Query

[Pranjali]

I have a query here which I am not able to fathom. When we say intrusive thoughts are something we are obsessed about and we carry out compulsions to get relief from the anxiety; my question is can thoughts be related to real life instances? I mean can thoughts not be restricted to only thoughts or imaginations? 

Am I able to communicate my query well. I hope I am. I wish to know is OCD related to the thoughts we attach to real life events? If so, aren't real life events something any human being would get hooked on and not ready or able to forget?

In that case, how do you differentiate between a normal thought and an intrusive thought? Because a thought causing distress out of a real life event is a normal thought, right? And can be experienced by a person without OCD as well I reckon? So doesn't that mean thoughts arising after a real life distressing event cannot be an OCD thought?

I hope I am making sense.

Thank you for your response.

[Sputnik]

Hi Pranjali,

If I have interpreted your question correctly, then yes - OCD fears can (and frequently are) about things that could genuinely happen, etc. The difference is that an OCD-sufferer's reaction to those fears is hugely out of proportion - for example, say I had a fear of falling down stairs. There's a small possibility that could happen, but avoiding all staircases, only using lifts and moving to a bungalow is a disproportionate response! :) Or whatever compulsions I might feel the need to do in order to relieve the anxiety around the fear.

Thoughts arising after a distressing event would follow the same process - if you obsess and feel the need to do compulsions to relieve it, then it's OCD. I expect for a lot of people, OCD thoughts may become more intense after distressing events due to the added stress that would accompany it. Does that make sense?

[Pranjali]

I am not too sure if I followed what you are saying

[gingerbreadgirl]

I think what sputnik is saying is that ocd can be about literally any topic on earth - whether it is real or not makes no difference. Ocd is defined by the pattern of behaviour - anxiety and doubt followed by compulsions attempted to relieve the anxiety (but which only feed it in the long run). 

Whether it is real or not is not the issue, the issue is whether anxiety, doubt  and compulsions are affecting your quality of life. 

With ocd the response is always wildly out of proportion to reality. The thing the sufferer fears is often extremely unlikely. 

In answer to your question a non -ocd sufferer may get hooked on a real event but they are unlikely to do so to the extent of an ocd sufferer. Their response is likely to be much more proportionate. 

[Sputnik]

7 minutes ago, gingerbreadgirl said:

I think what sputnik is saying is that ocd can be about literally any topic on earth - whether it is real or not makes no difference. Ocd is defined by the pattern of behaviour - anxiety and doubt followed by compulsions attempted to relieve the anxiety (but which only feed it in the long run). 

Whether it is real or not is not the issue, the issue is whether anxiety, doubt  and compulsions are affecting your quality of life. 

With ocd the response is always wildly out of proportion to reality. The thing the sufferer fears is often extremely unlikely. 

In answer to your question a non -ocd sufferer may get hooked on a real event but they are unlikely to do so to the extent of an ocd sufferer. Their response is likely to be much more proportionate. 

Yes quite, this is a much better description of what I was trying to say!  

[dksea]

16 hours ago, Pranjali said:

When we say intrusive thoughts are something we are obsessed about and we carry out compulsions to get relief from the anxiety; my question is can thoughts be related to real life instances? I mean can thoughts not be restricted to only thoughts or imaginations? 

Absolutely!  I will use my own OCD experience as an example.  When I was about 13 years old, in junior high school (6th or 7th year of school) I was feeling unwell one day.  In the afternoon, during one of my classes my stomach suddenly felt quite bad.  I tried to leave the room (either for the nurses office or the bathroom) but unfortunately I'd waited to long and I got sick near the door.  Obviously an unpleasant experience in general but also a bit embarrassing.  Well in the aftermath my OCD kicked in to high gear.  Now, every time my stomach started to feel different (which could be many things) I began to worry again (which ironically probably made my stomach feel uneasy).  I started visiting the school nurse almost daily.  At night I would struggle to fall asleep, I hated being in any situation where I couldn't quickly and easily leave a room.  My OCD was full bore on about a repeat of that previous, very real event.  (Fortunately my parents were proactive, got me in to see a therapist who after a few sessions referred me to a psychiatrist who diagnosed me with OCD and started me on the road to recovery).  So yes, absolutely OCD can be about real events, both possible realities and previous existing events.
 

17 hours ago, Pranjali said:

In that case, how do you differentiate between a normal thought and an intrusive thought? Because a thought causing distress out of a real life event is a normal thought, right? And can be experienced by a person without OCD as well I reckon? So doesn't that mean thoughts arising after a real life distressing event cannot be an OCD thought?

It would absolutely be reasonable for a person to feel some anxiety and nervousness at first after an event like mine, yes.  But it wouldn't be normal for them to go to the extremes I did, to worry as often or as strongly about it.  The difference between OCD and non-OCD isn't worry vs no worry, its about the degree of worry and how disruptive that becomes to the sufferer and their life.

Consider, for example, hand washing.  This is a common compulsion, particularly among contamination or health anxiety sufferers.  A person with this compulsion washes their hands excessively in large part because they worry excessively about germs and dirt etc.  In contrast, a non-OCD person washes their hands more or less on an appropriate basis, when there is clear dirt, when general health guidelines recommend it, etc.  Its not an all or nothing situation, its not never wash vs always wash, its appropriately wash vs excessively wash.

So yes, unpleasant real life experiences will cause a person distress and worry, OCD sufferers aren't the only people in the world who worry.  The issue is the excessive amount of worry and the excessive response to worry coupled with how disruptive it is to your life.

As for how you differentiate?  Experience helps.  Sometimes an outside perspective helps (such as a therapist or a loved one) but this can become a compulsion, always asking someone if a behavior is OCD or not, so its best to use that option sparingly.  Observing and applying how non-OCD people react to a situation and comparing it to your own helps.  One of the best ways of differentiating is a general guideline that I've come across in my recovery:  

If you think it MIGHT be OCD it PROBABLY is!

Doubting whether ones OCD problems are OCD is itself an example of OCD at work, by applying the above rule it helps you short circuit that particular problem.  You don't need to KNOW if its OCD, the rule says MIGHT.  A big part of recovery is learning to accept things like might be or probably isn't, etc.  You don't need 100% certainty, thats the OCD lie at work.  Hope that helps!
 

[Pranjali]

Thank you for explaining it. Yea hopefully it helps because I am struggling right now.

[Pranjali]

@dksea what you are essentially trying to say is regardless of whether the situation took place or did not take place, the thought that popped out to your head is the cause of this mess. Which basically implies a thought can just be a thought or a thought i.e meaning we attach to a situation (which I believe to have happened in my view)? So it is the thought that arises from a situation (happened or not happened) which causes distress. So it is basically the meaning/thought we attach to that situation. And what we do about the distressing thought is out of proportion compared to a non OCD sufferer?

The thought and the meaning we attach to a situation arises due to several factors which could be a result of your conditioning, upbringing etc. 

The question is if start to kind of accept the thoughts and even the reaction to it, wouldn't there be a chaos in the society? Shouldn't I be punished for cheating on my husband because if there is no punishment, there would be anarchy right?

This acceptance part is something that does not sit well with me. 

[Pranjali]

16 hours ago, gingerbreadgirl said:

I think what sputnik is saying is that ocd can be about literally any topic on earth - whether it is real or not makes no difference. Ocd is defined by the pattern of behaviour - anxiety and doubt followed by compulsions attempted to relieve the anxiety (but which only feed it in the long run). 

Whether it is real or not is not the issue, the issue is whether anxiety, doubt  and compulsions are affecting your quality of life. 

With ocd the response is always wildly out of proportion to reality. The thing the sufferer fears is often extremely unlikely. 

In answer to your question a non -ocd sufferer may get hooked on a real event but they are unlikely to do so to the extent of an ocd sufferer. Their response is likely to be much more proportionate. 

Thank you @gingerbreadgirl for breaking it down for me. I am unable to see anymore how my reaction is disproportionate to my instance. The part of acceptance just feels wrong because the aspect of self punishment feels fair.

[dksea]

17 minutes ago, Pranjali said:

And what we do about the distressing thought is out of proportion compared to a non OCD sufferer?

Thats correct, the issue isn't the thought itself, its our evaluation of and reaction to the thought.  Studies have shown that pretty much everyone suffers from intrusive thoughts, the difference is that in non-OCD people they are easily able to evaluate and dismiss these types of thoughts.

I'll give you another example from my life.  Occasionally over the years since I started driving I would occasionally have the image/idea pop in to my head about how easy it would be to just swerve off the road and run into a crowd of people.   Now obviously, if/when someone actually does that its a horrible thing.  Injuring people or worse is a terrible crime.  So the question becomes, does having that thought mean I'm inclined to do that? That I WANT to do that?  The answer is no, it doesn't.  I asked my dad about that kind of thought and he told me he's had that thought pop in to his head too.  I bet most people who get behind a wheel have that thought pop in to their head.  Why?  Could be a lot of reasons.  Maybe they saw it in a movie or tv show.  Maybe it was something they saw/did in a video game (like the Grand Theft Auto series).  Maybe they are just considering the possibilities of the situation.  Obviously a car leaving the road and running people over is an obvious situation that can (and sadly does) really happen.  But just having that thought of it happening, or even imagining yourself doing it doesn't mean you WILL do it in real life.  People imagine things, sometimes terrible things all the time.  Maybe they are writing a horror novel or murder mystery.  Obviously they have to consider how someone might be killed.  Maybe they are angry at someone, and are imaging hurting them, say punching your boss or running over that obnoxious person who just stole your parking spot.  Imagination is a powerful thing, but if we DID everything we imagined being able to do then we WOULD truly live in anarchy

Fortunately what we think is not always (or even often) what we do.  There is a big difference between a thought and an action.  For example, you can imagine lifting your arm, you can imagine waving your arm around, you can imagine raising your other arm, running forward and doing a flip.  These are all easy things to imagine.  But in reading that last set of sentences, in having those thoughts in your head, my guess is you didn't ACTUALLY do any of those things, because you have to send the command to your arm, to your body to do them, imagining doesn't send that signal.
 

26 minutes ago, Pranjali said:

The question is if start to kind of accept the thoughts and even the reaction to it, wouldn't there be a chaos in the society? Shouldn't I be punished for cheating on my husband because if there is no punishment, there would be anarchy right?

This acceptance part is something that does not sit well with me. 

I think the problem here is what you think you need to accept vs what you actually have to accept for OCD recovery.

You DONT have to accept the idea that adultery is ok.  You can still think adultery is wrong and recover from OCD.  (side note, I'd say that a fair number of people don't have a problem with adultery, and while it may not be a great thing, it hasn't resulted in Anarchy so far)
You DO have to accept the idea that you could have doubts about whether or not you committed adultery.  You are accepting the idea that you can't KNOW for 100% sure about the thoughts you have.

Right now you're thinking is going something like this:

1. I had a thought/memory/image of committing adultery
2. I'm not 100% sure that I didn't commit adultery
3. Therefore I must have committed adultery
4. Therefore I must be punished
5. If I'm not punished it means I"m work with adultery
6. If I'm ok with adultery it means...

Here's the healthier approach

1. I had a thought/memroy image of committing adultery
2. I'm not 100% sure I didn't commit adultery
3. But that doesn't mean I committed adultery
4. And even if I did, it doesn't mean I must receive extreme punishment
    

There are a couple of OCD themes I see you exhibiting here.
The first is false memories.  I haven't yet dealt with this one directly myself, but I've seen other sufferers on these forums struggle with it and there are some good resources out there.  It often relies on an illogical flip of the mind "if I don't remember it NOT happening then it must have happened".  People can come to believe some very serious things probably or even almost certainly happened based on no actual evidence whatsoever.  I definitely suggest learning more about false memory OCD and effective approaches to treating it.
The next is black and white thinking.  Either its black or its white, either its all one way or all the other.  Either I always behave in a certain way or the world will fall apart.  
This is also some hyper-responsibility, another OCD theme area, the idea that your actions and how you respond to them will have a much greater impact on the world around you then is possible.  Even IF you were to start cheating on your husband at every possible opportunity and were NEVER punished for it, the world wouldn't descend in to anarchy, you just aren't that powerful

The OCD part of your brain is playing on your doubt, its demanding that you be 100% certain that you haven't cheated before you can move on.  Thats an impossible standard.  There is just no way you can track everywhere and everything you have everyone and be able to analyze it for all your past actions.  You can't come close, its just not possible.  You have to accept that this is an image, a thought, and you have no way of knowing if its true and you don't HAVE to solve it anyway.

[Pranjali]

I am trying to reflect on what you said. There is just no one around me who wants to believe me on this one. I don't know how to prove it. And I cannot live with the guilt. That is the problem.

THE PROBLEM IS IT DOES NOT FEEL LIKE A THOUGHT, I BELIEVE IT IS REAL. HENCE THE GUILT. What I don't understand ever in OCD is as much as people say it affects your core beliefs arising out of a situation, doesn't it need me to react in some manner? If you wrong someone, what do you do? Not address it? And escape it like a coward? Letting it go is like overlooking your mistakes no? This is not for reassurance but really I am perplexed.

Is it wrong to feel to prove it to everyone? Why not request for a CCTV footage or punish myself because my husband does not deserve me? Isn't how you pay for your mistakes?

[Pranjali]

*I believe it has happened. Hence the guilt.

 

What do I do?

Edited April 24, 2019 by Pranjali

[Sputnik]

7 hours ago, Pranjali said:

THE PROBLEM IS IT DOES NOT FEEL LIKE A THOUGHT, I BELIEVE IT IS REAL. HENCE THE GUILT.

That's what OCD does. It creates a really convincing feeling within you that your fear is true. Nothing's happened. It's an imagined event.

32 minutes ago, Pranjali said:

What do I do?

No matter how much you believe it, do not give in to it. If you carry out compulsions, you will only be drawn deeper into the obsession. 

I know how hard it is to do, but standing up to OCD is worth it in the long run  

[dksea]

16 hours ago, Pranjali said:

THE PROBLEM IS IT DOES NOT FEEL LIKE A THOUGHT, I BELIEVE IT IS REAL. HENCE THE GUILT.

You BELIEVE its real, but that does not mean it IS real. 
 

17 hours ago, Pranjali said:

What I don't understand ever in OCD is as much as people say it affects your core beliefs arising out of a situation, doesn't it need me to react in some manner? If you wrong someone, what do you do? Not address it? And escape it like a coward? Letting it go is like overlooking your mistakes no?

If it were easy for OCD sufferers to treat intrusive thoughts (including false memories, etc.) as meaningless the disorder wouldn't exist to begin with.  The whole problem is that we react to and perceive these thoughts as presenting a genuine danger of some sort or another even if it isn't there.  

Think of it like a fire alarm.  When a fire alarm goes off it can mean there is a fire, and thats dangerous, and we should react like there is a fire right? But what if you know that the fire alarm is faulty, what if you know it doesn't usually work right and that 999,999 out of 1,000,000 when it goes off, there IS no fire.  Would it still make sense to react with panic after every time it goes off?  Of course not.  Now in real life when we discover a fire alarm is faulty we can replace it with one that works, quick trip to the store, a few turns of the screw driver, problem solved.  Unfortunately the faulty fire alarm in our brain that is OCD can't be replaced so easily.  It can be adjusted though, over time, and thats what CBT is for.  But in the meantime you have to learn to more or less ignore the false alarms. 

IF you were a person without OCD we would take your memory of having slept with someone at face value, we'd believe you were telling the truth and you could/should respond to it in the appropriate manner (confessing to your partner, trying to make it up to them, trying to move on from it and be a better person, etc.).  BUT since you are a person with OCD, specifically about this type of situation, we know that we can't take these kind of thoughts/memories at face value.  To go back to the previous analogy, we KNOW the fire alarm is faulty.  That doesn't mean the fire alarm never goes off, it means when it does we have to ignore it.  It's not about using it as an excuse or escaping guilt, its about knowing that in your case there is an existing problem, and the right thing to do for this problem is to handle the thoughts you are having differently than a normal person would.

If you know someone is in a wheelchair because they are unable to walk, you don't expect them to get up and walk around like other people.  What is normal for everyone else is difficult/impossible for them, so you adjust expectations and standards, thats the humane thing to do.  Or, consider a person with Tourette's syndrome, this disorder can affect them in many different ways, one of which is random verbal outbursts including profane language.  In a normal person you would respond very negatively if they suddenly made loud noises.  But if you know the person suffers from Tourette's you change the expectations, you know that they aren't doing what they are doing on purpose, you know to evaluate the situation differently for them.  A person with OCD is no different, there behavior/thinking is directly affected by something outside their control.  As a result we need to treat some of their reactions/behaviors differently than we would for a person without OCD.

Now, that doesn't mean its ok for you to ACTUALLY cheat on your spouse, it doesn't mean you get a free pass to do whatever you want.  We are not asking or telling you to use OCD as an excuse for genuine bad behavior.  Instead, we are saying, when it comes to this particular topic, we can't simply trust your thoughts to be reliable, we KNOW there is a false alarm going off in your mind.  This false alarm has been identified by professionals and they (and we) are asking you to understand that, and respond differently because of what we know that is different in you from other people.

Let me try another example to see if that helps.
Imagine you are out late at night, in a large city, its dark and a little scary.  Suddenly you hear some gun shots coming from your left.  What do you do?  The reasonable, rationale response would be to go in the opposite direction as fast as you reasonably can, to get away from the danger.
Ok, now, change the location, instead of the city you are in a movie theater, watching an action movie.  Suddenly you hear those same gun shot noises coming from your left.  What do you do?  If you try and run in the opposite direction people will think your nuts and you might even hurt someone.  Same exact noise, but different circumstances.  You use what you know about the situation BEYOND the specific event to evaluate your response.  We know that your mind is affected by OCD, and as such its likely these thoughts are the movie theater thoughts, not the dark city thoughts.  You can't tell the difference between them directly, the thoughts FEEL real to you, but you also have extra information, information that you NEED to consider in making your choices.  

[dksea]

17 hours ago, Pranjali said:

Is it wrong to feel to prove it to everyone? Why not request for a CCTV footage or punish myself because my husband does not deserve me? Isn't how you pay for your mistakes?

If you didn't have OCD it would be reasonable to feel guilty about being unfaithful, it would be reasonable to confess and to seek to atone for your mistakes.
But you DO Have OCD so that changes the equation.

You might be saying something like "Ok because I have OCD I can't be sure this happened, so then shouldn't I request the CCTV footage? Won't being able to prove it help??"
On the surface this seems like a reasonable response, you want to remove the doubt so you want to gather more information, to prove one way or another whether something is true.  Absent OCD this might be ok.  The problem is we know that for OCD sufferers this is exactly the WRONG approach to take, we know it doesn't work.  Let's say, for some reason, there IS video footage, and lets say, against all odds the place decided to give that footage to you.  You watch it and see nothing on it.  Your in the clear right?  But what if you simply did what you did outside the view of the cameras?  What if one of the cameras was switched off?  What if someone swapped the recordings, or hacked the recording to make it look like nothing happened.  While all increasingly unlikely scenarios, I can basically guarantee you that your OCD brain would jump to these types of thoughts, there is NEVER enough proof for OCD, it demands 100% certainty, an impossible goal.  And unfortunately trying to meet that impossible goal just further strengthens the OCD, it teaches your brain that these unwanted, intrusive thoughts ARE important, they ARE worth responding too, which means they will come to the surface more frequently.  In essence, engaging in compulsions is like feeding the OCD.  You want to do the opposite, you want to starve OCD by avoiding compulsions, and that includes checking like you are tempted to do here.

[Pranjali]

Everytime someone replies to me on my thread I feel a sense of relief or rather a feeling that there is someone who I can vent it out via this forum. This is a damn compulsion again, though it does not feel so.

I read all the messages. I am trying to absorb them and see some light in them. Not carrying out a compulsion is so difficult if this disorder is real.

I mean I checked Google maps and my timeline on that particular day. It does show that I travelled to that place a few minutes 'driving' and I was around that hostel for about 15-17 minutes. No idea why I checked it. But like you said it does not stop there. I have a zillion thoughts following about what if maps are not accurate? What if those 20 minutes I was into something unfaithful (that being my biggest belief)? And like you said even if I do get the CCTV records on some grounds, I would perhaps wonder about the places which were not under CCTV coverage. 

It is indeed to dismiss anything which I feel as OCD thoughts and only purely OCD thoughts.

Is there a fuzz always among concepts such as beliefs, realities, facts, thoughts, feelings? Do with people with OCD understand beliefs as facts? I think this is my underlying concern as well.

If everyone around me is to be believed and if at all these are OCD 'thoughts' and not 'realities', I am struggling to differentiate between the two - OCD thoughts and normal intrusive thoughts.

Plus of course the age old feeling of disbelief that this is even OCD at play, which I know I will be told to take the leap of faith, which by and large always feels like an escape and a plunge to unsee the hard realities.

Furthermore, what defies my rationality is I am not able to understand why does the idea of moving away from my husband to avenge for my guilt seem like a fair option! Will my OCD thoughts stop after I do that? If yes/no, how? Wouldn't I feel fair that I punished myself for the misdoings?

[dksea]

19 hours ago, Pranjali said:

Is there a fuzz always among concepts such as beliefs, realities, facts, thoughts, feelings? Do with people with OCD understand beliefs as facts? I think this is my underlying concern as well.

So my day job is software testing for an e-commerce company.  We run a website and some of my tests check different features on the website.  One way they do this is by taking a picture of the screen and comparing it to previous pictures that we have said are correct.  But this is a tricky problem, how do we know whether picture A is the same as picture B?  The easy way is to compare each pixel in each location and if they are the same for ALL the pixels for both images.  But what if everything is the same except the user name?  Or what if everything is the same but an ad we display is different this month?  A human could look at these images and say "sure, these are the same for all the important parts".  We can tell the computer exactly which parts of the image to compare,  and ignore the others, by selecting each region, but that is long and slow.  The alternative is to set a threshold (say 95%) and say "if these images are at least 95% the same, thats a match!".

So what does that have to do with OCD?  It turns out thats exactly how people (with and without OCD) operate in real life.  We all act as if things are DEFINITELY true, but the reality is we never know for sure that they are.  Its actually impossible (based on the laws of physics) to know things with perfect certainty.  Human beings (and all animals) have adapted to operate based on being certain ENOUGH.  

Consider locking the door of your house.  Its something you probably do almost every day.  Its something that becomes a habit.  But sometimes things happen that disrupt habits.  Its possible you could have been distracted while you were locking the door this morning and went about your day.  Later you think "hey wait, did I lock my door today?"  You try to remember, but its hard because you do it every day, and its not a particularly memorable event.  Your memory is imperfect.  Now you could simply go home and check, but maybe you are a far distance from your home, or you are at work and leaving would be a bad idea.  You have to decide if you are sure ENOUGH that you locked your door that you don't need to take the risk of leaving and going back to check.  Maybe you are 90% sure.  Maybe you are 80% sure.  Whatever level it just has to be enough.  We do this kind of thinking for all kinds of things every minute of every day.  Most of the time its automatic, sometimes you have to think about it a little, for serious things you have to think longer, but its totally normal.

Until OCD comes in to the picture.  OCD cranks that sureness lever up to 100%.  It says "Sorry you can't move on until you are 100% sure about this thing or I will make you feel anxiety".  The trouble is 100% is impossible.  OCD might as well be saying "until you can leap over this super tall building and then lift 1000 cars above your head and THEN cook the best meal ever AND THEN..." well you get the idea.

So yes, non-OCD sufferers treat things as being "certain" even though they are not at the most technical level.  OCD sufferers do this too for most things in their life.  You probably washed your hands after using the washroom today like normal.  You didn't spend hours doing it.  You didn't get a test done to determine if your hands were, in fact, sanitized.  You didn't run your hands under a UV light then rub alcohol on them, then wash them again, just to be sure.  Why?  Because you were sure ENOUGH that your hands were reasonably clean.

[dksea]

19 hours ago, Pranjali said:

If everyone around me is to be believed and if at all these are OCD 'thoughts' and not 'realities', I am struggling to differentiate between the two - OCD thoughts and normal intrusive thoughts.

This is another area thats tricky.  What is the difference between an OCD thought and a regular thought?  Which thoughts are REAL and which ones are fake.

The thing is, ALL thoughts are real.  Either you have a thought or you don't.  If you have a thought, its a real thought.  If you don't have a thought, well then that thought just doesn't exist (at least in your mind).  Just because you have a thought doesn't mean there is meaning behind the thought OR that the meaning is the literal contents of the thought.  Stephen King is a famous horror and mystery writer.  Some pretty scary and terrible things happen in his books including murder.  Obviously in order to write those books Stephen King had to have thoughts about this topic, he had to imagine the situations which occurred, otherwise he wouldn't be able to write about them.  But that doesn't make him a murderer.  it doesn't mean he is going to go out and start killing people.  If that were the case every person who wrote a scary movie or book or played a scary video game would all be horrible people!

The problem with OCD is not the thoughts themselves, we all have these kind of thoughts.  The problem is that while non-OCD people can easily recognize which thoughts are important and which thoughts aren't, OCD sufferers sometimes have trouble with a particular thought.  Its a false alarm (like the fire alarm example I used above).

Unfortunately, since we are used to dealing with all thoughts in the same way, when something goes wrong, we have a hard time dealing with them.  We are used to, both from a lifetime of training as well as our genetic nature, to believe that "if a thought isn't important I'll be able to move on from it easily, if a thought IS important I'll have a hard time moving on".  Well, because OCD makes it hard to move on from certain thoughts, our natural training is to think that that thought is somehow important. 

I used this example in another thread, but maybe it will help you too.  Imagine you are an experienced pilot.  You are out one night flying your plane when there is a big storm.  You can barely see a few feet in front of you its so dark.  But thats ok because your plane (like all planes) has instruments to tell you your direction, your height, whether you are pointing the plane up, down or straight, etc.  You can fly just based on the instrument readings, you've done it before!  But what happens if during the storm you get hit by a strong gust of wind and one of the instrument breaks?  What if the instrument is telling you you are flying at the right height and pointing in the right direction, but in reality you are descending and you are pointing towards the ground.  In the daytime maybe you could look outside and check, but its night and stormy, its hard to feel whats up and down so you trust your instruments, after all you are used to trusting them!  So now you are in a bad situation, your instruments are malfunctioning.  You don't know that though.  Suddenly your radio picks up, its a local control tower telling you that they have you on radar and are worried, your plane is descending rapidly and might crash soon.  You are confused, your instruments say everything is ok, and they've never been wrong before.  You doubt what the tower is saying, you know how to read the instruments after all, so they must be correct.  Then a second tower, and a third tower chip in, they say the same thing as the first tower, you are flying too low and you are going to crash.  Your instruments must be broken, you need to ignore them and listen to the instructions from the towers.

At this point there are three possibilities
1: Your instruments are right, the three towers are lying to you for some reason
2: Your instruments are right, the three towers instruments are all wrong at the same time
3: Your instruments are wrong, the three towers are right and you need to listen to them.

In our scenario obviously its situation 3.  But think about what happens when you listen to the towers, they can help guide you to safety but it doesn't mean your instruments will suddenly start working again, your instruments are still going to be lying to you, you have to continue to ignore them until you have been able to repair them and verifyy they work  correctly again.

Thats basically what you have to do with OCD, you have to learn to ignore the faulty instruments, and repair them.  You do this using CBT.  Until it happens though you have to keep in mind that your own instruments are faulty, that you have to ignore them, at least when it comes to certain topics, and part of CBT and OCD therapy is learning what situations the instruments malfunction in.  

 

[paradoxer]

21 hours ago, Pranjali said:

Furthermore, what defies my rationality is I am not able to understand why does the idea of moving away from my husband to avenge for my guilt seem like a fair option! Will my OCD thoughts stop after I do that? If yes/no, how? Wouldn't I feel fair that I punished myself for the misdoings?

It's very improbable any relief from guilt would come, at least for any more than a short time, in moving away. OCD would only find something else 'significant' to focus on. 

Dance to OCD's tune, deeper into the mire you go. 

[St Mike]

On 25/04/2019 at 14:37, Pranjali said:

I am struggling to differentiate between the two - OCD thoughts and normal intrusive thoughts. 

I am assuming you meant OCD-intrusive thoughts and normal intrusive thoughts. There is no difference between the two.

There are only intrusive thoughts.

The only difference is how an OCD sufferer and non-OCD sufferer responds to intrusive thoughts. Non-sufferers are able to dismiss them rather effortlessly while OCD sufferers can't.

[Pranjali]

@dksea Thanks a lot for giving so many examples. I took a day to only reflect on it. I see myself struggling with quite a few issues as of now and I might look for CBT videos online or CBT books. I am not so sure about getting a therapist specialized in CBT, so I will try videos and books first.

[Pranjali]

On 27/04/2019 at 01:56, St Mike said:

I am assuming you meant OCD-intrusive thoughts and normal intrusive thoughts. There is no difference between the two.

There are only intrusive thoughts.

The only difference is how an OCD sufferer and non-OCD sufferer responds to intrusive thoughts. Non-sufferers are able to dismiss them rather effortlessly while OCD sufferers can't.

 @St Mike Yes, as it seems it is about the reaction to thoughts. But the problem is aggravated when the thoughts not longer are thoughts but come across/are instances which have happened. I guess my underlying concern is my brain is not able to differentiate or accept the difference between thoughts/images/ feelings AND instances. The former are latter to me. Hence the cycle continues. I will try to look for CBT books or videos online.

[Pranjali]

On 26/04/2019 at 08:23, dksea said:

The thing is, ALL thoughts are real.  Either you have a thought or you don't.  If you have a thought, its a real thought.  If you don't have a thought, well then that thought just doesn't exist (at least in your mind).  Just because you have a thought doesn't mean there is meaning behind the thought OR that the meaning is the literal contents of the thought.  Stephen King is a famous horror and mystery writer.  Some pretty scary and terrible things happen in his books including murder.  Obviously in order to write those books Stephen King had to have thoughts about this topic, he had to imagine the situations which occurred, otherwise he wouldn't be able to write about them.  But that doesn't make him a murderer.  it doesn't mean he is going to go out and start killing people.  If that were the case every person who wrote a scary movie or book or played a scary video game would all be horrible people!

Yes all thoughts are real for they cross an OCD sufferer's as well as non OCD sufferer's mind. But yes the problem is the reaction of anxiety and distress to these thoughts, which perhaps makes things difficult as you say. But @dksea my problem right now is I am not able to differentiate between thoughts/images and reality. That fuzz is back again. For my brain, thoughts are realities and hence it is difficult to look at thoughts as just thoughts because my brain perceives thoughts as realities. I feel hopeless. I will look for videos and self help books online on CBT.

[Pranjali]

On 26/04/2019 at 07:47, dksea said:

So my day job is software testing for an e-commerce company.  We run a website and some of my tests check different features on the website.  One way they do this is by taking a picture of the screen and comparing it to previous pictures that we have said are correct.  But this is a tricky problem, how do we know whether picture A is the same as picture B?  The easy way is to compare each pixel in each location and if they are the same for ALL the pixels for both images.  But what if everything is the same except the user name?  Or what if everything is the same but an ad we display is different this month?  A human could look at these images and say "sure, these are the same for all the important parts".  We can tell the computer exactly which parts of the image to compare,  and ignore the others, by selecting each region, but that is long and slow.  The alternative is to set a threshold (say 95%) and say "if these images are at least 95% the same, thats a match!".

So what does that have to do with OCD?  It turns out thats exactly how people (with and without OCD) operate in real life.  We all act as if things are DEFINITELY true, but the reality is we never know for sure that they are.  Its actually impossible (based on the laws of physics) to know things with perfect certainty.  Human beings (and all animals) have adapted to operate based on being certain ENOUGH.  

Consider locking the door of your house.  Its something you probably do almost every day.  Its something that becomes a habit.  But sometimes things happen that disrupt habits.  Its possible you could have been distracted while you were locking the door this morning and went about your day.  Later you think "hey wait, did I lock my door today?"  You try to remember, but its hard because you do it every day, and its not a particularly memorable event.  Your memory is imperfect.  Now you could simply go home and check, but maybe you are a far distance from your home, or you are at work and leaving would be a bad idea.  You have to decide if you are sure ENOUGH that you locked your door that you don't need to take the risk of leaving and going back to check.  Maybe you are 90% sure.  Maybe you are 80% sure.  Whatever level it just has to be enough.  We do this kind of thinking for all kinds of things every minute of every day.  Most of the time its automatic, sometimes you have to think about it a little, for serious things you have to think longer, but its totally normal.

Until OCD comes in to the picture.  OCD cranks that sureness lever up to 100%.  It says "Sorry you can't move on until you are 100% sure about this thing or I will make you feel anxiety".  The trouble is 100% is impossible.  OCD might as well be saying "until you can leap over this super tall building and then lift 1000 cars above your head and THEN cook the best meal ever AND THEN..." well you get the idea.

So yes, non-OCD sufferers treat things as being "certain" even though they are not at the most technical level.  OCD sufferers do this too for most things in their life.  You probably washed your hands after using the washroom today like normal.  You didn't spend hours doing it.  You didn't get a test done to determine if your hands were, in fact, sanitized.  You didn't run your hands under a UV light then rub alcohol on them, then wash them again, just to be sure.  Why?  Because you were sure ENOUGH that your hands were reasonably clean.

This drive for certainty is quite insane, true! I have asked myself what and to whom are you prove? The urge to confirm going back to it for CCTV does point to the need for certainty. But then again, the aspect of good enough certainty is relative, isn't it? Non OCD sufferers might be okay with 50% certainty, but with an OCD sufferer why is that 50% certainty does not seem ENOUGH? Isn't the lack of 50% a lie I am running away from?

[Pranjali]

For me, at this point, it is not about thoughts feeling real, it is reality for me.

Just yesterday, I began thinking I am not good enough to raise children. A few days back I was playing with my nieces (2 year olds) and I started to feel I misbehaved with them. That anxiety of feeling like a pedophile was bad. Do you think I should tell my cousin about it that I feel this? 

How can it be about 'so what' kind of thinking here? Where in the world is pedophilia an accepted norm?