Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Okay so I don’t even know where to start without sounding a little mad. My thoughts normally revolve around harm of sexual thoughts around my daughter. I’m slowly starting to tackle them and I was having some me time. I was watching a comedy gig where they just mentioned how he used to work in a special needs school and one kid had got a bit angry and hooked his finger into his eye and scratched all of it. My reaction to it was god I bet that was painful and that was it. A few hours later I then had this awful intrusive thought of poking my daughter in the eye which that joke had triggered off!! 

Why did it pick such a random trigger, am I just stark raving mad or do I put this down to another silly ocd thought. The strong urge to do the compulsion of poking her in the eye is awful and I’ve found myself having to clench my hands a lot to stop myself going to do the urge as obviously I don’t want to hurt my little girl at all!

im also annoyed because every time I see that comedian anywhere now it literally just throws the thought at me. My mind is really stressing me out now and ruining my life

Link to comment

No, it's not strange, it's just OCD doing its tedious thing. And don't 'blame' the comedian ... keep in mind, with OCD life is a trigger. 

BTW the trigger isn't the problem, though the disorder will tell you otherwise - it's your reaction, or non-reaction,  that counts. 

Edited by paradoxer
Link to comment
7 hours ago, muddledmother said:

Why did it pick such a random trigger,

It didn't pick a random trigger at all.  Your primary anxiety is harming your daughter, that is what your brain has learned, because of OCD to focus on.  That increases the possibility that new input, such as the comedians comment, will end up being connected to your primary trigger. 

Think about it like this:  have you ever bought something, say a new car, or a new jacket, or some such and suddenly you start to notice that thing around you a lot?  Or maybe its something related to your job.  One summer I worked part time delivering mail for the postal service in the US (where I am from).  During and for awhile after that summer I noticed mail boxes a lot.  Now those mailboxes had pretty much always been there, so why hadn't i noticed them before?  Because my brain wasn't attuned to them.  We are more likely to notice things that have importance to us for one reason or another than we are to notice things unconnected or uninteresting to us.  You're more likely to notice a song you like if you hear it playing in a shopping center than notice a song you don't care about.  Your ears are still hearing the same thing but your mind processes the input differently.  Or for a more simple example consider your own name.  If you are in a crowded room and you hear your own name aren't you more likely to pay attention than if you hear someone else name?  Thats just how our brains work, they process all input and try to surface the most relevant information to our conscious minds.    The reason compulsions are bad for OCD is because they reinforce the connections in our minds between the unwanted thought and our believe that those thoughts are important.  And so those thoughts keep coming back because at a basic level our brain has learned "this thought is important, better raise an alert for it!"  But its a false alarm.

And yes, perhaps for awhile at least, the comedian will trigger your unwanted thought, because a connection has been made between those two things.  But the thought doesn't matter.  Its junk.  Your recovery requires you to work on treating the thought as junk and not giving in to the compulsions when you experience it, such as analyzing, ruminating or checking.

Meanwhile I understand what you are feeling.  Though the situation was a little different I have been at the point where my OCD has tricked me in to believing that if I didn't ACTIVELY control and hold myself back I might do something terrible.  That was the false belief that OCD tricked me into buying in to.  The reality was I was never just going to "lose control" and do something like that, and the proof was that eventually I would slip out of my panicked mode and get distracted and even though I was no longer putting in the effort to "control" myself I never actually did anything.  It was all a lie, a hoax.  It was only fear.  I was in complete control of my actions no matter how anxious I became.  The same is true for you.  I know you FEEL like you might lose control, you are afraid of that possibility but its not a real through, i its just more OCD noise, more doubt.

Link to comment
6 hours ago, paradoxer said:

No, it's not strange, it's just OCD doing its tedious thing. And don't 'blame' the comedian ... keep in mind, with OCD life is a trigger. 

BTW the trigger isn't the problem, though the disorder will tell you otherwise - it's your reaction, or non-reaction,  that counts. 

No that is true, it’s frustrating that my OCD has picked at this because I was watching comedy as a way to relax away from the thoughts and now it’s gone and made a new scenario. I struggle with not reacting to the thought, it’s something I think I need to tackle for sure. 

 

3 hours ago, dksea said:

It didn't pick a random trigger at all.  Your primary anxiety is harming your daughter, that is what your brain has learned, because of OCD to focus on.  That increases the possibility that new input, such as the comedians comment, will end up being connected to your primary trigger. 

Think about it like this:  have you ever bought something, say a new car, or a new jacket, or some such and suddenly you start to notice that thing around you a lot?  Or maybe its something related to your job.  One summer I worked part time delivering mail for the postal service in the US (where I am from).  During and for awhile after that summer I noticed mail boxes a lot.  Now those mailboxes had pretty much always been there, so why hadn't i noticed them before?  Because my brain wasn't attuned to them.  We are more likely to notice things that have importance to us for one reason or another than we are to notice things unconnected or uninteresting to us.  You're more likely to notice a song you like if you hear it playing in a shopping center than notice a song you don't care about.  Your ears are still hearing the same thing but your mind processes the input differently.  Or for a more simple example consider your own name.  If you are in a crowded room and you hear your own name aren't you more likely to pay attention than if you hear someone else name?  Thats just how our brains work, they process all input and try to surface the most relevant information to our conscious minds.    The reason compulsions are bad for OCD is because they reinforce the connections in our minds between the unwanted thought and our believe that those thoughts are important.  And so those thoughts keep coming back because at a basic level our brain has learned "this thought is important, better raise an alert for it!"  But its a false alarm.

And yes, perhaps for awhile at least, the comedian will trigger your unwanted thought, because a connection has been made between those two things.  But the thought doesn't matter.  Its junk.  Your recovery requires you to work on treating the thought as junk and not giving in to the compulsions when you experience it, such as analyzing, ruminating or checking.

Meanwhile I understand what you are feeling.  Though the situation was a little different I have been at the point where my OCD has tricked me in to believing that if I didn't ACTIVELY control and hold myself back I might do something terrible.  That was the false belief that OCD tricked me into buying in to.  The reality was I was never just going to "lose control" and do something like that, and the proof was that eventually I would slip out of my panicked mode and get distracted and even though I was no longer putting in the effort to "control" myself I never actually did anything.  It was all a lie, a hoax.  It was only fear.  I was in complete control of my actions no matter how anxious I became.  The same is true for you.  I know you FEEL like you might lose control, you are afraid of that possibility but its not a real through, i its just more OCD noise, more doubt.

That makes huge sense and is a great way to explain it, thank you :) The thing most worrying and frustrating for me at the minute is I keep going to act on the compulsion sometimes not realising until the last second, I don’t fwwl I can relax because when I do is when it starts to kick in and I constantly nearly go to do it. I feel like I have to be alert and on watch for my action every second of the day because as soon as I start to slightly relax it kicks in again :/ 

Link to comment

Just wondering how can I stop myself going to do compulsions? I never really got much help from the therapist regarding that side of it when I went to therapy, so I don’t know how to deal with that part. It’s a constant battle as I am always going to do it then stop at the last second, I can’t quite understand why I do it though? 

Link to comment

Hi :)

When you say you don't know how to stop yourself doing compulsions, are you referring to the urge to poke your daughter in the eye? Isn't that what you fear doing rather than a compulsion? It's quite normal for people to feel like they are going to do something when they aren't so don't worry. 

Have you looked at any self-help material? I would recommend Break free from OCD as a good place to learn CBT techniques :)

Link to comment
9 hours ago, Gemma7 said:

Hi :)

When you say you don't know how to stop yourself doing compulsions, are you referring to the urge to poke your daughter in the eye? Isn't that what you fear doing rather than a compulsion? It's quite normal for people to feel like they are going to do something when they aren't so don't worry. 

Have you looked at any self-help material? I would recommend Break free from OCD as a good place to learn CBT techniques :)

Hiya yeah that’s what I mean, it’s as if I’m going to go ahead and do it and then at the last minute it’s like my mind goes, nope and then that’s it but it’s on a loop over and over again. 

Ive actually just purchased that book as lots of people has recommend it to me so will start giving it a read :) 

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...