Riddled with guilt

[dksea]

Hi Luke, sorry to hear you are having a hard time.
 

On 13/03/2019 at 02:11, CoolHandLuke said:

Right now, I feel like no one cares. And, nobody cares because they think I'm a bad person.

This is an example of the black and white thinking that people who struggle with OCD often engage in.  The problem with such thinking is it traps you in to a false either/or situation.  

You said "nobody cares BECAUSE they think I'm a bad person".  

Yes, this is technically a possibility, but its not the ONLY possibility.
Maybe nobody cares because they don't think what you did is worth worrying this much over?
Or maybe they do care, but don't have time to respond right away?
Or maybe they do care, but they are trying to think of how best to help you?
Or maybe they do care, and they are trying not to feed your OCD with reassurance?

There are lots of possibilities here, so asserting that "they think I'm a bad person" is true doesn't make sense.
I'd also point out that people are taking the time out of their lives to respond to you here on this forum, and your therapist is helping you, etc.  Clearly people do care, not about the incident, but about helping you!

 

On 13/03/2019 at 02:11, CoolHandLuke said:

I just do know. I can't revisit back in time and relive the situation.

Exactly, you can't change the past.  You can learn from it, you can decide to act differently because of it, you can try and make amends to the person if you know them by apologizing for it, but you don't help yourself or anyone else by punishing yourself severely or indefinitely for something that is relatively minor.  I think you should read PolarBears question and answer him, he's very knowledgable about OCD and can offer good insight.

 

[CoolHandLuke]

On 13/03/2019 at 16:12, PolarBear said:

What eould you do if one of your parents, a sibling or your best friend told you thry decided to punish themselves forever just in case they did something wrong? Don't relate it to yourself. Answer my question as it pertains to them. What would you say?

I would tell them to stop punishing themselves over something that likely didn't happen.

[BigDave]

OCD has a way of questioning your own judgement. It makes you think that you have no ability to make the right call or that you make lots of mistakes.

My best example is with contamination OCD. I can be walking past a bin and then stop and think - wait? Did I touch that? I don't think I did but what if? 

You were drunk. You tapped someone on the bottom. You didn't grope them or molest them. I'm not saying it's the most advisable thing in the world and I'd recommend not doing it in the future but I think you can let this one go now. It's relatively minor.

[CoolHandLuke]

On 12/03/2019 at 23:53, PolarBear said:

Luke, you are far from the first person I've talked to with this theme. Heard it plenty of times. 

You aren't thinking clearly. No one in the throes of OCD does. You are punishing yourself just in case you did something wrong. That's a fact. Seen many people do that.

Your mind can come up with thoughts that make you believe you did something hideous and completely out of character. That's bad enough but you make it so much worse by doing compulsions.

You say you can't be sure either way. True with all with this theme. Here's the thing... you won't come any closer to knowing by doing more compulsions.

So are you saying that if you don’t think you’ve done something wrong I.e. that it is pretty likely that it wasn’t someone young because it would be so out of character then I should use that as my guidance and not think of the absolute worst? I mean even in my own mind, I’m pretty sure I could have made a reasonable judgement and wouldn’t have done anything so stupid. Is it really the OCD putting me in doubt of myself? It probably is but I’m just thinking. 

[PolarBear]

7 hours ago, CoolHandLuke said:

I would tell them to stop punishing themselves over something that likely didn't happen.

Exactly. So why treat yourself differently? We tend to be much more critical of ourselves.

[CoolHandLuke]

11 minutes ago, PolarBear said:

Exactly. So why treat yourself differently? We tend to be much more critical of ourselves.

It’s fair. I mean I’m 99.9% sure it didn’t happen. I just can’t handle the lack of certainty. 

[PolarBear]

I know Luke. OCD sufferers have an aversion to uncertainty. You can live with it and not doing compulsions, over time, changes the uncertain feeling to a less severe state.

[CoolHandLuke]

16 minutes ago, PolarBear said:

I know Luke. OCD sufferers have an aversion to uncertainty. You can live with it and not doing compulsions, over time, changes the uncertain feeling to a less severe state.

To be honest, the more I think about it, the more certain I am I would never have misjudged and I think I just panicked because of hearing about the R Kelly thing and thought - am I like him? I know I’m not though. I think I am really susceptible to the news though and the fact that stuff like that disgusts me made me all the more terrified I could be like that. I mean it truly disgusts me. Does that make sense?

[PolarBear]

Oh yeah. Every sufferer has their 'thing' that sets them off. Now, go do something fun!