if I do "let myself off the hook" I am being deluded, I am using CBT to sell myself a fantasy about my own acceptability.

- Having understanding for other people feels "right", it feels fair and compassionate.  However feeling this way about myself feels "bad", like I am making excuses for bad behaviour. ( As an aside I think this is very ingrained in western society, the idea that it is somehow noble to sacrifice your own happiness for others.  I am trying to adopt a more Buddhist approach of being kind to self and others, and seeing them as part of a bigger whole.)

I can see in some ways that these are irrational and contradictory, but even as I'm writing this I feel that I am trying to argue black is white, that I must accept my own horrible tendencies and make amends for them and stay on guard for them etc. etc.

I find it hard to return to the cognitive work I did before all this because I do feel like I've had a "revelation" about my own bad behaviour and I can't just unthink it no matter what I do.

 

Ginger, I get this. I get all of it. As someone who fears having committed an unforgivable sin, I do get it, truly I do. I can't let myself off the hook either because I feel I don't deserve it and moving on feels deluded. But in OCD, attempting to move on without the proper help and the cognitive approach is too much to take on anyway. I often see it as kicking off from the side of a pool. I can't kick off to start swimming - I'm leaning on the side.

I just wanted to let you know: I get it. I really do and I hope we can both find a way forwards.

[gingerbreadgirl]

5 hours ago, Gemma7 said:

It sounds to me like you feel shame not guilt. How can you feel this way when you can't justify why you do? My answer, because you do. You say that you are your own judge and jury, how long have you been that and why? What is the purpose of your self-criticism? Did it once have a use? 

I think you are absolutely right to try and deal with this. It clearly prevents you from moving forward, brings on relapses and is definitely part of your OCD cycle. I don't have the answers but i think you need to do a lot of self exploration ideally with a therapist but if not i would recommend CBT for OCD. It's the therapist's version of Break free from OCD and has a section on shame/self criticism and it is full of references. Some of the references will be free to read and maybe some might help. It also talks about various techniques borrowed from other therapies to help with problems of shame/self-blame etc. 

Hi Gemma,

Thanks v much for this.

I think I feel both shame and guilt.  I feel guilt over things I have done which I regret, and I feel shame for who I am as a person.  Committing that to writing is hard because I even doubt its truth as I'm saying it.  I have a voice inside saying "you don't have low self-esteem, you just feel justified guilt, if anything your self-esteem is too high, you're arrogant, etc. etc." It is tiring carrying this voice around, sometimes.  And it's tiring constantly analysing myself, my past, whether I'm OK.  I don't know where cognitive appraisal ends and OCD rumination begins.  I feel very very stuck.

Right now, what I feel is that I am intrinsically bad (by which I mean, selfish, entitled, lazy, dishonest... or whatever I am worrying about on any particular day.) And I feel my actions are reflections of that inherent "badness".  So I struggle to see any one action as an isolated thing - I see it as wrapped up in my entire worth as a person.

I don't think this rationally.  If I really step away from myself I can acknowledge that I can be kind and honest and loyal.  I can also acknowledge that the things I am ashamed of are perhaps not as bad as I think they are.  But I don't feel that - and that's my problem.  I feel contaminated or dirty, somehow, if that doesn't sound bizarre. 

I don't feel this all the time, but I have done during these last three months and it has had a huge effect on my quality of life.

Re - what you said about whether it served a purpose once, I don't know.  I suspect it was to do with the fact that I was always a bit of an outcast at school, and at primary school I was bullied and told some not nice things about myself which have always stuck with me.  Then there's the fact that I do feel justified guilt over some things - I guess that criticism stops me from feeling too terrible about myself, i.e. "I may have done this bad thing, but at least I'm beating myself up over it so I can't be that bad."

Edited January 31, 2018 by gingerbreadgirl

[gingerbreadgirl]

2 hours ago, Cub said:

Ginger, I get this. I get all of it. As someone who fears having committed an unforgivable sin, I do get it, truly I do. I can't let myself off the hook either because I feel I don't deserve it and moving on feels deluded. But in OCD, attempting to move on without the proper help and the cognitive approach is too much to take on anyway. I often see it as kicking off from the side of a pool. I can't kick off to start swimming - I'm leaning on the side.

I just wanted to let you know: I get it. I really do and I hope we can both find a way forwards.

Thank you Cub for your kind words and sorry to hear you are suffering with this kind of thing too

Hugs xx

[Cub]

Thankyou and to you. If it helps at all, I still have moments when I become aware of how lonely and isolated I feel, even though I don't want to leave the house and can often be left alone with my thoughts. I'm not quite sure how to relax, so we're both struggling, it seems.

[gingerbreadgirl]

2 hours ago, Cub said:

Thankyou and to you. If it helps at all, I still have moments when I become aware of how lonely and isolated I feel, even though I don't want to leave the house and can often be left alone with my thoughts. I'm not quite sure how to relax, so we're both struggling, it seems.

Thank you Cub, and sorry to hear you are struggling so much too Hugs xx

[gingerbreadgirl]

9 hours ago, Gemma7 said:

 You say that you are your own judge and jury, how long have you been that and why? What is the purpose of your self-criticism? Did it once have a use? 

I've been thinking some more about this and I think in some ways I have always been like this, but it certainly never really stopped me behaving in ways I knew I would later criticise myself for, which doesn't really make much sense.  When I was younger I could be very impulsive, selfish, and thoughtless.  And even though I still had this shame and guilt I carried around, it never seemed to kick in at a time when it would prevent me doing shameful things - it would only ever kick in afterwards.  And even though I had this shame on the one hand, outwardly I could be brash and full of it and the opposite of someone with low self-esteem.  Often I hear about people with low self-esteem and I think "How could they feel badly about themselves when they are so sweet and lovely?" but that isn't me.  I cringe when I think how I used to be and still am in some ways.  

[Franklin12]

I totally get this - I would do stuff especially when I was younger that I really didn’t care or feel bad about at the time, but then afterwards would beat myself up about it. But rationally I wouldn’t really want to care or think it was that bad. And then do it all over again...Also I get it with carelessness and guilt - I’ll be slapdash about something and not care at all, and then afterwards I’ll start feeling really guilty that I wasn’t more careful. But it doesn’t stop me from being just as slapdash the next time. 

I kind of think you have to reach a point where you just accept who you are. Maybe you are a person who is sometimes conflicted and acts/thinks and feels in contradictory ways. Moving forward, is it making you happy to analyse why that is? Can you try to park the negative emotions to the side and get on with life with them just in the background? Can you try to cut down on the negative self talk, even though you feel like you deserve it? Can you try to give yourself more positive messages on a regular basis even though you don’t quite believe them? 

[lostinme]

I’m not sure if this will help you guys or not but I’m hoping it will

Before starting cbt, I hated myself for lots of things, didn’t like myself much as a person either, I was very self critical about everything and my mind was one big jumbled mess of past events, just ruminating 24/7 over thoughts I’d just had or past events and coming up so many scenarios, the what ifs,  it wasn’t surprising I was driving myself crazy and I could no longer think straight, I’d to many things occupying my every waking moment and I cried myself to sleep night in night out, what if this happens, what if that happens, if it does it all my fault,  I’m a bad person, who doesn’t deserve to be happy, I would go as far as saying I really hated myself. I think this is the time to say I couldn’t see the wood for the trees. 

However now im at a stage of liking myself and liking me as a person, who I am and I’ve learnt to accept and forgive myself. I think self forgiveness is a major step towards recovery. You need to learn to love your self before you can expect someone to love you back. 

I think peeling off the onion layers is a great way to describe it, little by little layer by layer. Some things I think you need to address to prevent relapse because just avoiding them and refocusing they tend to sneak back in again. You need to deal with them and lay them to rest. I had lots of past minor events that taunted me for years, but altogether they seemed like major ones. Eventually I worked through them one at a time and viewed them differently with different thinking approaches. Obviously each one had a different outcome, either it was self forgiveness, letting it go because I would never find the answer etc. Eventually I worked through them one by one and started to realise I wasn’t a bad person at all, I was just a person who had made some mistakes, like most people do. I wasn’t a bad person after all and I slowly started to begin to like myself and who I am as a person. The things I couldn’t find the answers for, I learnt to let go because I knew I would never find the answer. I needed to accept the fact that it’s possible that I might have and find forgiveness for myself if I had, it’s in the past and I can’t change it even if wanted to. 

Hope this will you all 

 

[gingerbreadgirl]

9 hours ago, Franklin12 said:

I kind of think you have to reach a point where you just accept who you are. Maybe you are a person who is sometimes conflicted and acts/thinks and feels in contradictory ways. Moving forward, is it making you happy to analyse why that is? Can you try to park the negative emotions to the side and get on with life with them just in the background? Can you try to cut down on the negative self talk, even though you feel like you deserve it? Can you try to give yourself more positive messages on a regular basis even though you don’t quite believe them? 

I think you're right and this is probably exactly what I need to do.  Thank you x

[gingerbreadgirl]

8 hours ago, lostinme said:

I’m not sure if this will help you guys or not but I’m hoping it will

Before starting cbt, I hated myself for lots of things, didn’t like myself much as a person either, I was very self critical about everything and my mind was one big jumbled mess of past events, just ruminating 24/7 over thoughts I’d just had or past events and coming up so many scenarios, the what ifs,  it wasn’t surprising I was driving myself crazy and I could no longer think straight, I’d to many things occupying my every waking moment and I cried myself to sleep night in night out, what if this happens, what if that happens, if it does it all my fault,  I’m a bad person, who doesn’t deserve to be happy, I would go as far as saying I really hated myself. I think this is the time to say I couldn’t see the wood for the trees. 

However now im at a stage of liking myself and liking me as a person, who I am and I’ve learnt to accept and forgive myself. I think self forgiveness is a major step towards recovery. You need to learn to love your self before you can expect someone to love you back. 

I think peeling off the onion layers is a great way to describe it, little by little layer by layer. Some things I think you need to address to prevent relapse because just avoiding them and refocusing they tend to sneak back in again. You need to deal with them and lay them to rest. I had lots of past minor events that taunted me for years, but altogether they seemed like major ones. Eventually I worked through them one at a time and viewed them differently with different thinking approaches. Obviously each one had a different outcome, either it was self forgiveness, letting it go because I would never find the answer etc. Eventually I worked through them one by one and started to realise I wasn’t a bad person at all, I was just a person who had made some mistakes, like most people do. I wasn’t a bad person after all and I slowly started to begin to like myself and who I am as a person. The things I couldn’t find the answers for, I learnt to let go because I knew I would never find the answer. I needed to accept the fact that it’s possible that I might have and find forgiveness for myself if I had, it’s in the past and I can’t change it even if wanted to. 

Hope this will you all 

 

Thank you Lost, this is really helpful

I'm so pleased you have worked through this and now feeling so much better.  I have a slight nagging concern that (for me) going through my past mistakes one by one in this way probably wouldn't lay them to rest (as I've tried doing that numerous times) but rather generate a whole ton of ruminating.  I think (for me) I probably have to leave them be and sit with the discomfort of not having "solved" them, and instead work on my overall self-image and self-worth, if that makes sense?

Hope you're well and thanks again xx