Why is it important that we agree with the thoughts?

[St Mike]

Firstly, you are stuck neck-high in compulsions as you have pointed out in one of your earlier posts. You need to gradually reduce them through the compulsion hierarchy. This in itself should be thread on its own and you may need the help of a therapist to accomplish this. I shall not touch on this matter as my purpose of stating this is just to highlight the matter. To fully recover, you cannot continue to do compulsions related to other themes i.e magical thinking, even when you overcome this current cheating theme. OCD is a shape shifter, it will came back again in another form. 

Your current obsession arose because you have very rigid views about cheating being unforgivable. You will be in a much better position to deal with this theme if you allow for forgiveness to both yourself and your partner in the event that either one cheated on each other.

We as human beings are technically still animals, and the animal kingdom is promiscuous in nature. It is because we have evolved higher thinking and understand such a behaviour can cause hurt to another human being whom we love, we resist our so-called animal instincts to do so. Cheating is not right, but it does not deserve a death sentence or any other form of eternal punishment either.

Let go, loosen up a little, open your heart to yourself and others. Allow yourself to forgive yourself for any mistakes whether actual or perceived or in this case, OCD-induced false conclusions. You cannot argue with OCD, it is pointless because OCD wants you to do exactly that, it wants you to doubt, to question repeatedly, to work it out, argue with it and/or yourself, drawing you away from the real world and into the distorted reality of your OCD afflicted mind.

Forgiveness doesn't mean you have to do something wrong to receive it. Forgiveness is the ultimate form of letting go. Whether you have done something wrong or not, in the past, present or future, you will and stand ready to forgive yourself and others. It is the realisation of this point which helped me overcome my rigidity with how I view my behaviour as well as others.

 

As promised, I have prepared something which you can try to aid your mindfulness.

One exercise you could try is to listen to music mindfully.

The objective of this exercise is not to zone-out, not to escape as what you have  done with gaming or other activities. It is to keep your mind focused in the here an now in spite of roiling thoughts.

1. Pick an instrumental music track roughly 5 minutes long. Instrumental Jazz is my recommendation but of course, you can select other instrumental genres as long as it is mild and doesn't overexcite the mind such as a heavy metal track or hip hop.

2. Find a comfortable place, sit down, take a deep breath to loosen up any tension, close your eyes and put your earphones/headphones on.

3. When you start listening, gradually bring your focus to one instrument first, example, the strings of a guitar or harp, the beat of a drum etc.

4. Once you set your focus on that instrument, you can start to observe its qualities e.g its tempo - is it fast or slow?, its tone- is it sharp or dull etc. After that, gently, move your focus to another instrument and observe its qualities, do the same as prior.

At this point, your intrusive thought or thoughts may come barging in. Or they may be already there just waiting for you to feed they with  compulsions. I know that this is your weak point. You can't leave them alone. You have conditioned yourself for 30 years to give them attention. This is where you have to try your best. The intrusive thought wants to take centre stage, your focus on the musical instrument will start to fade into the background. Your urge to engage it with a compulsion is going to be very strong.

5. Don't try to stop it, block it or neutralise it as those actions would compulsions.

6. Just note, just let it be. Don't worry, let them come. In fact, leave the door wide open for the intrusive thoughts to enter. They are more than welcome to enter but there will be no greeting party to meet them. Just be aware and gently bring your focus back to the instrument that is playing. Let the playing instrument take centre stage instead of the intrusive thought.

7. Other thoughts may also enter the mind while you are trying to focus, they may not necessary be intrusive, i.e. grocery shopping you need to do later, an appointment with the dentist or a friend and so on. You treat them the same. You note but don't engage and return your focus to the playing of the musical instrument. Intrusive thoughts and all other thoughts are the same, they are just thoughts, they only matter when you give meaning and attention to them

8. Keep your focus on the music track and the instruments involved. You may also shift focus to observe how it sounds and feel when all the instruments are in concert, playing together. There is no fixed rule on what instrument you can focus on, if you want to just focus on the drums or the violin, that's fine too.

9. Repeat until the track ends. Then take a deep breath and remove your earphones/headphones.

You can do this simple short exercise anytime of the day. By doing so, you are strengthening your mind's ability to shift focus to something different instead of giving intrusive thoughts attention and performing compulsions such as rumination.  

I will have to stress that this is based on my own personal mindfulness practise and all conclusions and opinions come from it and not derived from any sort of therapy or hard science. It is something I've tried and found it useful and would like to share it with you.

 

[St Mike]

On ‎09‎/‎07‎/‎2018 at 19:30, taurean said:

Might I suggest you copy it over and make it a separate topic too, Mike? It will likely be helpful to others.

If others find it useful, I shall post it as a separate topic in the future.

Thanks for that vote of confidence, Roy.

[Headwreck]

3 hours ago, St Mike said:

Firstly, you are stuck neck-high in compulsions as you have pointed out in one of your earlier posts. You need to gradually reduce them through the compulsion hierarchy. This in itself should be thread on its own and you may need the help of a therapist to accomplish this. I shall not touch on this matter as my purpose of stating this is just to highlight the matter. To fully recover, you cannot continue to do compulsions related to other themes i.e magical thinking, even when you overcome this current cheating theme. OCD is a shape shifter, it will came back again in another form. 

Your current obsession arose because you have very rigid views about cheating being unforgivable. You will be in a much better position to deal with this theme if you allow for forgiveness to both yourself and your partner in the event that either one cheated on each other.

We as human beings are technically still animals, and the animal kingdom is promiscuous in nature. It is because we have evolved higher thinking and understand such a behaviour can cause hurt to another human being whom we love, we resist our so-called animal instincts to do so. Cheating is not right, but it does not deserve a death sentence or any other form of eternal punishment either.

Let go, loosen up a little, open your heart to yourself and others. Allow yourself to forgive yourself for any mistakes whether actual or perceived or in this case, OCD-induced false conclusions. You cannot argue with OCD, it is pointless because OCD wants you to do exactly that, it wants you to doubt, to question repeatedly, to work it out, argue with it and/or yourself, drawing you away from the real world and into the distorted reality of your OCD afflicted mind.

Forgiveness doesn't mean you have to do something wrong to receive it. Forgiveness is the ultimate form of letting go. Whether you have done something wrong or not, in the past, present or future, you will and stand ready to forgive yourself and others. It is the realisation of this point which helped me overcome my rigidity with how I view my behaviour as well as others.

 

As promised, I have prepared something which you can try to aid your mindfulness.

One exercise you could try is to listen to music mindfully.

The objective of this exercise is not to zone-out, not to escape as what you have  done with gaming or other activities. It is to keep your mind focused in the here an now in spite of roiling thoughts.

1. Pick an instrumental music track roughly 5 minutes long. Instrumental Jazz is my recommendation but of course, you can select other instrumental genres as long as it is mild and doesn't overexcite the mind such as a heavy metal track or hip hop.

2. Find a comfortable place, sit down, take a deep breath to loosen up any tension, close your eyes and put your earphones/headphones on.

3. When you start listening, gradually bring your focus to one instrument first, example, the strings of a guitar or harp, the beat of a drum etc.

4. Once you set your focus on that instrument, you can start to observe its qualities e.g its tempo - is it fast or slow?, its tone- is it sharp or dull etc. After that, gently, move your focus to another instrument and observe its qualities, do the same as prior.

At this point, your intrusive thought or thoughts may come barging in. Or they may be already there just waiting for you to feed they with  compulsions. I know that this is your weak point. You can't leave them alone. You have conditioned yourself for 30 years to give them attention. This is where you have to try your best. The intrusive thought wants to take centre stage, your focus on the musical instrument will start to fade into the background. Your urge to engage it with a compulsion is going to be very strong.

5. Don't try to stop it, block it or neutralise it as those actions would compulsions.

6. Just note, just let it be. Don't worry, let them come. In fact, leave the door wide open for the intrusive thoughts to enter. They are more than welcome to enter but there will be no greeting party to meet them. Just be aware and gently bring your focus back to the instrument that is playing. Let the playing instrument take centre stage instead of the intrusive thought.

7. Other thoughts may also enter the mind while you are trying to focus, they may not necessary be intrusive, i.e. grocery shopping you need to do later, an appointment with the dentist or a friend and so on. You treat them the same. You note but don't engage and return your focus to the playing of the musical instrument. Intrusive thoughts and all other thoughts are the same, they are just thoughts, they only matter when you give meaning and attention to them

8. Keep your focus on the music track and the instruments involved. You may also shift focus to observe how it sounds and feel when all the instruments are in concert, playing together. There is no fixed rule on what instrument you can focus on, if you want to just focus on the drums or the violin, that's fine too.

9. Repeat until the track ends. Then take a deep breath and remove your earphones/headphones.

You can do this simple short exercise anytime of the day. By doing so, you are strengthening your mind's ability to shift focus to something different instead of giving intrusive thoughts attention and performing compulsions such as rumination.  

I will have to stress that this is based on my own personal mindfulness practise and all conclusions and opinions come from it and not derived from any sort of therapy or hard science. It is something I've tried and found it useful and would like to share it with you.

 

Thanks very much for the time and effort you have put into this, it's so thoughtful of you and really appreciated.

I'm going to give this a try today. I'm having issues today because I know I felt guilty and horrible about some things I did against my partner and I don't really remember what they were, of course I'm saying it must have been this. It's really hard to not pay it any mind but I remember how caught up I was when I worried my partner had cheated, it was all encompassing, constant and literally everything would link to that. I need to bear the similarities in mind and as you have rightly said, the only way out of that was accepting it, letting go of it and getting on with life even though it was painful. I did this last time and that's how it switched, albeit it was a good year or so before it did after changing my approach. I just don't know what it might switch to next.

I like classical music so I'll give this a go and let you know how I get on. Thanks again, much appreciated.

 

Edited July 14, 2018 by Headwreck

[taurean]

13 minutes ago, Headwreck said:

I'm having issues today because I know I felt guilty and horrible about some things I did against my partner and I don't really remember what they were, of course I'm saying it must have been this.

Classic OCD Headwreck. 

 

14 minutes ago, Headwreck said:

it was all encompassing, constant and literally everything would link to that. 

The way to deal with this is remember that :

If we give belief to it, it gets stronger more frequent and more persistent. However difficult, practice simply noting it, considering it to be "just my silly obsession" and get busy doing something else. 

Gradually, the other, beneficial, things will become our default thinking, not OCD. 

Those connections are just OCD at work, not real. Don't be fooled, don't believe them, leave them be. 

17 minutes ago, Headwreck said:

I just don't know what it might switch to next.

Don't concern yourself with this. The more you leave obsessions be the less power and frequency, and theme changing, there will be.

Obsessional thoughts shrivel up and die away for lack of attention 

[taurean]

Lost, the number of your forum friends who have offered help and support shows just how much you are loved and respected here. 

None of us need believe what our OCD tells us. 

And just plucking up the courage to reveal the most frightening and repulsive suggestions it makes is in itself a challenge to its lies exaggerations and revulsions. 

None of us need any longer suffer in silence when OCD distresses us. No-one here will pass adverse judgement since we all ourselves know what damage and distress it causes. 

And in fact, by making this post you have emphasised this message to others. No sufferer need be ashamed, no sufferer need suffer in silence. 

Try and enjoy your day and climb those ladders. 

Roy 

Edited July 14, 2018 by taurean

[Handy]

Triage is the necessary first step for any thought. From that point, one can agree or not.

[taurean]

Agreeing with an OCD thought is just one CBT tool for dealing with them. 

Which CBT tool works best for what sufferer is very subjective. 

My preference lies with understanding how the OCD thinking works, then challenging it based on that cognitive knowledge.