So angry with myself

[SnowFairy]

I have been dealing with a particular theme for around a year - that I've committed a crime in the past while drunk (which is why I don't remember it) and my fear is that the police are going to turn up at my door and arrest me and my life will be ruined etc etc. 

I have been doing really well the past 3 months, I have pretty much successfully managed to stop doing compulsions and have done really well at not giving the thoughts any attention. They are still there in the background but they bother me much less and were no longer at the forefront of my mind and I was starting to feel a lot better.

So on Monday driving home from work, don't ask me why, but I had the brilliant idea that now I'm in a better place mentally, I should re-examine the thoughts, look at them from a logical perspective and then maybe I'll be able to see once and for all that they were all nonsense. So I did.  Cue the most horrendous spike of anxiety as NEW thoughts started coming in. I'm now back to where I was 6 months ago, I'm back down the rabbit hole and I'm struggling to get myself out. I'm so mad at myself, why did I do that? I should have known what would happen. 

The thoughts are back at the forefront of my mind and I'm struggling to concentrate or anything else and have done a few compulsions just to try and relieve the anxiety. I'm so disappointed in myself. My question is, now I've given in and have gone back down the rabbit hole, have I wasted the progress I made over the past 3-6 months? Is it going to take me another 6 months to get back to where I was last week?

[PolarBear]

It shouldn't, so long as you swear off compulsions and get uour mind back on real life issues. I believe you can nip this in the bud quickly.

[hazydaze]

No it really shouldn't!!! You'll be fine  stop your compulsions immediately. I do the same thing from time to time, an old worry comes up and I entertain it and it bothers me for a little bit, but as soon as I stop the compulsions, it doesn't take long 'til I'm back to normal. The sooner you stop performing compulsions, the easier it will be!

[dksea]

21 hours ago, SnowFairy said:

I'm so disappointed in myself. My question is, now I've given in and have gone back down the rabbit hole, have I wasted the progress I made over the past 3-6 months? Is it going to take me another 6 months to get back to where I was last week?

As a great philosopher of our time once said: "Everybody makes mistakes, everybody has those days.."

It can be very frustrating to have a setback in recovery, and unfortunately OCD recovery is seldom without such setbacks.  The only way you have wasted the past 3-6 months is if you give up.  On the other hand if you take what you have learned from those past 3-6 months, keep applying it to your continued recovery, it has not been wasted at all.  You made a mistake, we all do, it happens.  Now its time to learn from that mistake and use it to move forward with better understanding.

I also agree with PolarBear, its likely your recovery will be quicker this time IF you keep working at it because you have that extra 3-6 months of experience and knowledge that you didn't have before.  You know that you can survive without the compulsions, that the anxiety will fade, etc.  Use that to motivate yourself.  Also, you now know that going back to try and "solve" the problem doesn't help.  You don't need to review the situation, you need to choose to treat it as unimportant, just OCD junk.

[SnowFairy]

Thanks everyone for your replies, I'm feeling a lot better today and more positive. Onwards and upwards.