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Right back to square one again.

1. You are wrong. This will not go away if you move out/separate. OCD does not just go away when you do a compulsion like that.

2. It is OCD. 100% guaranteed. You have zero evidence that you did anything. You have identifiable obsessions and compulsions, you are greatly distressed and filled with doubt. We know what we are talking about.

3. Even if you did kiss this guy while slobbering drunk it is NOT the end of the world. OCD has been telling you that and you fall for it every time. I could think of many things worse than kissing a guy while drunk. OCD is making this out to be a much bigger deal than it is.

4. The situation you have been going through, at least for the past year, is far more damaging to you and your partner than actually kissing a guy while drunk. I see it. Your life is a mess... not because you might have kissed a guy, but because of the mental disorder you have.

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Yes right back to square one and then some. Don't know what to do. It says all over the internet that thoughts are irrational and against core beliefs etc. But I went out that night with intent, honestly I did. Also my worry is hardly irrational, if anything it's something most would worry about.

My life is on pause and has been for about 5 years now. I wanted to start exercising, felt excited about doing more (was even looking at buying stuff which is another thing I struggle with), but I can't do it because I'm constantly depressed and thinking. When I'm at home I want to go to work and when I'm in work I want to go home. I daydream about not being alive anymore and it brings me relief that I can check out. I don't belong anywhere. My partner's life is hell and I just want to leave for his sake but I can't because he will be left in a bad position and it is all my fault. I'm horrible to him, miserable, distant, snappy, uninterested, but I can't stop and it's horrible for him.

I know I've brought it all on myself and it's immoral and can't blame OCD for actions, I'm just a bad person etc. But I don't feel like I can live with myself or with this, I really don't know how to let go and forgive, especially when you are meant to come clean and tell the truth about misdemeanours. I can't keep this a secret even if I do end up forgiving myself for it (which I won't unless my partner forgave me).

PB I know you say I have compulsions but all it is really is thinking all the time, 24/7 thinking and associations. Which anybody would do in this situation. I did used to repeat the text message I received in my head until it felt it was true but I stopped this a while ago (the text is real as I told my mum and partner about it before all this started). And also I used to wonder if I knew before now. I still do that but they are probably the only OCD ish symptoms I can identify. I think that anyone who overthinks would do this sort of thing though.

Also can I just ask. In the evening I feel like my mind is numb to it, why is this and does anyone else have that? Why is it every night, like I let myself off the hook at night?

Edited by Headwreck
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10 hours ago, hedvig said:

Headwreck, I’m heading to bed but please know we are here for you and that we all care about you. Try to get some sleep and remember also that Sundays can be more difficult before work. I’ll log in tomorrow to check on you. x

That's so nice of you but please don't feel you have to do that, this is nobodies fault but my own so I don't expect people to feel bad for me, if anything everyone should sympathise with my partner. I hope you are feeling well and all okay with returning to work x

Edited by Headwreck
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I think you need to start being a lot kinder to yourself, when I had therapy that was my first cbt challenge. So maybe try having no negative thoughts about you, you are not a bad person, immoral, you have ocd and you need help to come through that. Ocd tricks you into thinking you may have done things you haven't that disgust you. 

People who cheat don't say its immoral, at least married men I have worked with, when I have told them I don't approve are the opposite of you they don't think its a big deal, they minimise it and justify it blaming their partner not themselves. I don't approve of cheating but realistically something like 50 percent of men do it and only a bit lower with women, its life. Its normal to feel attracted to others. Its normal to flirt a bit. Its normal to be alone at times with others. Its normal to go out and want to have a good time. Nothing you have done is wrong other than listening to your ocd which is tricking you into believing you cheated. 

Stay with your partner, get help and why not start doing that exercising, you could start at home if you can't face going out, put some music on and do some sit ups or similar. Exercise does help with depression. Swimming or aerobics can be really good, start once a week. 

 

 

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On 1/9/2018 at 12:26, Headwreck said:

Thanks Leopard and OCDhavenobrain. I have woken up today in a better mood than usual so decided to devise a plan/some goals for the next six months before the new job starts.

  1. Self help workbook. Going to try and find a good one and work through this while I look for a therapist (hopefully one I can use online rather than meeting with as it's too difficult with work)
  2. Get back into exercise and get in shape. I used to run and do yoga but stopped last year when my obsession switched and I got caught up with all this. I'm going to invest in a weights bench for toning and use my resistance bike for cardio, maybe go out running before the weather gets bad.
  3. Stop ruminating. This is a big one but I've done okay today. See how it goes for the rest of the weekend. Has been easier as anxiety hasn't been as bad, the challenge will be when the anxiety is higher. Find sometimes the thoughts affect me and sometimes they don't.
  4. Read more books.
  5. Invest in a SAD light. I struggle massively with winter so want to put something in place before it arrives. I have depression anyway but dark days and nights exacerbate it.

This that you posted before is great and a good plan Headwreck. 

Why not copy it over to your phone, so you can refer back to it when you are in danger of slipping. 

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1 hour ago, Justine said:

I think you need to start being a lot kinder to yourself, when I had therapy that was my first cbt challenge. So maybe try having no negative thoughts about you, you are not a bad person, immoral, you have ocd and you need help to come through that. Ocd tricks you into thinking you may have done things you haven't that disgust you. 

People who cheat don't say its immoral, at least married men I have worked with, when I have told them I don't approve are the opposite of you they don't think its a big deal, they minimise it and justify it blaming their partner not themselves. I don't approve of cheating but realistically something like 50 percent of men do it and only a bit lower with women, its life. Its normal to feel attracted to others. Its normal to flirt a bit. Its normal to be alone at times with others. Its normal to go out and want to have a good time. Nothing you have done is wrong other than listening to your ocd which is tricking you into believing you cheated. 

Stay with your partner, get help and why not start doing that exercising, you could start at home if you can't face going out, put some music on and do some sit ups or similar. Exercise does help with depression. Swimming or aerobics can be really good, start once a week. 

 

 

But I got really drunk to the point that I can't remember. I can remember afterwards when we had left the pubs and were in my colleagues house and I don't think looks as though anything happened based on the behaviour (surely if we had kissed earlier then we would be all over each other etc) but I can't be certain as I don't remember and I'm scared that the other guy forgot too as he said the next day he felt like kissing me all night. Maybe we did and he forgot? I also started crying in the pub before we left and I don't know why. It concerns me that I always said for two years that nothing had happened but I don't remember the night in the pubs so I'm now telling myself that I obviously never knew at all so I must have tricked myself into thinking nothing had happened because I thought I wasn't capable of it when it actual fact I was.

I just feel sick to my stomach and I don't think I'll ever be free of this, I know I've only got myself to blame but as you mentioned earlier I justified it because I thought my partner had done it to me. When I think of the future I think I'll always be thinking about this so refuse to get married etc.

Edited by Headwreck
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24 minutes ago, taurean said:

This that you posted before is great and a good plan Headwreck. 

Why not copy it over to your phone, so you can refer back to it when you are in danger of slipping. 

It's just too difficult, don't feel as though I can fight through it anymore. It feels futile as every day is the same.

Edited by Headwreck
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No not at all he isn't abusive or hurting me he wouldn't do that, sorry I hope I didn't make it sound that way. I was obsessed with him cheating on me from approx July 2013 until October last year 2017 and then this started. Well I presume it was OCD when I thought my partner had cheated because it went on for so long and now it doesn't bother me, it seemed to just stop all of a sudden.

The night out was Aug 2015. I thought if I did something in revenge it would stop me from thinking and hurting. I just want everything to stop, I've made a mess of everything.

Edited by Headwreck
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It didn't sound like that but when people hate themselves they are higher risk for entering abusive relationships and I just wanted to check you were OK as people often hide it or feel they deserve it. 

Sometimes taking a break helps as long as you have support, being on here can make you think about ocd 24/7. 

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Guest OCDhavenobrain

Try to take  break from writing about it. 1 day if you could then try 1 week. It was really hard for me and it will be for you. 

In this state of mind very little good will come from you writing and reading about it. If any

Edited by OCDhavenobrain
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2 hours ago, Headwreck said:

Sorry I shouldn't be spamming the forum like this. This is why I thought I should delete my account.

You have said before you have nowhere else to help you. So no need to delete your account. We know how difficult all this is, we are there or have been there ourselves :)

 

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3 hours ago, Headwreck said:

I'm never going to know and it's killing me but everything points to it happening.

Even if it's OCD it doesn't mean it didn't happen.

No. Everything does not point to it happening. Just because you've nearly convinced yourself doesn't make it true.

And you are wrong. Most anyone would not worry the way you do. You stand out because you are dealing with a mental disorder.

I tell you that you have clear compulsions. You dismiss that by saying it's just constant thinking. Well that constant thinking is called ruminating and it is the most common compulsion there is.

 

Edited by PolarBear
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7 hours ago, Headwreck said:

That's so nice of you but please don't feel you have to do that, this is nobodies fault but my own so I don't expect people to feel bad for me, if anything everyone should sympathise with my partner. I hope you are feeling well and all okay with returning to work x

I don’t feel like I have to, I do it because I want to. Because I care about you! You really don’t deserve to be treated the way you treat yourself. 

Thank you, so nice of you to remember that I’ve gotten back to work. It has gone a lot better than I expected. The days prior were quite anxious but I feel a lot better already. 

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2 hours ago, hedvig said:

I don’t feel like I have to, I do it because I want to. Because I care about you! You really don’t deserve to be treated the way you treat yourself. 

Thank you, so nice of you to remember that I’ve gotten back to work. It has gone a lot better than I expected. The days prior were quite anxious but I feel a lot better already. 

That's good, I'm glad it has been better than you thought. Typical to expect the worst, it's never as bad as you think but after a long time away it's natural to worry. Thanks for checking in anyway, as you can see same old garbage!

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5 hours ago, PolarBear said:

No. Everything does not point to it happening. Just because you've nearly convinced yourself doesn't make it true.

And you are wrong. Most anyone would not worry the way you do. You stand out because you are dealing with a mental disorder.

I tell you that you have clear compulsions. You dismiss that by saying it's just constant thinking. Well that constant thinking is called ruminating and it is the most common compulsion there is.

 

I just don't get how I can feel so certain I'm guilty after years of thinking I wasn't. There must be a reason for that. Can't remember what it felt like to feel innocent. What an absolute mess I have made of everything.

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30 minutes ago, Headwreck said:

I just don't get how I can feel so certain I'm guilty after years of thinking I wasn't. There must be a reason for that. Can't remember what it felt like to feel innocent. What an absolute mess I have made of everything.

I think what we need to challenge is the binary thinking: good/bad, innocent/guilty. It is possible to change this! I like the saying that accepting ourselves and our history is the bravest thing we’ll ever do. You can get past this (I know because I did) and you can begin to like yourself again but you have got to give yourself a chance. 

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2 hours ago, Headwreck said:

I just don't get how I can feel so certain I'm guilty after years of thinking I wasn't. There must be a reason for that. Can't remember what it felt like to feel innocent. What an absolute mess I have made of everything.

See you keep looking for other reasons why, when you have THE reason why staring you right in the face. It's OCD. Of course it feels real. The thoughts come from your own brain, where all other thoughts and feelings come from. Whst makes it much, much worse is your persistent performing of compulsions, notably ruminating.

Let's face it, you think about this non-stop. You continually reinforce the belief you did something wrong, even though there is no evidence you did. All that thinking does you absolutely no good. It just pushes you deeper and deeper into the hole. All that ruminating also makes this minor situation seem like a huge deal. 

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And for me, who has read many such similar stories, the actual intense feeling that it must be real is, in fact, the proof that it is all just OCD.

Because that is exactly how OCD works. And by looking at it this way we can actually turn the tables on OCD - use what the illness suggests as the proof OCD is in play :)

For me, such insight represents us clawing back some of the high ground that OCD has stolen from us. 

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2 hours ago, Headwreck said:

I just don't get how I can feel so certain I'm guilty after years of thinking I wasn't. There must be a reason for that. Can't remember what it felt like to feel innocent. What an absolute mess I have made of everything.

There is absolutely a reason, Headwreck. It's called OCD.

OCD can convince you of absolutely anything. In my worst moments, and you can check my past threads I made years ago, I was 100% convinced I was transgender and that for my entire life I'd been lying to myself and denying who I really was. This is despite me never having worried about this previously, and that I was a normal female person and was comfortable and happy with myself. Then one day "bang", I got an intrusive thought that I might be transgender after reading about something to do with transgender issues in the news and it was like a switch had been flicked and I was flooded with anxiety. There was nothing you could say to me that would make me change my mind. I was 100% convinced and it was awful. I thought my distress was due to the fact that my family and friends would reject me if they knew the truth, so I "came out" to them all one by one. Even though all of them were accepting of what I was saying to them this didn't make me feel any better at all, in fact it only made me more anxious. Only by realising that what I was doing were compulsions and stopping them did this worry eventually loosen its grip on me.

I also went through another obsession where I was completely convinced that I was a lesbian, which again came from an intrusive thought that popped up when there was a scene in a TV show of two women kissing and I got the thought "what if deep down I'm actually a lesbian and I just don't realise it?". This is despite me never having any interest or attraction to women previously and up until I became obsessed with this I had always fancied men and the thought of liking women had never even occurred to me. I even broke up with my partner because I didn't believe that I was straight anymore (luckily he saw it was OCD and stuck around, and we got back together as I started to recover). But now that I've recovered from that and other obsessions I look back and can see that they were 100% OCD, and it feels like what happened to me happened to someone else.

In other obsessions I've had for example I've been utterly convinced that a mark on my body was skin cancer (a birth mark that didn't bother me at all until 4 years ago) even though I'd had it checked out by 2 different doctors and a dermatologist. I was so convinced I had cancer I'd even looked into how to make a will as I was certain that I was going to die within 12 months. However, I eventually recovered from that too, and I've still got that mark on my body today but it doesn't bother me now at all.

I just wish that even if you don't believe what we are saying is true (that you have OCD), then for you to at least accept our advice and start putting into practice some of our suggestions. You don't believe that you have OCD and that's OK because when we are at our worst none of us believe we have it. All you have to do now is entertain the possibility that you MIGHT have it, and start putting into practice some of the techniques you've learned such as cutting down on your compulsions, challenging core beliefs and doing ERP. Only by doing that will you have the clarity needed to properly see things the way that they are. Trust us when we say that we've seen it all before and know what we are talking about.

Also, please see your GP. I still think you are overstating the risk of going to your GP about this in terms of your future job, believing that if you do so then your entire career will be ruined which is obviously not true, but you believing that is to be expected given your current mental state.

Edited by Lynz
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1 hour ago, PolarBear said:

See you keep looking for other reasons why, when you have THE reason why staring you right in the face. It's OCD. Of course it feels real. The thoughts come from your own brain, where all other thoughts and feelings come from. Whst makes it much, much worse is your persistent performing of compulsions, notably ruminating.

Let's face it, you think about this non-stop. You continually reinforce the belief you did something wrong, even though there is no evidence you did. All that thinking does you absolutely no good. It just pushes you deeper and deeper into the hole. All that ruminating also makes this minor situation seem like a huge deal. 

 

2 hours ago, hedvig said:

I think what we need to challenge is the binary thinking: good/bad, innocent/guilty. It is possible to change this! I like the saying that accepting ourselves and our history is the bravest thing we’ll ever do. You can get past this (I know because I did) and you can begin to like yourself again but you have got to give yourself a chance. 

53 minutes ago, taurean said:

And for me, who has read many such similar stories, the actual intense feeling that it must be real is, in fact, the proof that it is all just OCD.

Because that is exactly how OCD works. And by looking at it this way we can actually turn the tables on OCD - use what the illness suggests as the proof OCD is in play :)

For me, such insight represents us clawing back some of the high ground that OCD has stolen from us. 

50 minutes ago, Lynz said:

There is absolutely a reason, Headwreck. It's called OCD.

OCD can convince you of absolutely anything. In my worst moments, and you can check my past threads I made years ago, I was 100% convinced I was transgender and that for my entire life I'd been lying to myself and denying who I really was. This is despite me never having worried about this previously, and that I was a normal female person and was comfortable and happy with myself. Then one day "bang", I got an intrusive thought that I might be transgender after reading about something to do with transgender issues in the news and it was like a switch had been flicked and I was flooded with anxiety. There was nothing you could say to me that would make me change my mind. I was 100% convinced and it was awful. I thought my distress was due to the fact that my family and friends would reject me if they knew the truth, so I "came out" to them all one by one. Even though all of them were accepting of what I was saying to them this didn't make me feel any better at all, in fact it only made me more anxious. Only by realising that what I was doing were compulsions and stopping them did this worry eventually loosen its grip on me.

I also went through another obsession where I was completely convinced that I was a lesbian, which again came from an intrusive thought that popped up when there was a scene in a TV show of two women kissing and I got the thought "what if deep down I'm actually a lesbian and I just don't realise it?". This is despite me never having any interest or attraction to women previously and up until I became obsessed with this I had always fancied men and the thought of liking women had never even occurred to me. I even broke up with my partner because I didn't believe that I was straight anymore (luckily he saw it was OCD and stuck around, and we got back together as I started to recover). But now that I've recovered from that and other obsessions I look back and can see that they were 100% OCD, and it feels like what happened to me happened to someone else.

In other obsessions I've had for example I've been utterly convinced that a mark on my body was skin cancer (a birth mark that didn't bother me at all until 4 years ago) even though I'd had it checked out by 2 different doctors and a dermatologist. I was so convinced I had cancer I'd even looked into how to make a will as I was certain that I was going to die within 12 months. However, I eventually recovered from that too, and I've still got that mark on my body today but it doesn't bother me now at all.

I just wish that even if you don't believe what we are saying is true (that you have OCD), then for you to at least accept our advice and start putting into practice some of our suggestions. You don't believe that you have OCD and that's OK because when we are at our worst none of us believe we have it. All you have to do now is entertain the possibility that you MIGHT have it, and start putting into practice some of the techniques you've learned such as cutting down on your compulsions, challenging core beliefs and doing ERP. Only by doing that will you have the clarity needed to properly see things the way that they are. Trust us when we say that we've seen it all before and know what we are talking about.

Also, please see your GP. I still think you are overstating the risk of going to your GP about this in terms of your future job, believing that if you do so then your entire career will be ruined which is obviously not true, but you believing that is to be expected given your current mental state.

Thank you everyone, it means a lot. It must be really frustrating to keep going over the same ground so again I'm sorry.

Can I just ask though, everyone else seems to just know that in certain situations it's their OCD, did everyone else struggle to believe it? Is that a 'thing' to not believe it so adamantly? For me I know I have it a little bit re checking and random panics about random things that last a few hours but others see as stupid or funny, but this seems like another level.

I know I have to do something about this but I'm scared it will mess the new career up. They made me see a psychiatrist and they basically portrayed it to me as anything reported within the next two years will be classed as relapse.

Edited by Headwreck
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