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Need a slap upside the head!


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Hi all, I’ve been doing very well over the past few months. Therapy has been great and we are just doing check-ins these days. 

You are going to laugh at my latest compulsion because it sounds insane. I have been obsessed with the fear I’ve cheated on my SO in the past with an ex. 

So, I downloaded a program that can show satellite pictures from space on certain dates. I couldn’t find the particular date i was worried about, so I started using professional software and I have no clue how to use it. 

I’m specifically looking to see if my car was parked outside of his house. To be honest, it’s really hard to see what cars are in the photos due to it being quite literally a picture taken from space.

My mind keeps telling me to exhaust all resources, but I know I shouldn’t do it :(

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No definetly not, this will keep you stuck :(

You need to uninstall the app and learn to live with the uncertainty of never knowing, it’s in the past and you need to let it go, you will never find the answer you seek no matter how much searching you do. 

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1 hour ago, californiadreaming said:

But I just worry that there IS a way I can find out and I’m ignoring it to make myself feel better.

Installing/using an app to spy on yourself is not a normal reaction, its OCD.  You need to stop, you are not helping yourself.  You will never be able to silence the "what ifs" this way.  You can waste the rest of your life doing things like this to try and disprove something that almost certainly didn't happen OR you can do the work to get better and lead a normal, reasonable life.  Don't choose the OCD path, its never going to bring you happiness, no matter how much searching you do.

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2 hours ago, PolarBear said:

 

Come on over. I'll give you a good, swift kick for free.

 

Can I have one too :), slipped today with googling but reigned it in.

California - everyone is spot on here, delete the program, it’s a huge compulsion and it will keep you stuck. 

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Well, I found something. I found my car parked outside my ex’s a few days before my SO and I became official. We were definitely seeing each other at this time. I’m not sure how to bring this up to him. I’m not saying this to he dramatic, I am looking at the photo of my car right now.

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Ok, I’m trying to breathe. I can’t be 100% sure it’s my car as it’s blurry. Also - on this particular day, I was playing sports during the afternoon and could not be there.

He was also at a concert. At some angles it really looks like my car. I had a particular sticker on it which looks like it has it on some angles and not on others.

I feel like it’s not OCD if you actually find something. Help!

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57 minutes ago, californiadreaming said:

Ok, I’m trying to breathe. I can’t be 100% sure it’s my car as it’s blurry. Also - on this particular day, I was playing sports during the afternoon and could not be there.

You can't be 100% sure.  You will never be able to be 100%.  Its completely impossible to be 100% sure.  OCD is trying to make you believe you need to be 100% sure.  Thats a lie.  You don't.
 

58 minutes ago, californiadreaming said:

I feel like it’s not OCD if you actually find something. Help!

Of course its OCD.  OCD doesn't mean "I fear things that are completely imaginary and have no basis in reality whatsoever and I can never find anything remotely related to it".  OCD means "I am overreacting to something."

People have OCD related anxieties about real things all the time.  Take a person with contamination OCD.  They panic at the thought of touching a toilet handle because it might contain germs, and if they touch something afterwards they will spread those germs, and everything will be contaminated with those germs.  Well they are 100% right!  A toilet handle almost certainly has germs and touching it will almost certainly cause you to spread those germs.  The problem is not what they fear, which in this case is real, its the perceived level of threat and their response that is out of line.  So what if they spread some germs from a toilet handle?  The degree to which they are spreading germs is minuscule and the effect it has on the real world and their lives is basically meaningless.  Germs are all around us, you can't avoid them completely.

Or take my own example.  I was having OCD anxiety about possibly having a heart attack.  Why?  Because I was feeling real pain in my chest.  It wasn't anything related to my heart though, it wasn't in the remotely right place for one thing, and I didn't have a heart attack for another.  But the pain I felt was still real.  I had very clearly found "something" as you put it.  But that didn't mean my fear was true nor that my reaction was reasonable.

So what if you found something that even you can't possibly conclude is your car (delete the program)?  So what if it IS your car.  There are an insane number of possible reasons for you to see a car that may or may not be a car in the vicinity of your ex's house.  You can spend the rest of your life torturing yourself about something that might have happened but even you can't remember or you can do the reasonable thing, assume it DIDNT happen and move on with your life?  No good is going to come from constantly analyzing this situation and trying to prove something you will almost certainly never be able to prove.  If you want to make your SO's life better, make your own life better by fighting the OCD.  Then both you and he will be able to enjoy life.  Or you can keep wasting it on ridiculous obsessions involving satellite pictures.  Ultimately the choice is yours.  I hope you make the right one.

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10 hours ago, californiadreaming said:

I cant stop thinking about it. What if it is my car and I was doing something bad?

What if its not?  What if you are confessing for no reason?  What if you are wasting your life worrying about something meaningless?

You CAN stop thinking about it, but thats not as important as stop REACTING to the thought.  You have to choose to believe its just a garbage thought, just a meaningless thought that OCD is amplifying.  You have to accept that you will feel doubt about this for awhile.  Telling him won't help, it will just perpetuate your anxiety.  You might feel temporary relief, but it will just reinforce the connection in your brain between this thought and the anxiety.  You need to treat the thought as meaningless junk EVEN THOUGH you still think it might be true.  As an outside person looking  in, a person without your particular OCD worry I'm telling you, your reactions to this thought are not healthy, they are not rational.  Trust me when I tell you that you are allowing the OCD to blow this WAY out of proportion.

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13 hours ago, californiadreaming said:

I think I need to tell him what I’m worried about. He can tell I’m having a moment and was so sweet and cooked me dinner. I feel like i am a horrible cheater and don’t deserve it.

The fact that you're asking, ruminating, cogitating on this in an OCD forum, should be a clue. Otherwise, just take it to some 'ethics' forum. 

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Thanks, I’m just concerned because i had a sticker on the back of my old car. In only one of the photos, I can see a white blob on the window which kinda looks like the sticker but I’m not sure. On all the other angles, it’s not there.

Also, I was busy this day during the time the photo was taken (I think - I cant be sure of the time), but I’m still scared this is my car because of the sticker.

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Stop looking at the photos! Stop it! 

Looking and analyzing and rumimating over this are compulsions and they are keeping you stuck. 

You have a choice to make: do you want to continue down this path where certainty is absent or do you want to get well?

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10 hours ago, californiadreaming said:

I can’t let go of the small chance in the one picture that it IS my car.

Sure you can.  You do it all the time every day of your life for other things too.  Letting go of small chances and living instead of obsessing over them is how life works.  You let go of the small chance you might get in a car accident instead of never getting in a car again.  You let go of the small chance that you'll choke on a piece of food instead of never eating again.  And in this case you let go of the small chance that it is your car and go on living your life.    

Lets say I randomly choose a number between 1 and 1,000,000.  I write that number down and I put it in an envelope.  Next I give you the chance to choose a number.  If you choose any number that is DIFFERENT from the one in the envelope I'll give you $1,000,000.  If you choose the same number as me you get no money, i will shoot you with a stun gun, and steal your car. So you've got a 1 in a million chance of having a bad thing happen and 999,999 in a million chance of becoming rich.  One more twist, i'll give you 10 seconds to decide.  After 10 seconds the amount of money will go down by $1000 for every second you take to decide.  In about 17 minutes you'll get no money.  

So, what do you do?  Do you immediately take the deal, walking away with $1,000,000?  Do you walk away because you are afraid of getting shot with a stun gun?  Do you hem and haw as the money slow vanishes?  My guess is you take the chance at $1,000,000 right away.  Why?  Because the odds of it NOT being the bad thing are really really high.  The opportunity cost of taking the chance is clearly in your favor so you go ahead and guess a number.  

Thats life, taking a risk every day in everything you do because you can never be 100% certain about anything.  You can't be certain you won't drop dead of a heart attack in two second.  You can't be certain a meteor won't fall from the sky and destroy your house.  You can't be sure we aren't all living in some fancy alien computer simulation.  You just have to be sure enough about the events in life instead of wasting your time focusing on the least likely scenarios and missing out.

 

10 hours ago, californiadreaming said:

So, I shouldn’t tell him that it could be my car then - yes?

No, don't confess, thats a compulsion.  There is no reason to confess, just like those no reason to assume you'll get struck by lightning the next time you walk out the door.  

 

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Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I think you can be certain in a lot of instances. For example, there was a night i was worried about and I checked my bank, social media, and my SO’s location services and we were definitely there together.

That is where I get stuck - sometimes you CAN be certain. What if that photo was without a doubt my car? What would I do?

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