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Hi All,

I have a place at a good Uni for this September. I'd be a mature student, having previously left the third year of another course at uni because of incapacitating OCD (I had actually achieved A grades for most of my work and nothing lower than a B grade but OCD just destroys everything!). 

Basically I'm not sure I will be well enough to take up the place but I'd really like to. However since getting the place I have had a thought that something terrible will happen if I take up the place. This 'bad thing' is non-specific and so far I have speculated that it could mean my family members being involved in a fatal car accident (e.g. on the way to visit me there) or me being socially isolated and failing the course.

I am agnostic but used to be Christian and was encouraged by the church and my family to 'listen to God' and to pray about my daily activities. Some guidance I had was that if I felt 'peaceful' about something then God might be telling me to do something whereas if I felt a sense of dread then God might be warning me not to do something. (The idea wouldn't be that God would harm me if I did something he didn't want but rather that he was warning me that something bad might naturally happen if I did). I cannot shake the worry that this 'bad feeling' is actually either God or my future self or intuition warning me not to go! 

So I'm wondering- is this OCD? 

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Hi BelAnna

Many congratulations, you clever girl. What a wonderful thing. I hope you enjoy Uni. 

I know what you mean about worrying about bad things happening. My Dad was away for a month with my stepmum and I kept worrying about something bad happening to them, even right up to the plane crashing on their journey home. I often find, when something good happens, that the OCD makes us feel we don't deserve it, or shouldn't have it, or something will go wrong. I also understand - as someone who suffers scrupulosity and self-doubt with religion - how much it hurts to be confused about it all. I often wonder about feelings and if I say sorry for something, if I feel better, is that just my OCD or is that God making Himself known? I have had what feel like genuine connections but part of OCD is to hear voices in our heads; something I'm still trying to cope with. 

It sounds like OCD from where I'm standing, but this is a really wonderful opportunity all the same and I would encourage you to take it. Please try, at the very least. Maybe you're just anxious about returning after what happened last time? That's okay if you are, because you'll have more experience and you're smart enough to succeed and you'll be able to recognise the signs. And we're all here if you need us; lean on us during your study-time. It's what we're here for.

Lots of love and well done again!

C x :hug: 

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Thank you for the great support and advice Cub (thank you for your lovely post!), Lost, Polarbear, Daja, Closed and Dksea! 

I honestly cannot tell whether it's OCD or not. I do think that my past religious beliefs make these type of situations difficult to work through.

I did just search back through the forums though and find a post from last year where I was scared that something bad would happen if I went on holiday and that maybe God was warning me not to go!! Nothing happened so I really should have learnt from that! 

There might be elements of real indecision here- for example I would need to move a couple of hundred miles and might be socially isolated as a (really quite!) mature student in the city where I would be studying; I am not sure whether to study this particular course (Linguistics) and I don't know whether another University closer to family would be better. I think though that if it was just a case of normal indecision then I could work through this but it's the absolute fear/dread that I'm not sure how to cope with! 

I hope you're all ok and thanks so much for your advice/support :) 

 

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VqwI

Quote

I experience this a lot too (am also agnostic, raised Christian). I think it is OCD

And it's not restricted to OCD sufferers.  If you could do a survey of the population I think you'd find almost all have experienced this type of superstitious thinking.  The difference is that we obsess about the thought and give it more meaning and concern.

I often find myself thinking about things like this in the run up to Xmas when I'm out driving.  I (sensibly) think there may be drink-drivers about and should watch out.  I then think of the number of times you see newspaper headlines saying "Woman delivering families Christmas presents killed in fatal accident 2 days before Xmas"........luckily, I leave it at that but you can see how quickly and easily a train of thought can run like that, especially if you suffer from OCD.  You need to work on stopping the rumination you will be doing about this.

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On 21/01/2020 at 05:48, BelAnna said:

I am agnostic but used to be Christian and was encouraged by the church and my family to 'listen to God' and to pray about my daily activities. Some guidance I had was that if I felt 'peaceful' about something then God might be telling me to do something whereas if I felt a sense of dread then God might be warning me not to do something. (The idea wouldn't be that God would harm me if I did something he didn't want but rather that he was warning me that something bad might naturally happen if I did). I cannot shake the worry that this 'bad feeling' is actually either God or my future self or intuition warning me not to go! 

It can be challenging to overcome long held patterns and beliefs, for sure, but doing that is exactly part of OCD recovery anyhow.  
I am not God, nor do I speak for God (at least He hasn't told me I do ? ), therefore I can not say with certainty that God doesn't send good vibes/bad vibes as a way of communicating.  Maybe He does, maybe He doesn't.  But in my experience at least, there have been many times in my life where I felt dread, did something anyway, and was fine.  One big part of that is because I have OCD.  A person with OCD is predisposed by the very nature of the disease to feel dread more often than the average person. Its how OCD works.  So even IF God is trying to communicate to you through good/bad vibes, that communication is unfortunately being at least partially obscured by OCD.  Whatever your feelings on God, the reality of OCD and how it messes with how we feel must be taken in to account.  You have to assume there is a good possibility that this dread is likely OCD.  

As Caramoole mentions this type of thinking is not limited to OCD sufferers.  I'm sure the people around you can even provide examples of "I felt good, so I did it and the result was good" or "I felt bad, so I didn't do it, and it saved me from bad results".  However this is most likely explained not by supernatural forces, but by confirmation bias.  Confirmation bias is the tendency to ignore data that doesn't support a belief and overemphasize data that does.  For example, maybe your mother tells you "remember that time I had a bad feeling about doing X, so I didn't do X, and it turned out I was right!".  What she is forgetting is that she may have had 10 or 100 times where she had a "bad feeling" and didn't do X and it turns out if she had there would have been no problem.  You remember the times you were right about something fare more easily than the times you were wrong.  Its human nature.

So God or no God, its important for YOU and for all sufferers of OCD to remember what OCD is and how it works.  It causes dread and anxiety irrationally.  Its giving you bad data, its clogging up the line.  Its my belief that if God is trying to send you a message and its that important, there will be more signals than just one that can easily be explained by your OCD.  I can't prove it, neither can you.  You just have to take a leap of faith.

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Hi Belanna

You could assess whether whether linguistics is the subject to choose by doing some free online courses put on by the Open University or by doing some online courses put on by the University of Birmingham or the City University Birmingham. There are summer schools introducing you to corpus linguistics in London and Lancaster where you could experience some hands on teaching as well as living for a short period in a new city. There are a number of summer schools in a variety of subjects. You could test the water of both the subject and living away from home. I think a two week period of study would be a good test.

 

Edited by Angst
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