Special events triggering me

[cashewnutsandraisins]

So admittedly this will fall into the realm of confessing/reassurance seeking so I know Im being my own worst enemy but need to get this out somewhere as I can fill the anxiety starting to surge within me.
 

Two year anniversary tomorrow and my fella has surprised me with an overnight stay at a lovely hotel as part of a weekend away.

Apart from the fact its our dating anniversary and hes making it special I have no reason to think hes going to propose but my mind keeps thinking what if he does and then it goes to ‘and what if that makes me realise Im actually gay and in denial’. Keep imagining getting the worst feeling in the pit of my gut as he gets down on one knee and it triggering this realisation about who I really am.

have noticed a real trend with significant milestones triggering me and feeling the struggle at the moment. I just want to be able to enjoy this weekend with him.

[AnxiousAnnie]

How did the weekend go @cashewnutsandraisins

[cashewnutsandraisins]

Hi @AnxiousAnnie

Thanks for your message :)

i don't want to say too much as i'm worried about slipping into confession mode about the thoughts and inadvertently making this worse for myself but the weekend was lovely and I had such a lovely time with my boyfriend. I would be lying though if OCD wasn't an uninvited third wheel though and I felt myself doing lots of compulsions. Went through some of the worst moments in a long time over the weekend, which makes me feel really sad that I couldn't just fully enjoy myself and be in the moment.

i even had one moment of a total anxiety panic in a restaurant where I had to repeat 'I have OCD' in my head over and over to try and calm myself down, whilst at the same time seeming normal on the outside. Whilst I didn't fully relax from it, it did stop me going the other way with it so i'm taking that as a small victory. 

Yeah, just really hating that I have OCD basically, but aren't we all?! Things are also somewhat continuing - OCD feels just very close to the surface at the moment with ROCD, HOCD related thoughts close by. Trying to just let them be, but sometimes they feel agonising and I feel so much fear that I'll hurt my boyfriend, intense guilt that I'm thinking these things in the first place and just an overwhelming sense of when will this end?

I hate how my own brain feels like it's a battleground sometimes.

[AnxiousAnnie]

It's poo isn't it. 

Great that you managed to have some good times tho.

[dksea]

22 hours ago, cashewnutsandraisins said:

i even had one moment of a total anxiety panic in a restaurant where I had to repeat 'I have OCD' in my head over and over to try and calm myself down, whilst at the same time seeming normal on the outside. Whilst I didn't fully relax from it, it did stop me going the other way with it so i'm taking that as a small victory. 

Thats not a small victory, thats a huge victory!  Congratulations!  The desire to run and hide when you are dealing with OCD in a setting like that can feel overwhelming. Being able to ride out the anxiety and stay, even if you weren't fully able to relax again is a huge success!  You should be very proud    Its also something you can look to in the future if you have similar anxiety.  You can remind yourself that you have gotten through it before and been ok, and it can help give you confidence you can do it again.  The more times you are able to repeat that kind of thing the easier it becomes!

Im glad you were able to enjoy at least some of your weekend too. It sucks that OCD is along for the ride, true, and you have every right to feel disappointed about that.  Often we OCD sufferers get stuck focusing on the parts of the day that OCD ruins (understandable) and how things aren't "perfect" or "great" like we want them to be.  But if we let that overshadow the good parts then we give OCD the power to control even more of our lives.  Its not always easy, we don't always have the strength at the time, but when you can try and focus on the positives of times like these, the parts that you were able to enjoy or felt good about.  Glass half full sort of thing.

[cashewnutsandraisins]

Thanks @AnxiousAnnie - yeah I'm definitely grateful that I managed to have some enjoyment over the weekend. I need to make sure I focus on that as like dksea has opened my eyes to, it's so easy for the cloud of OCD to be all I remember.

@dksea thank you for getting in touch as well. Your comment actually did give me a bit of a wake up to realise how big a victory that was for me, and as I said above, how actually there were more positive moments in the weekend then the memory of all the OCD stuff was allowing me to remember - so thank you.

I'm doing okay at the moment, just trying to push myself to do stuff whenever intrusive thoughts hit - rather than sit down and ruminate on it all - and going to try and plough through some more of Brain Lock today as well. I won't lie - that voice telling me that I'm a repressed lesbian and questioning whether I'm just not admitting the truth is one of the thoughts plaguing me the most. I know that's somewhat of a confession, but the reason I say it is in terms of understanding OCD and how it works - say that I had another type of OCD - POCD for example - then I would also be tormented by the idea that I might be a repressed paedophile and I'm not admitting the truth also, if that makes any sense?! For many years I was haunted by the thought that I had been sexually assaulted as a child by a friend's dad and that I had repressed the memory because I was traumatised etc, - I'm no longer bothered by that thought/false memory so rather than seeing that as me being repressed, I find it much easier to identify that as a form of OCD and not doubt that it is OCD like I doubt my HOCD is HOCD...

Hoping this makes an ounce of sense! Fingers crossed! 

[dksea]

On 03/10/2020 at 18:06, cashewnutsandraisins said:

say that I had another type of OCD - POCD for example

Heres the thing, there aren't really types of OCD.  No POCD, no HOCD, no ROCD, just OCD.  It may seem pedantic to point that out, but there is a reason.  OCD can be about anything.  Any kind of topic can become an intrusive thought. When people compartmentalize OCD into different "types" they usually think that it takes different steps to beat each one.  For HOCD do W and X, for POCD do Y and Z, etc.  But the CBT approach used to treat OCD is the same regardless of topic. When you approach it from that standpoint it allows you to be more confident when dealing with new and different intrusive thoughts.  You already have practice with the tools you need, you may need to vary some part of your response slightly to fit the theme, but the core techniques remain the same.