Struggling with thoughts

[SeaBreeze]

Hi everyone,

It has been a couple of years since my departure on here and I am now back. It's nice to see some familiar faces on here.

Jumping straight in to it, so I used to have really bad OCD symptoms and rituals which was that I got bad thoughts such as, I'm a bad person or I did one thing wrong such as being rude to someone that would make me do all my compulsions which take a day or so- cleaning mainly. I used to delete online accounts, (some of you may remember me having hundreds of accounts and memberships on here). I apologise to Ashley for this and the admin team.

I have got a lot better and hadn't done my compulsions for well over a year and deleting online accounts well over two years. I no longer delete online accounts such as this, so there's no worry of me ever doing that again. However, I ended up doing my cleaning for the first time in over a year a couple of weeks ago and it took me by surprise. I was having a really stressful day and my brain just kind of ended up doing the compulsions. I ended up feeling really guilty straight away.

Problem is, I am struggling more so with cleanliness. Like if I pick a spot and don't wash my hands straight away, I feel disgusting and un-hygienic. I want to do all my cleaning again but I know deep down this isn't going to help.

I am surprised my brain could sub consciously do my OCD compulsions and rituals after over a  year of not doing them.

I feel like a bad person, I have struggled with coming out of Prison late last year and I am struggling to come to terms with the abuse I faced when I was younger.

Any tips / advice would be great.

 

Thanks.

[Gemma7]

Hi Alex, it's good to hear you've been doing so well

Don't be so hard on yourself, when you have walked the OCD path lots of times before it can be easy to slip back into the same old habits. How about refreshing yourself on what you did to overcome these problems in the past, perhaps you have old notes from therapy. If not try the self-help book Break free from OCD, it will help remind you of CBT techniques to nip it in the bud before it gets anywhere. 

Also, we are all here to offer support too

[SeaBreeze]

On 14/07/2019 at 22:29, Gemma7 said:

Hi Alex, it's good to hear you've been doing so well

Don't be so hard on yourself, when you have walked the OCD path lots of times before it can be easy to slip back into the same old habits. How about refreshing yourself on what you did to overcome these problems in the past, perhaps you have old notes from therapy. If not try the self-help book Break free from OCD, it will help remind you of CBT techniques to nip it in the bud before it gets anywhere. 

Also, we are all here to offer support too

Thank you so much, that means a lot. I will definitely do that, thank you.

Hope you're well too!