Struggling so so much

[gingerbreadgirl]

hope your CBT session goes well Saz.  Stay strong x

[lostinme]

Good luck with your CBT tomorrow saz, keep working at it you will get there in the end  x 

[Saz]

15 hours ago, gingerbreadgirl said:

hope your CBT session goes well Saz.  Stay strong x

 

15 hours ago, lostinme said:

Good luck with your CBT tomorrow saz, keep working at it you will get there in the end  x 

Thank you both... X

[gingerbreadgirl]

Hi Saz, how did your CBT go? x

[Saz]

4 hours ago, gingerbreadgirl said:

Hi Saz, how did your CBT go? x

Hi gbg

It went well, the therapist is lovely,  I really recommend her. Im doing emdr, I think its called, next week. Its still early days i guess. 

However I am still struggling so much with acceptance. I seem to be focused more so on my behaviour and feelings after the wedding rather than the actual fear itself and this gives it all the more credibility. The worry hits me hard in the stomach and i see no way that it cant be true. My focus takes me to how I felt at the time - which was terror. X

[Saz]

Massive spike in anxiety after speaking to a mortgage advisor! He asked me who would your kids go to in the event anything was to happen to me or my partner.. I said my mum amd dad... He said 'wrong' and that they go straight into foster care because of the whole baby p thing. My heart literally sank! He said its best to make a will. I think that's a disgrace to be honest and this is what angers me and causes huge distress regardless of my false memory. It just led me to Google and its true! Why would you take children away from loving grandparents or family members that wanted to look after the poor children. Feeling hugely distressed

[Orwell1984]

The law is an ass. And the guy you were speaking to seems very black and white with no room for empathy. Please take no notice. People like that in those sort of careers are quite hard nosed I find so please just see it as one opinion from an abrasive personality. Don't ruminate on 'what if this/that will/won't happen'. Xxx

[Lynz]

The guy you spoke to seems like a bit of an idiot to be honest. Grandparents can still be foster carers in many situations so it's not an either/or thing that he makes it out to be.

[Saz]

46 minutes ago, Orwell1984 said:

The law is an ass. And the guy you were speaking to seems very black and white with no room for empathy. Please take no notice. People like that in those sort of careers are quite hard nosed I find so please just see it as one opinion from an abrasive personality. Don't ruminate on 'what if this/that will/won't happen'. Xxx

 

14 minutes ago, Lynz said:

The guy you spoke to seems like a bit of an idiot to be honest. Grandparents can still be foster carers in many situations so it's not an either/or thing that he makes it out to be.

Thank you both x

To be honest google did say thats what happens so I don't think the mortgage guy was lying and he wasn't even trying to sell me anything to do with making a will. I just don't understand it at all. Some members on here know i also have a side fear of my children being removed, not entirely sure its completely linked to my false memory but obviously that doesn't help at all. My heart sinks every time i see a story about 'forced adoption'. X

[Caramoole]

Try put it in perspective Saz.  The guy may have been a bit ham fisted with his delivery but was simply pointing out the importance of making your wishes known formerly, in this instance in a will.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Resist the temptation to read something into it that doesn't exist.

 

 

[Saz]

On 12/04/2018 at 02:53, Caramoole said:

Try put it in perspective Saz.  The guy may have been a bit ham fisted with his delivery but was simply pointing out the importance of making your wishes known formerly, in this instance in a will.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Resist the temptation to read something into it that doesn't exist.

 

 

Thanks caramoole but I'm now thinking this:

What that man said to me was real, its the way i reacted to it... So how do i know my thought/memory isn't real and its just the way I've reacted to that. I honestly don't understand. 

 

[PolarBear]

Saz, you don't have to answer all these questions that pop up. You don't have to understand everything perfectly. That's not life. Life is messy.

Trying to answer a question like that is a compulsion and will only serve to keep you stuck. Leave it alone.

[Saz]

4 hours ago, PolarBear said:

Saz, you don't have to answer all these questions that pop up. You don't have to understand everything perfectly. That's not life. Life is messy.

Trying to answer a question like that is a compulsion and will only serve to keep you stuck. Leave it alone.

Thanka pb. I know its a compulsion but how do i know if the compulsion is for a valid reason? 

5 hours ago, Saz said:

Thanks caramoole but I'm now thinking this:

What that man said to me was real, its the way i reacted to it... So how do i know my thought/memory isn't real and its just the way I've reacted to that. I honestly don't understand. 

 

Please doesn't anyone see where I'm coming from with the above? Sorry if i seem like im being repetitive. 

[gingerbreadgirl]

5 hours ago, Saz said:

how do i know my thought/memory isn't real

 

The bottom line is you don't know, Saz, and you have to let go of trying to know.  You can never know for sure.  That's why they call it a leap of faith.

Edited April 13, 2018 by gingerbreadgirl

[Saz]

1 hour ago, gingerbreadgirl said:

The bottom line is you don't know, Saz, and you have to let go of trying to know.  You can never know for sure.  That's why they call it a leap of faith.

But then if i don't know that doesn't make it ocd. I can't do this, its too exhausting and i just go round in circles 

[lostinme]

20 minutes ago, Saz said:

But then if i don't know that doesn't make it ocd. I can't do this, its too exhausting and i just go round in circles 

Saz, OCD is often referred to as the doubting disease, sometimes we have to accept the uncertainty of never knowing  it’s the doubting that is keeping you stuck and going round in circles  

Take a leap of faith, you don’t need to know the answers for everything x 

[gingerbreadgirl]

9 hours ago, Saz said:

But then if i don't know that doesn't make it ocd.

This is no different to what every other OCD sufferer goes through Saz This is what we're talking about when we say you have to let go of the need for certainty.  You have to treat is as OCD without being sure that's what it is.  All these years you have demanded to be sure before you will do the necessary work, but that will never work (as you've found).  You have to "put the cart before the horse", treat it as OCD, and then the relief will come (and so will the perspective).  But you can't do it the other way round, it will never work.  You are honestly no different here x

[Saz]

5 hours ago, gingerbreadgirl said:

This is no different to what every other OCD sufferer goes through Saz This is what we're talking about when we say you have to let go of the need for certainty.  You have to treat is as OCD without being sure that's what it is.  All these years you have demanded to be sure before you will do the necessary work, but that will never work (as you've found).  You have to "put the cart before the horse", treat it as OCD, and then the relief will come (and so will the perspective).  But you can't do it the other way round, it will never work.  You are honestly no different here x

I know im no different to anyone else on and ocd forum and im no different in terms of advice that is specifically for ocd...but what if its not ocd. 

[Saz]

14 hours ago, lostinme said:

Saz, OCD is often referred to as the doubting disease, sometimes we have to accept the uncertainty of never knowing  it’s the doubting that is keeping you stuck and going round in circles  

Take a leap of faith, you don’t need to know the answers for everything x 

Its so hard lost

[Franklin12]

Saz, if a person posted on here a fear of ‘what if the sausage I fed to my child’s friend gives her food poisoning’, do you think the advice should be to wait to see if the child gets food poisoning, and then if they don’t then go ahead and treat as OCD? 

[Saz]

1 hour ago, Franklin12 said:

Saz, if a person posted on here a fear of ‘what if the sausage I fed to my child’s friend gives her food poisoning’, do you think the advice should be to wait to see if the child gets food poisoning, and then if they don’t then go ahead and treat as OCD? 

I see what your saying but they could actually get food poisoning... Potentially... So my thought that cripple  might not be just a thought. And just to add,  obviously when the child you mention doesn't get food poisoning then you know you didn't give them food poisoning x

Edited April 14, 2018 by Saz

[Franklin12]

Well exactly - none of our fears would scare us any more once we know they won’t/haven’t come true. The problem is that they morph into new fears, unless we address the dysfunctional thinking that causes them. We need to learn to think in a healthy way, in order not to let our lives be ruled by ‘what ifs’. 

All the fears that everyone has on here have the potential to be true. The poisoned sausage, the scrape with a HIV infected syringe, getting sick, being murdered...there’s no 100% guarantee that any of those bad things won’t happen to us. But we have to live our lives applying the same fear/risk ratio as we do with the other risks that we aren’t obsessed with. I’m not scared that I will get a vomiting bug so I don’t spend all my time trying to work out how to avoid vomit, how likely it is that I have come into contact with germs etc. 

Unfortunately until we make a commitment that doing our compulsions is not the right thing to do, we won’t get better.

[taurean]

2 hours ago, Saz said:

I know im no different to anyone else on and ocd forum and im no different in terms of advice that is specifically for ocd...but what if its not ocd. 

You were asking that when you first came on the forum Saz. 

You are only still asking it because you just won't follow the excellent guidance given. And, although we say don't, you are still listening to the connections the illness makes up as you go along - which is exactly what not to do. 

When you truly listen to what you are being told, and apply that doctrine - refusing to give belief to the connections being suggested in your brain - you will be on the right road. 

But you must do this continually not for two or three days. That changed philosophy and behaviour has to become the norm before you will get better. 

As I have said before, we can have the best OCD CBT therapist on the planet - but if we don't put into practice what they tell us to do, then they cannot help us. 

Only we can apply the knowledge given and change the thinking and behaviours we need to change. 

 

Edited April 14, 2018 by taurean
typos

[Franklin12]

To draw parallels with the sausage example: you have your child’s friend for tea. They have a nice time. You make sausages for tea, as you have done many times before. They eat the sausages, the sausages are nice. The children carrying in playing, and then the other child goes home. You think nothing more about sausages that night as you have no reason to think any more about it. The next day you wake up, a bit tired and you have a cold coming. You have a bit of background anxiety that has come with the tiredness and cold. You start to wonder why you are feeling anxious. You suddenly remember that one time you read about a person who had got food poisoning from a sausage. You made sausages last night. And fed them to a child. Did you check they were cooked through? You can’t remember. You desperately try to remember. You start to think about that child getting sick, and it all being your fault. Imagine if that child died. You start googling how long it would be before the symptoms of food poisoning show. You have images of the insides of the sausages coming to your mind - were they cooked? Or still pink? Sometimes sausages can be pink and ok. But what about these ones? Surely the mum would phone if the child was sick. But you read that sometimes symptoms of food poisoning can take weeks to show up....

etc etc...

 

 

[gingerbreadgirl]

3 hours ago, Saz said:

I know im no different to anyone else on and ocd forum and im no different in terms of advice that is specifically for ocd...but what if its not ocd. 

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, and the same goes for all of us... we may really be contaminated/unclean/murderers/paedophiles etc. etc.  If we didn't doubt it was OCD, it wouldn't be a problem would it? - it would be easy to let go of. The answer is you treat it like OCD anyway despite the doubt, and then in time you get clarity.  What do you have to lose? Really? x