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Sorry, I'm back. I thought after my last post I should take a break from posting on the forum. I understand that it's annoying to see the same thing posted over and over again.

But, i don't know what to do. I can't tell the difference between ocd thoughts and actual thoughts. It feels like there's no difference. Also, how would I know if I'm in denial about sexual themes? What is it like to be in denial? Why don't I feel back to who I was after a break from this. I don't feel secure in my feelings. It feels like I'm gone and I can't relate to anyone anymore. 

Again, sorry for posting. I'm just a bit confused. 

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Well, I'm not going to engage with your compulsions by answering your questions. It didn't work the last dozen times we tried that so it's very unlikely to work now.

You don't have to believe this is OCD right now. You just have to treat it like it is. First and foremost, you must stop going to those other forums.

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9 hours ago, don't know said:

But, i don't know what to do.

We have told you what to do, treat this as OCD, follow the recovery steps for OCD either on your own or with a therapist.  That includes working to stop ruminating compulsions including trying to "solve" the question of whether your in denial or not.

 

9 hours ago, don't know said:

I can't tell the difference between ocd thoughts and actual thoughts.

There is no such thing as "OCD thoughts".  All thoughts are actual thoughts.  Either you have a thought or you don't.  As soon as you have a thought its an actual thought.  But HAVING a thought doesn't mean a thought is true.  I can have the thought "I am the greatest football player in history!".  But that doesn't mean I could out perform David Beckham on the pitch.  I can have the thought "I can fly!" but it doesn't mean i won't injure myself if I jump off the roof of my house and flap my wings.  I can walk through the forest, hear a noise and think "OMG ITS A BEAR" but it then turns out it was just a rabbit.  We have thoughts all the time, some we choose, some that happen involuntarily, no person on earth can control every thought they have, its functionally impossible.  
OCD doesn't make us have thoughts, OCD makes us dwell on, and worry about, thoughts that happen anyway.  When I was younger I had a brief period where I worried about being gay.  But OCD didn't make me have the thought "What if I'm gay?".  Lots of people have that thought, probably most people at some point or another.  OCD didn't create the thought, it merely latched on to it and made me feel doubt and anxiety about it.  It could have been any thought.  It could have been, "What if everything I touch is contaminated" or "What if my family is injured in a car crash" or "What if i'm a horrible monster".  All these are thoughts that virtually everyone gets from time to time.  The only difference is whether or not that thought gets stuck, THAT is OCD.
OCD doesn't make thoughts, it just affects how we react to thoughts.

There is a saying: "If you think it might be OCD, it probably is."  But that doesn't mean your thought is OCD, it means your REACTION to the thought is driven BY OCD.  So what can you do with that?  You can choose to accept that the anxiety, doubt and fear you feel is from OCD, not legitimate worry.  You can choose to treat your doubts and fears as not worth spending time on.  You can choose to accept that sometimes you have thoughts that you don't want, but that doesn't mean the thought is true or it says anything about your deeper self.  You can CHOOSE not to continue ruminating on these thoughts, to accept that they aren't important and that you are allowed to move on with your life.  Yes the thoughts make you uncomfortable but you don't have to respond.  Just as a smoker feels like they NEED a cigarette you feel like these questions NEED to be answered.  And just like the smoker can live without the cigarette, probably better than with it, you can live without "solving" these thoughts.  It might feel hard at first, but you can do it.  That is what you do.

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Hi I don’t think you should apologise . This is after all a mental health forum where we all struggle and if posting numerous times helps then so be it !!I’m sure people mean well but I’m not sure if I agree with some of the hard line approach that I often see on here. Advice is easy to give when your coming from a Better place. As much as I agree reassurance is a very bad idea to give somebody with ocd they still need to feel understood so the only advice I can give you is just try to accept your thoughts instead of fighting them. Easy for me to say!! It’s only taken me 20 years but  I to suffer with sexual themes and I always needed to have them resolved which just made them 100x worse . I now except that I will have ocd for ever and these horrible thoughts will always be there but I have more piece of mind this way than ever before. It’s not easy but it dose get easier. Stay strong ?  

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Yeah, I just don't know. I feel as though I don't match up with anyone and I'm just genuinly confused over this. I don't want to do these things but again why would they be there. I was in one of my classes and they were talking about repression and they said that it builds up until you can't ignore it anymore. Is this me? I don't know my real feelings anymore. Am I into all this stuff and I'm not acknowledging it? I was also watching something that had one of my 'triggers' and I felt really conscious of all my movements and everything. I felt like people were thinking that was me. I don't know really. 

I understand how frustrating it is to see me constantly posting. But, the thing is having ocd doesn't necessarily mean that this is why it is happening. It's like even the touch of something makes me go into questioning - doesn't matter who it is. I thought I had gotten over this! I don't know my feelings anymore and I'm scared. 

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2 hours ago, bluegas said:

Hi I don’t think you should apologise . This is after all a mental health forum where we all struggle and if posting numerous times helps then so be it !!I’m sure people mean well but I’m not sure if I agree with some of the hard line approach that I often see on here. Advice is easy to give when your coming from a Better place. As much as I agree reassurance is a very bad idea to give somebody with ocd they still need to feel understood so the only advice I can give you is just try to accept your thoughts instead of fighting them. Easy for me to say!! It’s only taken me 20 years but  I to suffer with sexual themes and I always needed to have them resolved which just made them 100x worse . I now except that I will have ocd for ever and these horrible thoughts will always be there but I have more piece of mind this way than ever before. It’s not easy but it dose get easier. Stay strong ?  

Well, bluegas...

You say 'if posting numerous times helps...' It doesn't. Not in this way. And how numerous is too numerous? I've been around for five years and I can tell you that there are people posting the same things today as they were five years ago. And hundreds of times in between. They're stuck. We want to get them unstuck and out of their OCD cycle. Those of us who have been here a while can recognize when someone is spinning their wheels and we urge them to change course.

Reassurance is bad. Period. In the beginning, a little is okay but at some point, after X months or years, as a helper, you have to realize you are enabling the disorder and not helping the sufferer.

Hardline? I suppose. Know that every person here was or is a sufferer. We were all the hamster on the OCD wheel. And our words never come with anger. We do this because we want to help. And because we know there is a way out. I talk very plainly and factually. It's not what some people want to hear. I try to tell them what they need to hear.

It's too bad you think you'll suffer forever. It doesn't have to be that way.

Edited by PolarBear
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Yeah, sorry for wasting everyones time. I don't know anything anymore. I never feel like this is ocd. It feels like this is who I am. I don't know, maybe it was repression and now this is what I have to do now. Or do I actually want to do those things? I don't know. A family member hugged me and I felt something, that I backed away quickly.

I'm trying to see the difference between me and someone who's into this type of stuff. I don't activiely think this stuff or 'like' it. So, it would mean that I'm not into it. But, others have suddenly felt into it or felt empty or asexual until they got off to the idea of it. Is that me? 

I hate this! I wish I had some type of anxiety because I don't and it feels real. Why am I saying it feels it probably is and I don't know what to do. I don't want to do these things but is that what I'm supposed to say? You know people don't know until a lot later and they think they are normal. Was that me? Also I keep getting 'groinal responses' it doesn't feel like arousal but it happens instantly and is different. Was I feeling arousal differently? Was I blinded by society expectations? I could honestly not say. I'm a freak, and I'm sorry for wasting everyone's time. 

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2 hours ago, don't know said:

Yeah, I just don't know.

This is what OCD does, it fills us with doubt.

 

2 hours ago, don't know said:

I feel as though I don't match up with anyone and I'm just genuinly confused over this.

Again, very common in OCD, more doubt.  "But my situation isn't the same..." is a common refrain heard from people with OCD who doubt they have OCD.

 

3 hours ago, don't know said:

I don't want to do these things but again why would they be there.

Also perfectly common thinking in someone with OCD.  You are making a faulty conclusion: Having these thoughts means X.  You are ascribing meaning to something without considering the myriad of other possibilities.  Black and white thinking.  Very typical in OCD.
 

3 hours ago, don't know said:

I understand how frustrating it is to see me constantly posting. But, the thing is having ocd doesn't necessarily mean that this is why it is happening. It's like even the touch of something makes me go into questioning - doesn't matter who it is. I thought I had gotten over this! I don't know my feelings anymore and I'm scared. 

I understand how frustrating and scary this can be, pretty much all of us here do, because we have been there.  Any frustration we feel is not because you post a lot, its because we want you to feel better, we want to help you, but we keep seeing you choose the path that leads to more suffering.

Its like this, you are standing in a hallway.  Trapped.  Its hot, its loud, its uncomfortable.  You want to get out!  There are two doors, one to your left, one to your right.  The one to your left has no obstacles in front of it, nothing in the way, all you have to do is walk through it.  The one to your right is harder to get to, you have to climb over some obstacles, do some physical work, it looks hard.  Which door should you choose? It seems obvious right?  But we are in the crowd, we are telling you, desperately shouting for you to choose the door on the right, because we know whats on the other side of the doors, we can see it because we have already been through the same maze.  
We know that if you go through the door on the left it will lead to another hallway just like this one, only a little hotter, a little more unpleasant, and the obstacles to the exit will be a little harder.  
We know the door on the right leads to the exit.  It leads to a less hot, less humid, less unpleasant hallway.  That if you keep going to the right eventually you'll get out.
We are frustrated and sad because we keep seeing you choose the door on the left, the seemingly easy path that just leads to more suffering.  We keep watching you make the same mistakes over and over and there's little we can do about it.  We can keep trying to tell you to go to the door on the right, but we can't make you.

So yes, the recovery path is a hard path, its challenging, it will not be easy, especially at first, but the alternative is to not just continue suffering as you have been but for that suffering to get worse. 

We understand, really we do, how painful and real the doubt and anxiety you feel is.  

 

1 hour ago, don't know said:

I hate this! I wish I had some type of anxiety because I don't and it feels real.

You don't think you have anxiety?  Its crystal clear to me you do!  You say it yourself "You hate this", you post here constantly about how much you don't want this to be true.  If you didn't feel anxiety, if you didn't feel doubt, you wouldn't be here, you would be happy.  You wouldn't care.

Literally everything about your behavior on this forum matches what we have seen from ourselves, and from other sufferers of OCD.  All of it.  You may doubt it, but I don't.  Polar Bear doesn't.  Which leads to two possibilities:

1. You have OCD
2. You don't have OCD but are a highly skilled actress who is incredibly well informed about OCD and OCD behavior, enough so that you can masquerade as an OCD sufferer on this forum and fool all of us into believing you have OCD.  

For the record my money is on #1.  If you were as skilled an actress as it takes to pull of this level of ruse, you'd be a super Hollywood star by now, not spending all this time posting on a forum on the internet.

So take the leap of faith, decide, that for now at least, you are going to treat this as OCD.  If it turns out that it is OCD (which it is, trust me) you'll get the treatment you need and take the steps you can to get better.  Life will improve for you.
If it turns out to NOT be OCD (very doubtful) then you'll still learn valuable skills and it won't make your life anyworse.  You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by treating this as OCD.  And you don't have to be certain that its OCD to do the work!  You just have to decide to do it.  Decide to, for now, treat this as OCD.  If you wait until you are 100% certain about this (or anything) you'll wait forever and continue suffering.  Don't do that, don't let yourself suffer any longer than you have to.  You have the power to change this, one day, one step at a time.  Why not start now?

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You are only wasting your time. You spend all your time figuring this out and you get nowhere with it. That is a hallmark of OCD. You don't have to be anxious.

You spend so much time trying to convince yourself this isn't OCD but that just strengthens the evidence that it is.

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