Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Hello folks. I'm having / had various types of therapy that have been helpful with my ocd and related things. 

However I have one thought and story I tell myself that I just can't get past. I've tried exposure, challenging it, accepting it, compassion work etc etc. It will not budge. It's based in reality (which I think has made it so sticky) and makes me think I'm evil and going to end up in prison. It doesn't stop swimming round in my head and has done for YEARS. I can't see or believe anything round it and have had professionals say that some people can get almost delusion like obsessions. When people challenge it I just don't 'get it'. I don't even think I have compulsions directly related to it anymore, it just goes round and round.

What do you when you feel so stuck? 

Edited by Em00
.
Link to comment

I used to struggle with all sorts of OCD variations that were often not reality based, but now really only stuff that is at least based on something in reality ... some mistake I made or fear I could have made. These are difficult cause you wonder "should I be worried?", "would a non ocd person be worried?".... I mean, people do make mistakes and horrible things happen ... where do you draw the line ?

Sometimes after a while I see that my view on reality is a bit distorted towards the catastrophic side of things :-)

Sometimes I am lucky to find some piece of evidence that convinces me that my mistake was not that bad and I can break the loop long enough for it to stop. I guess this latter behavior is not helpful in the long run.

Will be interested to see what advise you get here ....

Maybe your compulsion is to think about it obsessively in a endless loop ....

Edited by Flipfix
Link to comment
2 hours ago, Flipfix said:

Maybe your compulsion is to think about it obsessively in a endless loop ....

In OCD some of us do experience these loops of repetitive intrusive thoughts and they can be :

low frequency 

regular 

continual. 

With my OCD, the intrusive thoughts on my, harm, theme would for no apparent reason suddenly become problematic, and form a continuous rolling loop. The episode of duration originally might be a few hours, but eventually such an episode might go on for weeks. 

CBT was fine at helping me understand that the OCD was attacking my core character values of love and care and suggesting I might act opposite to them. But did nothing to stop the repeating thoughts in my mental chatter. 

Eventually, thanks to help from a therapist and other members here, I learned how to stop, then ease them away. 

Self-love and self-forgiveness is the first step. Only the OCD is telling you and I that we are bad, we should be punished. And OCD lies. 

Our true character values, which the OCD is challenging, are the truth - the OCD the falsehood. 

So by stopping hating ourselves for having the thoughts - for which we are not responsible - we rebuild self-love and confidence. 

Then I learned how to ease my thinking out of the active "doing" part of the brain - where all the obsessing, compulsing and repetitive thinking takes place - and into the benign just "being"  part of the brain, where our focus is purely in the present in the moment, and away from obsessing and compulsing and into mindfulness. 

By putting in the homework to practice this switch of focus I learned to enter that state of mindfulness, and the looping thoughts stopped. 

CBT was insufficient on its own. Additionally I needed love kindness meditation and mindfulness to be able to stop, and shift focus away from, the constantly-repeating thoughts. 

 

Link to comment
1 hour ago, taurean said:

In OCD some of us do experience these loops of repetitive intrusive thoughts and they can be :

low frequency 

regular 

continual. 

With my OCD, the intrusive thoughts on my, harm, theme would for no apparent reason suddenly become problematic, and form a continuous rolling loop. The episode of duration originally might be a few hours, but eventually such an episode might go on for weeks. 

CBT was fine at helping me understand that the OCD was attacking my core character values of love and care and suggesting I might act opposite to them. But did nothing to stop the repeating thoughts in my mental chatter. 

Eventually, thanks to help from a therapist and other members here, I learned how to stop, then ease them away. 

Self-love and self-forgiveness is the first step. Only the OCD is telling you and I that we are bad, we should be punished. And OCD lies. 

Our true character values, which the OCD is challenging, are the truth - the OCD the falsehood. 

So by stopping hating ourselves for having the thoughts - for which we are not responsible - we rebuild self-love and confidence. 

Then I learned how to ease my thinking out of the active "doing" part of the brain - where all the obsessing, compulsing and repetitive thinking takes place - and into the benign just "being"  part of the brain, where our focus is purely in the present in the moment, and away from obsessing and compulsing and into mindfulness. 

By putting in the homework to practice this switch of focus I learned to enter that state of mindfulness, and the looping thoughts stopped. 

CBT was insufficient on its own. Additionally I needed love kindness meditation and mindfulness to be able to stop, and shift focus away from, the constantly-repeating thoughts. 

 

Thanks for the insights !

I can understand how this would help for the sort of "what if I drop my baby" type of OCD situation. I had a small phase like this where I started thinking that I was going to unconsously steal something, but I was able to get out of it fairly quickly ... don't really remember how. Probably some other obsession came along.

I have bigger problems with a situation like : I rent a car on holidays, bang the tires accidentally into the curb a bit .. nothing really serious. Now I know this , when done vigorously enough, can cause invisible damage to the tire. So of course images of innocent families dying in the rental car, cause I could have damaged the tire, start to haunt me. Then I start to obsessively debate with my self ... Is it ok? , should I tell about the incident when dropping the car of? It was a real incident, but am I exaggerating it? was it that bad?  don't want to spend my life owning up to everything, but what if ... and on and on.

Of course in the situations where I give in and do own up, invariably, no body cares or they look a bit puzzled.

Is the solution to say? "Rationaly it's possible but seems fairly unlikely ..... Being alive is risky. Live with that you might harm someone".

Edited by Flipfix
Link to comment
24 minutes ago, Flipfix said:

Thanks for the insights !

I can understand how this would help for the sort of "what if I drop my baby" type of OCD situation. I had a small phase like this where I started thinking that I was going to unconsously steal something, but I was able to get out of it fairly quickly ... don't really remember how. Probably some other obsession came along.

I have bigger problems with a situation like : I rent a car on holidays, bang the tires accidentally into the curb a bit .. nothing really serious. Now I know this , when done vigorously enough, can cause invisible damage to the tire. So of course images of innocent families dying in the rental car, cause I could have damaged the tire, start to haunt me. Then I start to obsessively debate with my self ... Is it ok? , should I tell about the incident when dropping the car of? It was a real incident, but am I exaggerating it? was it that bad?  don't want to spend my life owning up to everything, but what if ... and on and on.

Of course in the situations where I give in and do own up, invariably, no body cares or they look a bit puzzled.

Is the solution to say? "Being alive is risky. Live with that you might harm someone".

What you are describing is classic OCD. Doesn't matter what the theme or manifestation, the what ifs and the catastrophic thoughts are OCD. 

You need to see this, understand that is what is going on. 

In the scenario you describe, OCD is taking a not uncommon occurrence and exaggerating and catastrophising along a harm OCD theme. 

Here is another example of this that I experienced as a youth on a school trip to Holland. 

We had bought some cigarette lighters, and in fuelling up my lighter a spot of fuel spilled onto the sheet. 

After the holiday, I suddenly had the intrusive thought "what if the lighter fuel had caused the sheet to catch fire and the whole hotel had burned down?"

This thought tortured me for a few days, and I had the compulsive urge to check if the hotel was still intact!  No Internet then, this was some 50 years ago, so I would have struggled  to do this anyway! 

I didn’t know then that this was OCD. But I did see that the scenario was completely irrational. 

And once I had accepted that, the obsessional thought stopped and faded away. 

It was what I now know was the cognitive side of CBT that brought this about. 

Edited by taurean
Link to comment
1 hour ago, taurean said:

In OCD some of us do experience these loops of repetitive intrusive thoughts and they can be :

low frequency 

regular 

continual. 

With my OCD, the intrusive thoughts on my, harm, theme would for no apparent reason suddenly become problematic, and form a continuous rolling loop. The episode of duration originally might be a few hours, but eventually such an episode might go on for weeks. 

CBT was fine at helping me understand that the OCD was attacking my core character values of love and care and suggesting I might act opposite to them. But did nothing to stop the repeating thoughts in my mental chatter. 

Eventually, thanks to help from a therapist and other members here, I learned how to stop, then ease them away. 

Self-love and self-forgiveness is the first step. Only the OCD is telling you and I that we are bad, we should be punished. And OCD lies. 

Our true character values, which the OCD is challenging, are the truth - the OCD the falsehood. 

So by stopping hating ourselves for having the thoughts - for which we are not responsible - we rebuild self-love and confidence. 

Then I learned how to ease my thinking out of the active "doing" part of the brain - where all the obsessing, compulsing and repetitive thinking takes place - and into the benign just "being"  part of the brain, where our focus is purely in the present in the moment, and away from obsessing and compulsing and into mindfulness. 

By putting in the homework to practice this switch of focus I learned to enter that state of mindfulness, and the looping thoughts stopped. 

CBT was insufficient on its own. Additionally I needed love kindness meditation and mindfulness to be able to stop, and shift focus away from, the constantly-repeating thoughts. 

 

I understand the logic of all the cbt, obsessive thoughts, being kind to yourself, everyone makes mistakes, you can't change things etc etc and the great advice I've read on here. I just can't seem to FEEL it. I can see it can apply to others but I'm irredeemable. ? I get the slightest bit of movement on it with compassion work and mindfulness, but it's only ever fleeting. It's really relentless and has been for years. My brain constantly wants to find meaning in it which I'm constantly trying to let go of. I think if it's 'just' ocd surely it should let up a bit. I really have problems seeing any other truth in it. 

In some ways it's kind of comforting you saying about repetitive loops. I will, of course, continue to try and let it go. Even writing all this my head is yelling 'it's not ocd, you're bad'. It's hard. 

Link to comment
14 minutes ago, taurean said:

What you are describing is classic OCD. Doesn't matter what the theme or manifestation, the what ifs and the catastrophic thoughts are OCD. 

You need to see this, understand that is what is going on. 

In the scenario you describe, OCD is taking a not uncommon occurrence and exaggerating and catastrophising along a harm OCD theme. 

Here is another example of this that I experienced as a youth on a school trip to Holland. 

We had bought some cigarette lighters, and in fuelling up my lighter a spot of fuel spilled onto the sheet. 

After the holiday, I suddenly had the intrusive thought "what if the lighter fuel had caused the sheet to catch fire and the whole hotel had burned down?"

This thought tortured me for a few days, and I had the compulsive urge to check if the hotel was still intact!  No Internet then, this was some 50 years ago, so I would have struggled  to do this anyway! 

I didn’t know then that this was OCD. But I did see that the scenario was completely irrational. 

And once I had accepted that, the obsessional thought stopped and faded away. 

It was what I now know was the cognitive side of CBT that brought this about. 

But thing, is I am not sure my scenario is irrational. The tire manufacturers will warn about going over curbs etc. I am not even sure, at least in the moment, if I am exaggerating. Only thing I know is that most people would not be worried ... But then I arrogantly think that this is just  blissfull ignorance.

 

Can certainly relate to the lighter situation.

By the way ; sorry, for kindoff highjacking thread. Not sure how related our issues are.

Edited by Flipfix
Link to comment

We have to be bold and let those thoughts be. When we listen to them they hurt us. When we become resilient enough to ignore them, knowing that OCD is behind the you are bad etc thoughts, and learn to refocus away, is how we get better. 

OCD intrusions strengthen when they get attention, but gradually weaken when they don't. 

 

Link to comment
4 minutes ago, Flipfix said:

But thing, is I am not sure my scenario is irrational. The tire manufacturers will warm about going over curbs etc. I am not even sure, at least in the moment, if I am exaggerating. Only thing I know is that most people would not be worried ... But then I arrogantly think that this is just  blissfull ignorance.

By the way ; sorry, for kindoff highjacking thread. Not sure how related our issues are.

Most people would not be worried. Hang onto that. 

There is a technique in CBT called "the OCD twin". You choose to represent this twin a significant other you know doesn’t have OCD. 

Don't ask them for reassurance about this - that's an unhelpful compulsion. 

Rather, consider - from how you know they are psychologically - how they would react to such an intrusion as this. 

Then determine to look to take up the same position. 

It's very powerful and has really helped me with such quandaries. 

Link to comment
6 minutes ago, Flipfix said:

By the way ; sorry, for kindoff highjacking thread. Not sure how related our issues are.

It's ok. That's very much the sort of thing I have issues with too. Was just more about the unrelenting chronic nature of it and if I'm missing something. 

Link to comment
1 minute ago, Em00 said:

It's ok. That's very much the sort of thing I have issues with too. Was just more about the unrelenting chronic nature of it and if I'm missing something. 

 I have had stuff go on for months and years. Even things I could not do anything about anyway.

Link to comment

What may also help you both is the concept invented by Jeffrey Schwartz called " The Four Steps ", introduced in his book on OCD called "Brainlock". 

You can find details from previous topics using the search field on the forum. 

Put in The Four Steps, then redefine to content in topic titles only. 

Link to comment
5 minutes ago, taurean said:

Most people would not be worried. Hang onto that. 

There is a technique in CBT called "the OCD twin". You choose to represent this twin a significant other you know doesn’t have OCD. 

Don't ask them for reassurance about this - that's an unhelpful compulsion. 

Rather, consider - from how you know they are psychologically - how they would react to such an intrusion as this. 

Then determine to look to take up the same position. 

It's very powerful and has really helped me with such quandaries. 

Thank you !! That sounds very helpful. Will definitely try that. Indeed being able to discuss on this forum is very helpful !!

Link to comment

The book "Brainlock"  was the first time I found anyone who sensibly explained why our thoughts might lock onto the obsession and repetitively churn, like a needle stuck playing a vinyl record. 

And how we might set about unsticking the stuck transmission in the brain. 

The way to break free is for me rather more, if the thoughts constantly churn. My solution was a combination of CBT, four steps, love kindness meditation and mindfulness. 

It has been working for me now for 18 months. Why? Because I also now have the resilience and fortitude to stop ✋ any intrusion that still makes it through, and immediately refocus away into mindfulness and an involved beneficial subject. 

This stops a thought loop (repetitive recurring thought)  kicking in. 

 

Link to comment

I'll have a look at the book definitely. I'm currently reading on compassion focused therapy and it talks about the complexities of the brain, evolution, the threat system etc. Is that the sort of thing you mean? It is helpful, understanding things. Having Aspergers also it really helps with the logic side of my brain. See, even knowing I'm autistic and knowing that makes me prone to get stuck on things... The obsessions feel so real. ?

Link to comment
17 minutes ago, taurean said:

The book "Brainlock"  was the first time I found anyone who sensibly explained why our thoughts might lock onto the obsession and repetitively churn, like a needle stuck playing a vinyl record. 

And how we might set about unsticking the stuck transmission in the brain. 

The way to break free is for me rather more, if the thoughts constantly churn. My solution was a combination of CBT, four steps, love kindness meditation and mindfulness. 

It has been working for me now for 18 months. Why? Because I also now have the resilience and fortitude to stop ✋ any intrusion that still makes it through, and immediately refocus away into mindfulness and an involved beneficial subject. 

This stops a thought loop (repetitive recurring thought)  kicking in. 

 

It's on the kindle now :-) thanks again !

Link to comment
12 minutes ago, Em00 said:

The obsessions feel so real. ?<span>

Yes, they do indeed ... and presumably are sometimes very, very slightly real ... I guess not real enough to justify the attention we give them.

Link to comment
3 minutes ago, Flipfix said:

Yes, they do indeed ... and presumably are sometimes very, very slightly real ... I guess not real enough to justify the attention we give them.

And I suppose that is the point we're trying to reach - that balance of thinking. 

Link to comment
On 20/10/2018 at 00:19, Em00 said:

And I suppose that is the point we're trying to reach - that balance of thinking. 

I think this sums it up very well .... at least for my situation

 

Link to comment
10 minutes ago, gingerbreadgirl said:

I go on about this article a lot because it really helped me, it might help you as well with what you describe: http://www.ocdspecialists.com/real-event-ocd/

Good article. Thank you :-)

My compulsion is thinking about whether some "perilous" situation that I have caused and which persists indefinitely warrants some action on my part to remedy it. In general there will be some real but probably (but who knows :-)) degligable mistake that I fear could, under unfortunate circumstances, escalate into a catastrophic event for someone.

I think my only solution is to say to myself : it is OCD exaggerating, even if I have my doubts and if I am wrong and whatever actually happens, then so be it. Life is risky. Feels like deciding to be "evil" but I think it's the only way out unless I want to spend my life retroactively making everything perfect so as not to need to worry about it. Perfectionism I think plays a big role here and black and white thinking. 

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...