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I have been having issues with this for a few months. To me it’s hard to believe anybody else’s life is real, I feel once im not around the world won’t exist and it’s all in my head? I fear im controlled and my fate is preplanned. 

So how does this affect me? I guess it makes me feel empty like nothing matters no matter what I do I have no control it’s controlled for me? I know it’s not a healthy way to think, I think about me and me only. It’s  hard to digest that somebody else is living a life, doing there own life and I have mine. It feels like my life is the only one in true existence?

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There are plenty of other people who have similar thoughts ... who knows I might be writing this message to no one? ... but they don't care. The fact that you're posting your concerns repeatedly on an OCD forum ...  the doubt, the hand-wringing, the ruminating, the pain, the search for reassurance, makes it pretty apparent ... your problem, chum, isn't existential. It's (arguably far more daunting ;) OCD. Treat it accordingly. 

Edited by paradoxer
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21 hours ago, Phil19 said:

To me it’s hard to believe anybody else’s life is real, I feel once im not around the world won’t exist and it’s all in my head? 

If it’s true, there’s nothing you can do about it, so what does ruminating on it change?

If it’s not true, then ruminating on it would be a waste of time too. 

You gain nothing from worrying about it either way. You can decide to not spend time on it. 

 

21 hours ago, Phil19 said:

I fear im controlled and my fate is preplanned. 

Again, same thing. If you are controlled, then there’s nothing you can do about it. If you aren't, then worrying that you are is just wasting your time. 

Both are unsolvable questions, you gain nothing by ruminating on them. You gain nothing by believing they are true. 

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4 hours ago, dksea said:

If it’s true, there’s nothing you can do about it, so what does ruminating on it change?

If it’s not true, then ruminating on it would be a waste of time too. 

You gain nothing from worrying about it either way. You can decide to not spend time on it. 

 

Again, same thing. If you are controlled, then there’s nothing you can do about it. If you aren't, then worrying that you are is just wasting your time. 

Both are unsolvable questions, you gain nothing by ruminating on them. You gain nothing by believing they are true. 

So do you believe that it’s controlled or nobody else exists?

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On 15/07/2019 at 08:03, Phil19 said:

So do you believe that it’s controlled or nobody else exists?

Paradoxer called it correctly, it doesn't matter what I think.  What matters is disengaging from the compulsions and doing what is necessary to recover from OCD.

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3 hours ago, dksea said:

Paradoxer called it correctly, it doesn't matter what I think.  What matters is disengaging from the compulsions and doing what is necessary to recover from OCD.

I feel tangled up in these ideas though. Using some sort or evidence chart may help my ocd. Like ideas for it and ideas against because the issue is when I get an idea in my head doesn’t matter the subject my head says because I had the idea or thought that it must be true. 

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12 minutes ago, Phil19 said:

my head says because I had the idea or thought that it must be true. 

Well that ones pretty easy to disprove.  All you have to do is have an idea or thought which isn't true.  Have the thought you are a millionaire.  Just by reading this sentence you almost certainly had that thought, if not you just have to think it yourself, I'd be surprised if you already hadn't.  But I'm guessing you aren't a millionaire.  On the off chance you are, try something else.  Imagine you are 12 feet tall.  Imagine you can fly.  Imagine you have a pet dragon.  You can have any number of thoughts, a nearly infinite number of thoughts, and it doesn't mean even one of them is true. 

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Since I had this worry I’ve had a few strange symptoms happen:

1. I blink my eyes and can see computers doesn’t happen very often but gives weight behind the we are a machine or robot argument.

2. I can taste the type of food I eat by thinking about what I’m about to eat the taste comes? Only bad this since solipsism. 

3. When I’m in work and ransoms call me Phil yes I have a name badge now but use to happen in the past before that. 

During my breakdown I noticed lots of strange stuff going on I mentioned months ago how when made conversation someone always had something in common too. I remember when I was ill hearing someone say is he still alive or something? I heard this in a shopping mall and found it very strange. 

But yes since solipsism my enjoyment of life isn’t the same because I can’t be sure how genuine the experience is. I can’t prove I have full control over my brain.

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On 20/07/2019 at 06:09, Phil19 said:

1. I blink my eyes and can see computers doesn’t happen very often but gives weight behind the we are a machine or robot argument.

Or that have been thinking about this topic a lot...
 

On 20/07/2019 at 06:09, Phil19 said:

2. I can taste the type of food I eat by thinking about what I’m about to eat the taste comes? Only bad this since solipsism. 

You can remember the taste of something you are about to eat?  Thats completely normal, and if you are about to eat it you can probably already smell it anyway, which is where the majority of "taste" comes in.
 

On 20/07/2019 at 06:09, Phil19 said:

3. When I’m in work and ransoms call me Phil yes I have a name badge now but use to happen in the past before that. 

So people at work know your name?  Again, thats not abnormal.


You are looking for signs, so you are seeing "signs".  In the words of Freud, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar".

So long as you keep engaging in these kind of compulsions you will remain stuck.

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On 20/07/2019 at 06:09, Phil19 said:

I can’t prove I have full control over my brain.

Well first, you don't have full control over your brain, you never did.  If you did, you'd have to think about each breath, each heartbeat, each individual muscle movement.  Since your brain first formed, however long ago, in your mothers womb, you have NEVER had full control.  Thats not the way the brain works, large portions of it are automatic, always have been.

Second, setting aside the automatic portions of the brain, even focusing purely on your conscious mind, you will never be able to prove you have control over that either.  There is ALWAYS the possibility of things you don't know going on.  Unless you are an omnipotent, omniscient being, there is literally no way to know anything with 100% certainty. But you don't NEED to be 100% certain to enjoy life, you don't NEED to be 100% certain to have a "genuine" experience.  Almost everyone around you (unless they are also suffering from mental disorders like OCD) doesn't have these hang ups and they are able to enjoy life, so why are the rules for you different? These are rules you are creating and putting in place for yourself, they are completely artificial and you don't have to follow them.
 

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On 22/07/2019 at 02:32, dksea said:

Well first, you don't have full control over your brain, you never did.  If you did, you'd have to think about each breath, each heartbeat, each individual muscle movement.  Since your brain first formed, however long ago, in your mothers womb, you have NEVER had full control.  Thats not the way the brain works, large portions of it are automatic, always have been.

Second, setting aside the automatic portions of the brain, even focusing purely on your conscious mind, you will never be able to prove you have control over that either.  There is ALWAYS the possibility of things you don't know going on.  Unless you are an omnipotent, omniscient being, there is literally no way to know anything with 100% certainty. But you don't NEED to be 100% certain to enjoy life, you don't NEED to be 100% certain to have a "genuine" experience.  Almost everyone around you (unless they are also suffering from mental disorders like OCD) doesn't have these hang ups and they are able to enjoy life, so why are the rules for you different? These are rules you are creating and putting in place for yourself, they are completely artificial and you don't have to follow them.
 

That’s true but this stuff never use to bother me but bothers me now? Why is this? Like I can go hours or half a day feeling normal again then I go into existential mode worrying about my mind. My fear is about being controlled or free will. What I have discovered that by simply having these thoughts they may be totally false but I end up believing them and they seem real. It’s almost as if I am what I think. This is a problem with my ocd in general if I think of a bin, I can see a bin that’s enough to make me want to wash my hands. So if I think life might be a dream or if we have no free will my head is like yes I will go with that anyway regardless? Life just doesn’t feel the same the experience seems less genuine just by having the thought. Same as my contamination if I have a thought that something is dirty it doesn’t feel clean anymore. 

It shows the issue is my deep rooted ocd. Therapy isn’t changing how I am thinking. If anything the forums are helping more. I have become sucked in by ocd everything I have posted seems real, rationally I know it can’t all be but I can’t be sure it’s all not real or something contaminated happened? The free will issue has made me lazy about change as I fear I have no control over mind so it doesn’t matter what I do?

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2 hours ago, Phil19 said:

That’s true but this stuff never use to bother me but bothers me now? Why is this?

Because are brains are not static, life is not static.  On top of that OCD is affecting you.  We don't know why some thoughts get caught in OCD's web for one person and not another.  Many many OCD sufferers have asked the question "But why THIS thought, why does it bother me NOW and didn't before?".  For some there is a triggering event that you can connect to, for others it seems random, and maybe it is.  My personal theory?  Sometimes we are more vulnerable to OCD, sometimes less, just like sometimes my asthma bothers me more, sometimes less.  If a thought happens to occur at just the wrong time, when we are particularly vulnerable, it gets stuck in our minds and becomes an OCD thought.  Just bad timing really.  But thats just a guess.  But why it happens is not required for recovery, you don't need to know why Thought A bothers you but Thought B doesn't, or even why Thought A bothers you now but didn't before.  You just have to know that it DOES bother you now, and the way to recover from OCD is to change how you behave and how you react.
 

2 hours ago, Phil19 said:

What I have discovered that by simply having these thoughts they may be totally false but I end up believing them and they seem real. It’s almost as if I am what I think. This is a problem with my ocd in general if I think of a bin, I can see a bin that’s enough to make me want to wash my hands. So if I think life might be a dream or if we have no free will my head is like yes I will go with that anyway regardless?

Yes, thinking about unpleasant things can be painful, thats how brains work for all thoughts.  You don't have to be experiencing an event in real life for it to impact you in the same or similar way.  You go to a sad movie, the story can make you feel sad, even though you KNOW its completely made up, the characters aren't real.  You can recall a happy memory from your vacation at the beach and it will make you feel happy, even though you aren't currently at the beach.  You can think of someone you love and feel love towards them, even though they aren't there in person.  And, yes, you can have thoughts or images of anxiety causing things and feel anxiety.  This is normal human behavior. Its how your brain has always worked, the OCD just makes it easier for unpleasant experiences to impact you.
 

2 hours ago, Phil19 said:

I have become sucked in by ocd everything I have posted seems real, rationally I know it can’t all be but I can’t be sure it’s all not real or something contaminated happened?

Yes, it seems real or at least real enough to trigger anxiety, if it didn't we wouldn't have a problem, OCD wouldn't exist.  And yes it is difficult for suffers to feel like they know, again, thats the problem with OCD.  The central lie of OCD, the central idea you need to reject in order to recover is that you have to KNOW in order to act, in order to change.  You keep trying to figure it out, to get your head around it, to KNOW what is OCD and what is not and THEN you'll change how you behave.  Thats the opposite of the way it works.  You need to change how you behave THEN you'll become more confident in knowing and the decision making will get easier.  But at first you have to make hard decisions, you have to make choices in SPITE of the anxiety you feel.  You have to say to yourself "OK, I know it FEELS like this bin is contaminated, and if I touch it bad things are going to happen.  But I also KNOW I have OCD, which means those feelings are probably not accurate.  So I am going to touch the bin anyway, I am going to make a choice, make an action that will make me uncomfortable because I have to learn to behave normally again."

You touch the bin EVEN THOUGH you feel the anxiety.  EVEN THOUGH you feel like its contaminated.  You make a choice because you also know its probably/possibly OCD and other people have told you what you need to do to get better.  You can try and rely on only your own mind, but you know that your own mind is partially broken, relying solely on that partially broken mind isn't very logical.  You need to compensate for the broken part, you need to make choices to act how other people, outside people with expertise on how to get past this are telling you.

Think of it like this, from time to time you'll hear stories of people driving cars who do stupid things because the GPS device they were using told them to and they ignored their own eyes or what other people were saying and end up doing things like turning on to a non-existent road and into a lake or something.  Well your brain is the GPS and OCD is a bug in the GPS software, its bad data.  It doesn't mean the GPS can never be trusted, but it means you need to double check sometimes, you sometimes need outside information and you sometimes need to ignore what its saying and make a different choice.  Your doctors, your therapists, and the people on this forum are your eyes, we're the other people in the car.  We are telling you that the GPS is WRONG when it says "turn left, contamination ahead, turn left, contamination ahead".  You need to go straight, the contamination ISNT ahead, but if you turn left you'll end up in a lake which is far worse.

You COULD wait until the GPS software is fixed (i.e. OCD is cured), but then you aren't going to be going anywhere anytime soon, and you'll probably get more lost.  OR you can listen to the other sources of information and what they are telling you, that you can keep going even with a faulty GPS, you just need to learn to be more aware, you need to learn to differentiate, and you need to learn what choices are OK to make and which ones aren't.

We all understand how real the contamination feels.  We've all had those same kind of anxieties, some of us about the same things you are experiencing but some of us about other things too.  But the pattern is the same.  The behavior that doesn't work is all the same, and the behavior that does is also the same.  Compulsions don't help, avoidance, checking, replacing, etc.  Challenging the OCD thoughts, doing the opposite of what they say, EVEN THOUGH it feels incredibly uncomfortable in the moment, does help.  

So you can wait until your OCD goes away on its own (almost certainly never going to happen), wait until there is a complete cure (not looking likely anytime soon) or do what we know works now, even though its hard and unpleasant.  You have to make the choices, you have to DO things to get better.  Ruminating about why this thought or that thought, or why it bothers you now but didn't before doesn't change anything, you can do it, but its just going to waste your time and probably make things worse.  Stop trying to "solve" OCD in your head, you solve it by following the path we've shown you.
 

2 hours ago, Phil19 said:

The free will issue has made me lazy about change as I fear I have no control over mind so it doesn’t matter what I do?

If you don't have free will it doesn't matter what you do, so why not do what might change things?
If you DO have free will it DOES matter what you do, so why not do what might change things?

Again, you don't need to KNOW in order to make a choice.  If you wait until you KNOW you'll probably wait forever because the question of free will is basically impossible to answer, the question of whether you are a simulation being controlled by some other source or whatever, even if true you have no way of knowing for sure.  Make the choices that will probably make your life better, thats the most logical course of action no matter what the ultimate nature of reality is.

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  • 1 month later...

I may have a chance to transfer jobs to another store but again my ocd and Solipsism makes me worry. I now hate making “life decisions” due to the Solipsism. 

I find myself in a real muddle should I fly should I drive should I move jobs should I have a family and I just wonder about free will and how much choice I have.

But it’s a strange one as if I really had no free will who decided I would spend hours worrying over these questions? I believe my ocd condition has led me down this path. I mean I can make choices like what to have for dinner but it’s harder to make life decisions. The Solipsism is like a seed that’s been planted and it’s hard to change my view. I mean is life a fix well because I had that thought my ocd will go with the fact it is. Since I googled these psychology ideas I now believe them all.

Edited by Phil19
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Hey guys,

just wanted to ask you for some information. I know now that the way out of this is cutting the compulsions. But what are my compulsions exactly? Is it the reassurance seeking on the web maybe (I look up boards and articles on a daily basis, because that's the only thing calming me down a bit)? I've read somewhere that the rumination itself is the compulsion, but this seems to be a automatic process. And isn't a compulsion something to relief the stress? Ruminating just makes everything worse. And how could I cut this? Questions over questions.

I'm looking forward to your advise.

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Reassurance seeking is a compulsion. So is ruminating. That one may seem automatic but it is learned and can be unlearned.

Sufferers ruminate for a variety of reasons, chiefly to find an answer or solve a problem. But it's a trap, because the sufferer never reaches the goal. Doubt kicks in, more intrusive thoughts arise and the sufferer just goes round and round in their head.

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On 29/08/2019 at 02:15, Phil19 said:

I can make choices like what to have for dinner but it’s harder to make life decisions.

This is not exclusive to solipsism or OCD, its perfectly normal to have a harder time making more difficult/more impactful decisions.  Each of us approaches them in different ways, and yes they can make you feel nervous/unpleasant.  Accept that you don't HAVE to feel perfect all the time, make as informed a choice as you reasonably can and then move forward.  Maybe you'll make a mistake, maybe you won't.  There is seldom (if ever) a truly perfect choice in life, its all too complex. 

As for the solipsism, well either you are being controlled or you aren't.  Either way there is nothing you can do about it, so worrying about it is just a waste of time.  Stop trying to figure it out.  Assuming you aren't being controlled is the only rational choice anyway (if you are being controlled you HAVE no choice, if you aren't being controlled, its best to assume that and act on it).

 

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On 29/08/2019 at 09:17, badsidejoe said:

Ruminating just makes everything worse. And how could I cut this? Questions over questions.

You cut it by working on being aware of when you are doing it, when you notice you are ruminating stop yourself.  If you notice yourself ruminating again, stop yourself again.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  Over time you will stop ruminating so much.  Its like any habit, it takes a while to break but I can be done.

When I moved to Japan from the US, I had to adjust some of my automatic behaviors and learn new ones.  For example, in the west its common to respond when someone around you sneezes with a phrase like "bless you".  This isn't a mandatory behavior, but its cultural and learned, and you might not realize how automatic it is.  In Japan they have no such behavior, if someone sneezes you don't typically say anything.  I didn't realize how "automatic' the behavior of saying "bless you" was for me until I was surrounded by people who don't do it.  I had to catch myself and not say it, or otherwise look like a weirdo.  It took time, but now I don't do it.  In the reverse, in various circumstances I now use set Japanese phrases for things, such as the Japanese version of "excuse me" when passing someone in a crowded train or walkway.  When I visit America or other countries that don't speak Japanese, I have to catch myself because I will reflexively respond in Japanese in those situations.  Again, a learned, habitual behavior.  It can be undone, it can be avoided.  The more you do something the more habitual it becomes but you can stop.  Heck smokers are chemically addicted to cigarettes and even they can stop.  its hard, they often take many attempts but they can do it too.  You can learn not to ruminate so much, you just have to be vigilant and put in the time and effort.d

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