Just 'figuring it out'

[Pranjali]

Folks, how do you find if thoughts are actually real, true and not just thoughts OR

are they only thoughts which seem real?

Any experiences/insights/tips on if there is a way out to distinguish the two?

Thanks for your time.

[gingerbreadgirl]

Hi pranjali

You can never be completely sure. Trying to be completely sure is a big compulsion of yours (you regularly ask this question - and it's been answered many times). 

You have to take a leap of faith. If you feel like there's a chance it might be ocd then it probably is. 

[dksea]

On 23/02/2020 at 18:26, Pranjali said:

Folks, how do you find if thoughts are actually real, true and not just thoughts OR

are they only thoughts which seem real?

Any experiences/insights/tips on if there is a way out to distinguish the two?

All thoughts are "real" in the sense that you either have a thought or you don't.  You can't have a fake thought, if you think it, you think it.

What we really want to know, as suffers, is does this thought MATTER, does it mean anything or is it just useless garbage that's only sticking around because I have OCD?

Unfortunately, because of OCD, that sense of "certainty" we often get (and desperately want) doesn't always come, and thus we suffer from OCD worries.  What should happen automatically,  doesn't. and so we have to shift to manual mode.  As GBG says you have to take a leap of faith.  You have to go with probably.  You have to decide to treat some thoughts as true and other thoughts as not true based on a decision, not on a feeling.  You have to say to yourself "I know this makes me feel uncomfortable, I know it would be bad if it was true, but feeling bad doesn't MAKE it true, its PROBABLY just OCD so I'm going to treat it that way, even though I am not sure."  Yes, it is hard, but if you do it long enough (enough being relative for each person and situation) your brain will start treating it like it should automatically

The good rule of thumb is "if you think it MIGHT be OCD, it probably is."
You don't have to be certain (which is good, because OCD makes it hard to feel certain).  

So yeah, it sucks we can't just "know", unfortunately that's the entire nature of OCD.  If we could just know, we wouldn't have OCD to begin with.