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My ocd is mainly obsessional, focused on responsibility and harm I might cause others. (also contamination) My biggest sticking point is ruminating over past mistakes. However much I try and let go of my thinking I can't. I don't BELIEVE that I'm not bad and haven't done a bad thing. Even though I WANT to forgive myself and stop going over and over I can't seem to. I try so hard. I meditate daily, I try and let go of my thoughts, I work hard to try and keep my general anxiety down. I find it hard to believe it's ocd even though I'm aware the amount of thinking I'm doing is extreme. It's been like this for 6 years. 

I also have Aspergers which I'm aware makes me prone to obsess. 

I'm on clomipramine and quetiapine. I'm just coming to the end of a second lot of 'cbt' with the mental health team. However because I was so suicidal when I came into therapy, the psychologist has merged it more into dbt I'd done previously. Similarly to cbt we've been looking at challenging my thinking and being mindful of my thoughts. I can't ask for more therapy as they were so reluctant to give me this. 

I still feel stuck. I still don't want to be alive. My current support talks about living with my current obsessing and uncertainty. Is it never going to get better? I find it hard to bear the thought it won't get better. I feel broken. 

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Hello, I'm so sorry to hear you are struggling. I have probable Aspergers traits, and I had responsibility and past mistake obsessions and suicidal depression for 20 years but I'm doing so much better now, there is hope. Have you done much work on your core beliefs? 

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Hi em

I'm sorry to hear you're struggling so much. I can relate to a lot of what you've said. It sometimes feels like trying to force yourself to believe something. I think the key is to understand that truly everyone has made mistakes. And also there is no such thing as binary "good" or "bad". I struggle with believing this but there really is a huge spectrum and doing something wrong one day does not put you in a "bad" box for the rest of your life. I grew up around very entrenched moral beliefs, my family thought there were good and bad people in the world - so I adopted the belief that if I am not 100% good it must mean I'm 100% bad. I think the key is to accept that we have made mistakes and maybe those things are just part of a huge tapestry. We can never prove this of course which is why ocd loves it so much - it's totally subjective and we have to just take that leap of faith and leave it alone. 

Take care and stay strong xx

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8 minutes ago, Wren said:

Hello, I'm so sorry to hear you are struggling. I have probable Aspergers traits, and I had responsibility and past mistake obsessions and suicidal depression for 20 years but I'm doing so much better now, there is hope. Have you done much work on your core beliefs? 

Do you think your Aspergers contributes to your obsessing? 

Core beliefs - not really. It's hard, because I have had therapy under the NHS you tend to get what you're given. Everything is very short term and present focused. 

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4 minutes ago, gingerbreadgirl said:

Hi em

I'm sorry to hear you're struggling so much. I can relate to a lot of what you've said. It sometimes feels like trying to force yourself to believe something. I think the key is to understand that truly everyone has made mistakes. And also there is no such thing as binary "good" or "bad". I struggle with believing this but there really is a huge spectrum and doing something wrong one day does not put you in a "bad" box for the rest of your life. I grew up around very entrenched moral beliefs, my family thought there were good and bad people in the world - so I adopted the belief that if I am not 100% good it must mean I'm 100% bad. I think the key is to accept that we have made mistakes and maybe those things are just part of a huge tapestry. We can never prove this of course which is why ocd loves it so much - it's totally subjective and we have to just take that leap of faith and leave it alone. 

Take care and stay strong xx

Thanks gbg. I relate to what you've said - I tend to be very black and white with how I think. But what's really demoralising is I WANT to think differently and I know I need to, but there's just always this nagging background that I don't believe it. And because there's that mismatch I just keep going over and over it. ?

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Yes, I think I have an Aspergers type obsession learning about philosophy/moral beliefs which I enjoy as an academic interest but this then becomes a problem when combined with ocd. I don't want to give up things I enjoy, but distinguishing what is a healthy interest from an unhealthy one is tricky. 

Like GBG I was brought up to believe people are either born bad or good, and therefore their is no redemption for 'bad' people, so I was terrified of discovering I'm one of the bad ones. I was taught in therapy that this idea is not rationally true and I agree, but I think that this is something that needs to be absorbed on an emotional level, not just cognitively, in order to really help a sufferer.

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1 hour ago, Em00 said:

I can't ask for more therapy as they were so reluctant to give me this. 

I want to challenge this. You still need help. If they don't help you, or signpost you to somewhere else to get help, they will have failed you. They can't leave you like this. You must fight to get more help. Do you have someone in your corner who will fight with you? 

You are completely within your rights to ask for more help. Please don't not ask them for a fear of displeasing them, if that's what's stopping you. 

11 minutes ago, Em00 said:

But what's really demoralising is I WANT to think differently and I know I need to, but there's just always this nagging background that I don't believe it.

I struggle with this too. A CBT therapist said to me, beliefs are flexible, not everyone has the same beliefs. If your belief isn't serving you, why keep it? I kept thinking, but if the belief is TRUE, then I can't decide to believe in a lie. I tried to make myself believe in what I thought to be a lie, and over time I could see that it wasn't a lie. 

I know how tormenting it is to be like this. There are good periods and bad periods. You're in a bad period right now. A good period will come round again. 

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Hi @Em00, I'm sorry to hear you are having such a difficult time.  Dealing with the distress caused by OCD can be very disheartening, but I am glad you are reaching out to us (and others) for help.  I don't have autism/Asperger's myself so I can't really comment on how that plays into things (sounds like Wren has that covered though!) but I have lived with OCD for over 25 years now so hopefully I can offer some insights on that side of things.
 

On 03/04/2019 at 05:00, Em00 said:

My current support talks about living with my current obsessing and uncertainty. Is it never going to get better? I find it hard to bear the thought it won't get better.

This is an area I think many OCD sufferers struggle with.  What the sufferer wants, desperately wants, is for the distressing thoughts they are having to go away.  This is, of course, completely understandable.  Who wouldn't want something that causes them pain and suffering to go away?  If you step on something sharp, like a tack, you want to take it out, so it stops hurting, right?  Unfortunately our thoughts are not like tacks.  You can't just pull them out, throw them away and forget about them.  This sort of approach, thought suppression, is often the natural reaction of an OCD sufferer, but unfortunately (and ironically) because of the way thoughts and memories work, the harder we try to make a thought go away, the more we strengthen it.

Consider the following example, before you read this sentence I am willing to bet you were not thinking about pink bunny rabbits with green polka dots.  Now however, you have that image in your mind.  If I tell you to forget that thought, under no circumstances are you to think about a pink bunny with green polka dots, you will probably thinking of it MORE not less, because the action of trying NOT to think about something means you have to think about it I the first place:
"Am I NOT thinking about pink and green polka dotted bunnies? Oh ****, I just thought about them!".  Its tricky.  

So you can't FORCE yourself to stop having a thought, does that mean you are stuck with these obsessions forever?  Fortunately the answer is no.  But the path to getting where you want to be is a bit indirect.

Many sufferers believe that the goal for beating OCD is to never have an unwanted thought again.  Maybe they go for a day or two feeling ok, but then on the third day they have the thought again.  Suddenly they feel defeated, the thought can always come back, as we learned already you can't force yourself to stop thinking it so what can you do?  

The answer is simple, but not easy.  The REAL goal for beating OCD is not to never have an unwanted thought again, its to reach the point where you don't care if you have an unwanted thought.  Its to retrain your brain to recognize that the intrusive thought is not important, that it is a false alarm, that you don't have to feel anxiety about it, you can ignore it and go on with your day.  For non-OCD sufferers this is relatively easy, they have an unwanted thought, their brain classifies it as not important, and they forget about it.  Sometimes they don't even really notice it happening.  Othertimes they might think about it for a moment or two, but they can easily move on from it.  Unfortunately for OCD sufferers that process does not always work so smoothly.  We know it works at least SOME of the time because we don't worry about everything, but for some things, its like our brain gets stuck in worry mode, even when we KNOW its not a real worry, we still FEEL the anxiety.  But you absolutely can reach the point where the thoughts don't bother you, and the nice thing is when they don't bother you, they don't happen so often, and when they do, they aren't such a big deal.  Your brain gets bored essentially.

I'll use my own experience as an example.  My primary anxiety when I first developed OCD was around throwing up, especially in public.  Now, to other people that may sound silly, it happens, its not fatal, it might be a little embarrassing, but even if it does happen its not like its going to happen every day.  Even though I can (and could) logically understand that, the mere thought of it happening filled me with dread and anxiety.  To me it was the worst things.  I would become anxious at even the slightest hint of a stomach ache.  I sat in front of the bus when I had to ride it since I'd heard that made people less prone to motion sickness AND it meant I was closer to the door and the garbage can if I started feeling sick.  In church or at movies etc. I would always want to sit on the aisle, easy way to get out if I needed to.  I hated situations where I felt trapped, like on a plane, etc.  I would carry ant-acids and other stomach medication with me in a small pill box in case I started feeling ill.  I was molding my life around this unwanted fear.  Fortunately I was diagnosed with OCD relatively quickly and with the help of counseling and medication I have been able to reach the point where my OCD no longer controls my life, where I can go long stretches without even thinking about it.  But it took work to get there.  One of the things I had to do was learn to accept the possibility that yes, someday I might be sick.  I didn't have to accept that it would be fun, I didn't have to want it to happen, but I had to let myself be ok with not being able to guarantee 100% certainty about my fear, because such certainty can't exist.  Sometimes I might have a thought or worry about being sick, but I learned over time that having that thought didn't mean it would happen, it didn't mean I had to panic.  It was just a thought.  I had to work hard to stop ruminating when these kind of thoughts came in, but over time, with practice and effort I did, and now I am at the point where I can have a thought about my previous trigger and barely even notice.  Its not that I NEVER think about it, it happens, life happens.  But its no longer a big deal.  Thats what you should aim for.  Good luck and I hope that helps clear things up for you.

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Thank you for the replies. 

I understand the concept of not clinging on to my thoughts. My problem lies in being stuck with not believing the thoughts to be very important ie I AM a bad person and how I reconcile with that. Especially when it's not what other people say think. So I get stuck going round in circles because my thinking is different to people I have spoken to. But I honestly can not see things from their perspective. And then there's the issue not being black and white, which completely trips me trying to cope with the uncertainty... 

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13 hours ago, Em00 said:

And then there's the issue not being black and white, which completely trips me trying to cope with the uncertainty... 

The uncertainty is the tricky part, for sure.  It feels like you need to know, you need to know that you aren't a bad person, and you keep having these intrusive thoughts and doubts.  The thing is you are likely going to be stuck going around in circles forever if you keep trying to solve this problem the way you are now, ruminating, analyzing, checking etc.  Its unfortunate, but its the nature of OCD.  The way forward is simple but difficult:  You have to decide that you aren't going to try and answer the question anymore, you aren't going to keep hunting for the answer, you are just going to live with the uncertainty.  When the thought pops in to your head "what if I AM a bad person" you have to choose to respond with "maybe I am, maybe I'm not, but for right now I'm not going to dwell on that".  It'll be hard, especially at first.

Now, you're likely thinking something along the lines of "But I have to know!  If I'm a bad person and I don't do something about it thats irresponsible!"  A couple of points on that.  First, and most obvious, if you were genuinely a bad person, you wouldn't CARE if you were a bad person, thats kinda how it works :)  Aside from that, the reality is you have been living without knowing already,  you don't know right now, or else you wouldn't be having this problem, and you haven't known for awhile or else you'd just now be coming here asking us for advice.  You can absolutely move forward with your life without knowing the answer to this question for sure.  Because you know what (and pardon me if you've heard this before)?  Every single person on earth keeps living their life without knowing for 100% sure what kind of person they "really" are or whether or not they might do something bad in the future.  The only point at which a person can know 100% what actions they will take in life is at the very end.  Before that there is ALWAYS the chance that a person will make an unexpected choice.

Lets take me for example.  So far, in my 38 years of life I have never killed another person.  I am not, at least up to this point a murderer.  But that doesn't guarantee that I'll never be a murderer.  Who knows what will happen over the rest of my life.  Now, I'm feel fairly comfortable that I will not murder someone in the future, the odds seem unlikely given what I know about myself up to this point.  But what if something unexpected happens?  What if I someday just "snap"?  What if I have a traumatic brain injury that affects my behavior?  What if some situation makes me extremely angry?  What if a war breaks out?  There are a myriad of possible scenarios that could lead me to make that choice, or any other.  So why don't I worry about those like you are worrying about your situation?  Because, for me fortunately thats not an area my OCD has affected me.  I am able to respond to those thoughts in a normal, non-OCD manner and rate those scenarios as extremely unlikely.  Thats the normal, non-OCD response, to consider a thought, reach a conclusion that you are sure enough, and then move on.  No one is EVER as sure as OCD has made you believe you have to be, 100% certainty is an illusion.  

To move forward, to move past this you basically have to stop fighting, stop fighting the intrusive thought, stop trying to prove that you are unequivocally a good person, or at least not a bad person.  No more testing, no more ruminating.  You have to make the decision that you are going to bet on being a good person and move on with your life.  It'll be hard at first, you'll have to work at stopping your compulsions, it'll take practice and time, and you'll have to accept that sometimes you will feel doubt and anxiety and that its OK to feel that way even if its not pleasant.  Because as long as you keep trying to solve this, keep going over it over and over, you'll remain stuck.  You can fight OCD, but not directly, you have to be strategic about it and fight OCD in the way that works, CBT w/ERP and possibly medication.  Hope that helps!

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Thanks dksea. 

It's so hard when it's rumination - it's not like do this action or don't do that action, as we know our minds tend to do what they want! Everytime you're faced with the thoughts it's like the very first time you've had them, nothing has changed. 

Is there equal merit in challenging thoughts compared to just letting them go? Or is one more important than the other? 

I continue trying to find something that might help make it easier, but sadly I don't think there is anything and all this thinking probably just exacerbates the issue. ?

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19 hours ago, Em00 said:

Thanks dksea. 

It's so hard when it's rumination - it's not like do this action or don't do that action, as we know our minds tend to do what they want! Everytime you're faced with the thoughts it's like the very first time you've had them, nothing has changed. 

Is there equal merit in challenging thoughts compared to just letting them go? Or is one more important than the other? 

I continue trying to find something that might help make it easier, but sadly I don't think there is anything and all this thinking probably just exacerbates the issue. ?

Hi em

My opinion is that challenging the thoughts, erp etc should come later - the first and most important thing is to have a period of time where you just leave the thoughts alone completely. No challenging, no cognitive reappraisal, no exposure, no engagement whatsoever. When the thoughts come along just decide to do nothing with them. Even if this feels very wobbly and fragile at first just keep going back to that. I often think "meh" or "OK then" or "whatever". Leaving the thoughts alone can be extremely difficult but I find the more I do it the easier it becomes. The trick is to not spend time deciding whether you SHOULD leave them alone or whether the thought is true or whether it really is ocd or whatever. Just leave them alone regardless. 

I really feel for you as I get this exact same issue. Stay strong xx 

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