Need a slap upside the head!

[dksea]

9 hours ago, californiadreaming said:

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?

No, you only THINK you can be certain because your brain triggers the right reaction and lets you believe so. You believed those three pieces of data but what if there was some grand conspiracy against you and it was all faked?  You don’t worry about that because the odds against it are laughingly small. Unfortunately for you, even though the odds are probably also incredibly small in this case OCD has caused your brain not to be able to let this worry go. The same process that lets you be sure before is malfunctioning. That’s how OCD works, sometimes it lets you be sure, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s not fun, it’s not fair, but you can learn to deal with it. 

But checking won’t help. Checking bank accounts and GPS data and the like, non-OCD people don’t do that. Heck OCD people like me who don’t have your particular intrusive thought don’t do that. It’s unhealthy behavior that reinforces the OCD. 

If you want to get past this, if you want to overcome the OCD and resolve this anxiety you NEED to accept that you are going to feel doubt about it. You need to let that doubt be and not engage in all this checking.  No matter how many what ifs you come back with the solution is not going to change. You can keep checking and confessing and all that if you want, that’s up to you, but it won’t fix the problem, it will just make it worse, and probably make your life worse in the long run too.  Bet the odds, the odds say, overwhelmingly, that this is OCD.  Take the chance at $1 million, stop focusing on the stun gun.

 

[californiadreaming]

You’re right. I’ve spent over 24 hours looking at these photos and I still don’t know for sure. 

[PolarBear]

So what are you going to do?

[californiadreaming]

Stop. My SO even caught me doing it and asked some questions (he doesn’t know how to handle my OCD as well) and he looked at me and said “I can’t even see anything, I’d let it go.” So I’m going to try.