Are you always aware of your checking compulsions?

[PolarBear]

3 hours ago, Cora said:

That it is as not important as I think it is?

But I just don't understand how it's not...

Stop trying to understand. It won't work. The clarity you seek cannot be found through more compulsions.

[Caramoole]

32 minutes ago, Cora said:

I need a plan and I think I need help with that because I'm too confused at this point to do it on my own. 

Have a think about some of the things that have been said in previous threads about this.  People will help you along the way and make suggestions but it's also important that you sit down and have a think about the things that you need to do.  Have a think about some of those things based on things your therapist has talked about and the things that have been discussed here.

[Cora]

2 hours ago, Caramoole said:

Have a think about some of those things based on things your therapist has talked about and the things that have been discussed here.

@Caramoole, before I do that I feel like I need to end this chapter (the incident with my cousin) but I'm not sure how. I have to move on but how exactly? 

[Cora]

I guess the first step would be to accept that whatever happened, happened and it's now in the past, right? 

[Hdigtts]

The best thing to do is to move forward with a plan

[snowbear]

41 minutes ago, Cora said:

before I do that I feel like I need to end this chapter (the incident with my cousin) but I'm not sure how.

This is the point Caramoole(and others) are making, Cora. You want an ending (answers and feeling of certainty) before you make a fresh start. But it never works that way.

You have to make a fresh start with all the old doubts and unanswered questions still open, still bugging you.

It's BY making that start that the old doubts gradually fade away and bug you less and less.

Trying to close the door on it all before you change your behaviour guarantees you'll stay stuck where you are forever.

 

7 hours ago, discuccsant said:

Why is nobody making a big deal out of it? Because it never happened the way we think it might have happened in our perception, our OCD just altered our interpretation of said events

Exactly.

Your thinking at the time and your memories are always influenced by your perception and your interpretation.

If your perception (thinking) is skewed then your interpretation and memory of events will not reflect reality. You're convinced we're missing something or we haven't understood because we don't see it the way you see it no matter how you explain it.

Well of course we don't! Because we see it with normal thinking, not with skewed (OCD) thinking.

You're looking at everything through black-tinted OCD glasses and wondering why everything looks black. We're trying to help you see what it looks like in bright daylight (without OCD colouring it.)

OCD thinking is like being in a swimming pool of treacle. When you're in it all you can think about is keeping your head above the surface. You don't see the pool isn't as deep as you imagined or that the side and safety is only an arm's reach away. Your entire world consists of kicking and fighting to stay afloat in the treacle. Everything you think, feel and do is coated in a layer of sticky treacle. No wonder you feel stuck!

Looking in from outside (normal thinking that's not skewed by your personal fears) we tell you again and again how to escape the treacle so you can go for a nice shower and get cleaned up. But with treacle in your nostrils, your mouth, your lungs and weighing down your limbs you want to know on how to wash it off before getting out of the pool. Well you can't! You have to get out of the pool first and then you can clean up.

You have to get out of the skewed thinking before you can see how skewed your thinking has been.

And the way to do that is to stop looking for answers/ certainty/ reassurance.

Once you've done that, you'll be able to look back and see where your thinking was going wrong. Be able to look at all of this with unskewed (normal) thinking - and that's when the anxiety and distress will disappear.

[snowbear]

1 hour ago, Cora said:

I guess the first step would be to accept that whatever happened, happened and it's now in the past, right? 

This still suggests 'something happened' when actually it's just your OCD thinking (perception) that's convinced you something happened.

The first step is to stop using OCD thinking to try to make sense of the world. Which means stop doing compulsions.

Remember the black-tinted OCD glasses? Every time you ask for reassurance you make them blacker. Every time you try to work out if what you did was sexual assault or not the lenses get darker and darker.

When you stop doing these compulsions the lenses lighten and become clearer, helping you to see things more normally again.

Stopping compulsions isn't easy, but you've had lots of advice in previous threads on how to make it easier.

In short, you need a plan for what you're going to do when the urge to carry out a compulsion hits you.

So get working on that plan. How will you distract yourself? What will you do to maintain your resistance when the compulsive urges get even stronger? (And they will get stronger, because you're starting to resist.)

It might help to have a reward in mind. 'If I go a whole day without doing compulsions then I can have a treat.' (You decide what the treat will be.)

And also include in the plan what you'll do when things don't go as well as you hoped. How will you regroup and get yourself back on track without falling into the old ways of self-recrimination, self-doubt and self-hatred?

Be specific. A recovery plan isn't about what you want to achieve, but HOW you will achieve it.

 

[malina]

8 hours ago, snowbear said:

This still suggests 'something happened' when actually it's just your OCD thinking (perception) that's convinced you something happened.

The first step is to stop using OCD thinking to try to make sense of the world. Which means stop doing compulsions.

Remember the black-tinted OCD glasses? Every time you ask for reassurance you make them blacker. Every time you try to work out if what you did was sexual assault or not the lenses get darker and darker.

When you stop doing these compulsions the lenses lighten and become clearer, helping you to see things more normally again.

Stopping compulsions isn't easy, but you've had lots of advice in previous threads on how to make it easier.

In short, you need a plan for what you're going to do when the urge to carry out a compulsion hits you.

So get working on that plan. How will you distract yourself? What will you do to maintain your resistance when the compulsive urges get even stronger? (And they will get stronger, because you're starting to resist.)

It might help to have a reward in mind. 'If I go a whole day without doing compulsions then I can have a treat.' (You decide what the treat will be.)

And also include in the plan what you'll do when things don't go as well as you hoped. How will you regroup and get yourself back on track without falling into the old ways of self-recrimination, self-doubt and self-hatred?

Be specific. A recovery plan isn't about what you want to achieve, but HOW you will achieve it.

 

Hey @snowbear,

I think this is brilliant advice but I have a question! I think a lot of the time for people, resisting compulsions ends up meaning enduring the anxiety for as long as they can before they just can't take it anymore and then they return with more compulsions. I have a feeling that @Cora (sorry to talk about you in the third person Cora!) treats it like this, that she is just resisting seeking reassurance until it builds up and she can't resist anymore. I would suspect there are lots of other compulsions like rumination going on too, but it seems to me that the perception of the event isn't going to change, that she is still going to feel like something terrible has happened and that she is an awful person.

How do you deal with that? Is it the case that by resisting compulsions, you then lessen the impact of the event to the extent that you are able to move on and stop seeing yourself as a terrible person?

I have definitely dealt with guilt over past events, like Cora and many other sufferers, but eventually I was able to stop using OCD thinking to make sense of them (I like how you put that), and to understand that my interpretation of the event was greatly skewed by my condition. This then helped when I tried to reduce the compulsions and that helped the thinking even further. I just worry that without being able to apply that kind of reasoning, you might end up falling into the trap of thinking that you just have to stop thinking about it and stop talking about it, but that it will eat away at you until you just need reassurance again.

I think this is partly Cora's problem, that she doesn't understand (as she keeps pointing out) how this particular aspect of her OCD works. Like this idea that she does something, on purpose, that resembles (in her own head) the content of that urges that she is feeling. I know we have all explained it many times, but I just feel like, until she understands it, that the reasoning about the events will not really change.

I hope I'm making some sense!

[Cora]

@snowbear, thank you so much for the amazing advice. 

9 hours ago, snowbear said:

This still suggests 'something happened' when actually it's just your OCD thinking (perception) that's convinced you something happened.

Okay, let's say nothing happened, but then how do I describe that moment in my life? I feel like I have to label it something, anything really, because if I dismiss it like nothing I'm never going to move on, if that makes any sense. 

28 minutes ago, malina said:

I think this is partly Cora's problem, that she doesn't understand (as she keeps pointing out) how this particular aspect of her OCD works. Like this idea that she does something, on purpose, that resembles (in her own head) the content of that urges that she is feeling. I know we have all explained it many times, but I just feel like, until she understands it, that the reasoning about the events will not really change.

Again, I apologise for being so stubborn and annoying but I feel like @malina is right. After all this time, I'm still finding it hard to understand how this particular part of OCD works, and I agree that continuously doing compulsions is part of the problem but I think there's something else, which is probably lack of knowledge. 

[Caramoole]

1 hour ago, Cora said:

I'm still finding it hard to understand how this particular part of OCD works, and I agree that continuously doing compulsions is part of the problem but I think there's something else, which is probably lack of knowledge. 

An important point is differentiating between "understanding" how something works and "feeling" reassured by that knowledge......because you won't.  Even if you understand (or at least accept) the explanations intellectually, that same doubt will remain.  This is a major stumbling point where people fall and don't move forward because they are waiting for that light bulb moment where everything clicks into place, where they feel certain and unafraid. It doesn't happen......you will still feel that urge and need to be certain.  The information is available in abundance for this (and other) type(s) of obsession, in professional articles, books, internet articles, forums etc.  We have to accept that these explanations are fact but then it does require a huge leap of faith to follow the recommendations even though we don't feel certain.

[snowbear]

3 hours ago, Cora said:

Okay, let's say nothing happened, but then how do I describe that moment in my life? I feel like I have to label it something, anything really, because if I dismiss it like nothing I'm never going to move on, if that makes any sense. 

So don't dismiss it as nothing. Accept it was a moment in your life when you weren't thinking rationally and interpreted something harmless as something highly dangerous.

Is that hard to do? Well, imagine the 'something harmless you interpreted' was a cuddly toy tiger somebody pounced on you from behind the sofa. You interpret that as, 'I was sitting on my sofa one day and I got attacked by a tiger - a real tiger, imagine that!' And you go through the rest of your life telling yourself and everybody else that you've been the victim of a tiger attack and how it's made you anxious every time you sit on the sofa, expecting them to agree and see that anybody attacked by a tiger pouncing from behind the sofa ought to be scared.

While you're thinking with your OCD head you probably will believe it was a serious and dangerous tiger that attacked you.

Other people don't look at it with your OCD lens in their glasses. Their immediate interpretation is 'It was a cuddly toy right? Real tigers don't pounce on people in their living room'

If you can begin to trust others when they tell you it was a cuddly toy then over time you'll change the story you tell yourself to, 'One day I thought I got pounced on by a tiger! It was scary at the time, until I realised it was just my brother and his cuddly toy. Made me jump! But I'm not anxious about tiger attacks any more because I know there aren't any real tigers in my home.'

So you label all of this, not just one incident but all of it, as the time you were thinking with your OCD head and looking at the world through OCD tinted lenses.

 

3 hours ago, Cora said:

After all this time, I'm still finding it hard to understand how this particular part of OCD works, and I agree that continuously doing compulsions is part of the problem but I think there's something else, which is probably lack of knowledge. 

I second what Caramoole said. It isn't lack of knowledge any more, it's wanting certainty. (Wanting to be free of the sticky treacle before you get out of the treacle filled swiming pool.)

 

4 hours ago, malina said:

I would suspect there are lots of other compulsions like rumination going on too, but it seems to me that the perception of the event isn't going to change, that she is still going to feel like something terrible has happened and that she is an awful person.

How do you deal with that? Is it the case that by resisting compulsions, you then lessen the impact of the event to the extent that you are able to move on and stop seeing yourself as a terrible person?

 

As long as you look at things (interpret) using your OCD tinted glasses the world will always look black and you'll always be convinced you're an awful person.

You deal with that by taking off the OCD glasses! Which basically requires a leap of faith to trust the people telling you to take them off. Sorry, but there's no easy way to get clear vision of the world back unless you do.

If you keep doing compulsions (especially ruminating) while still telling yourself the story, 'It was a real tiger, but if I just sit here and wait it won't matter that it was a real tiger and nobody but me can see that' then you're not taking off the OCD glasses. You've just shut your eyes - and when you open your eyes again you're still wearing the OCD glasses and the tiger still looks real. (Telling yourself you're 'riding out the anxiety' but you're still doing ruminating compulsions that maintain it.)

Of course you want to keep believing what you see with your OCD glasses on. As long as you keep doing compulsions, ruminating, telling yourself it was real then it will feel real. Because it feels real you tell yourself it was real and round and round you go again.

Changing your perception requires taking that leap of faith. Truly accept there was no danger, no real tiger, other people see clearly what you can't. Let go of the old story you told yourself. Change it to, 'The tiger looks real to me, but everybody else says it's a cuddly toy. I'm scared if I trust them it'll turn out to be a real tiger and it will bite me but...here goes! I'm going to take a chance on it being just a cuddly toy...'

And you peek out from behind your OCD glasses - the tiger is still there and still looks scary, but you trust this is OCD and you keep trying. So you go a bit longer without acting as if the tiger is real. (Resist compulsions a bit longer.)

And after a while you're ready to take a chance that it is a cuddly toy. So you look again and - yep, looks quite like a cuddly toy now, not a real tiger after all.

But there's a bit of doubt still, the fear of getting bitten is strong. This is where you have a choice.

1. Go back to behaving as if the tiger was real - go back to your checking and compulsions and real tiger story and glue those OCD glasses firmly to your face.

OR

2. Start behaving as if the tiger wasn't real. Take a chance you might get bitten, but as nobody else around you is worried maybe, just maybe, the tiger isn't real and it's ok to keep resisting the compulsions. The leap of faith. (Ride out the anxiety while trusting/ telling yourself it wasn't real. )

Take the leap of faith and eventually the OCD glasses fall off and the world looks normal. The only tigers you ever encounter in your life thereafter - and you can clearly see for yourself - are cuddly ones.

 

[Cora]

5 hours ago, snowbear said:

So don't dismiss it as nothing. Accept it was a moment in your life when you weren't thinking rationally and interpreted something harmless as something highly dangerous.

Is that hard to do?

At this point in my life, yes, it is hard, and it's been hard since it happened two years ago. 

 

5 hours ago, snowbear said:

'The tiger looks real to me, but everybody else says it's a cuddly toy. I'm scared if I trust them it'll turn out to be a real tiger and it will bite me but...here goes! I'm going to take a chance on it being just a cuddly toy...'

I like this and the tiger analogy very much! 

 

5 hours ago, snowbear said:

2. Start behaving as if the tiger wasn't real. Take a chance you might get bitten, but as nobody else around you is worried maybe, just maybe, the tiger isn't real and it's ok to keep resisting the compulsions. The leap of faith. (Ride out the anxiety while trusting/ telling yourself it wasn't real. )

Take the leap of faith and eventually the OCD glasses fall off and the world looks normal. The only tigers you ever encounter in your life thereafter - and you can clearly see for yourself - are cuddly ones.

Thank you, @snowbear. I guess this is the best choice I have, really. Yes, it's probably going to be very difficult but not more difficult than the situation I'm in right now, right? 

[Cora]

I've just read@discuccsant's post and I have a question. Will the guilt go away in my case as well if I stop the compulsions? In addition, is there anything else I can do in order to get rid of it? 

[Caramoole]

14 minutes ago, Cora said:

I've just read@discuccsant's post and I have a question. Will the guilt go away in my case as well if I stop the compulsions? In addition, is there anything else I can do in order to get rid of it? 

Yes, the guilt will go away because you'll begin to realise that this was a lengthy episode of OCD that had you in it's grip rather than an incident to be bothered about........but you must start working on those compulsions.  We can help you with that in a supportive way or by offering tips but not by means of constant reassurance & endless explanations.  Time to get to know the cuddly tiger and see there's nothing to fear but your fear

[malina]

2 hours ago, Cora said:

Thank you, @snowbear. I guess this is the best choice I have, really. Yes, it's probably going to be very difficult but not more difficult than the situation I'm in right now, right? 

First off, thanks @snowbear for the really detailed and insightful response, I also really like the tiger analogy too! 

So now @Cora with all of this detail in mind, can you start putting together a plan for how you're going to start handling this situation and others similar to it? Can you maybe give us some bullet points of what you're going to try to do?

[Cora]

@malina, @Caramoole, and @snowbear, I think I've missed some details of the incident. 

I'm so sorry. This is already very hard. I hate it. I won't be able to do it, will I? This is definitely self pity but I'm either stupid or there's something wrong with me because I've been reading and re-reading snowbear's and caramoole's replies the entire day but it just won't stick to my brain. Why is this so hard for me to accept? If someone told me that I have cancer or diabetes or pneumonia, I would never doubt it and accept the diagnosis, right? Why can't I do the same thing here as well...?

[Cora]

29 minutes ago, Cora said:

I think I've missed some details of the incident. 

I'm scared of the consequences (which mainly means closed thread and upsetting people) but I promise I won't do this anymore. The only most important detail I missed is that I moved very slowly when standing up, which again I did on purpose because I thought I was enjoying the groinal feeling. That's it. I'm done now. 

I'm sorry. I'm very, very sorry. You have all the rights to be mad and upset with me. 

[malina]

17 minutes ago, Cora said:

I'm scared of the consequences (which mainly means closed thread and upsetting people) but I promise I won't do this anymore. The only most important detail I missed is that I moved very slowly when standing up, which again I did on purpose because I thought I was enjoying the groinal feeling. That's it. I'm done now. 

I'm sorry. I'm very, very sorry. You have all the rights to be mad and upset with me. 

Ok you have done your last confession with this additional detail. Can you now try to think of some steps you could take to follow the advice you've been given?

53 minutes ago, Cora said:

@malina, @Caramoole, and @snowbear, I think I've missed some details of the incident. 

I'm so sorry. This is already very hard. I hate it. I won't be able to do it, will I? This is definitely self pity but I'm either stupid or there's something wrong with me because I've been reading and re-reading snowbear's and caramoole's replies the entire day but it just won't stick to my brain. Why is this so hard for me to accept? If someone told me that I have cancer or diabetes or pneumonia, I would never doubt it and accept the diagnosis, right? Why can't I do the same thing here as well...?

As everyone keeps telling you, there will never be that lightbulb moment where you just get it. You have to work on it, take a leap of faith as Snowbear put it, trust the people you have been speaking to and take some of the steps they suggested.

 

[PolarBear]

23 hours ago, Cora said:

I'm scared of the consequences (which mainly means closed thread and upsetting people) but I promise I won't do this anymore. The only most important detail I missed is that I moved very slowly when standing up, which again I did on purpose because I thought I was enjoying the groinal feeling. That's it. I'm done now. 

I'm sorry. I'm very, very sorry. You have all the rights to be mad and upset with me. 

Cora, STOP IT!

You just fell back into that old, self destructive behavior again. You've already explained it way too many times. Now you've explained it again.

Why? Two reasons.

You simply won't accept that we don't see you as deprived as you do. You think (absolutely wrongly) that if you give us just a little more information, a light bulb will go off and we'll see how disgusting you are. If we said that, it would be devastating but at least our responses would match the way you feel.

However, it's not going to work and it's never going to work. We know what's going on. We've told you hundreds of times. And nothing you say is going to change our opinion of you.

Secondly, you are, once again, asking for reassurance. You want a little pat on the head and for us to say  no we're not mad, you're a good girl.

All of the above is a compulsion. You revert back to it continually. And it's never, ever going to work.

[Cora]

The anxiety around the incident (I'm not sure what else to call it) with my cousin has been less overwhelming compared to how it was a few days ago. But, of course, I'm still struggling with past memories, and it's awful. 

Today, out of nowhere, I started thinking how about a year and a half ago my brother needed help in the bathroom, with wipping more exactly. That was, and it still is, a huge trigger for me so in that moment I felt very anxious which within seconds changed into annoyance. I very clearly remember that I was extremely annoyed (maybe it was still anxiety but it just fel different) and because of that, while I was wipping his bottom, I had the immense urge to do something inappropriate and then I moved and pressed my finger more than I really wanted to (I mean on the inner part).

I'm trying to not see this through my OCD glasses. I'm trying to see that I was just helping my brother, that the feeling of annoyance was probably caused by OCD, that the fact that I moved my finger doesn't mean I abused my brother, and that I don't really have to understand what happened and why it happened. But it doesn't feel right. This incident involves an intimate, personal area and it seems like I should give it more attention than I am right now.  

[malina]

4 minutes ago, Cora said:

The anxiety around the incident (I'm not sure what else to call it) with my cousin has been less overwhelming compared to how it was a few days ago. But, of course, I'm still struggling with past memories, and it's awful. 

Today, out of nowhere, I started thinking how about a year and a half ago my brother needed help in the bathroom, with wipping more exactly. That was, and it still is, a huge trigger for me so in that moment I felt very anxious which within seconds changed into annoyance. I very clearly remember that I was extremely annoyed (maybe it was still anxiety but it just fel different) and because of that, while I was wipping his bottom, I had the immense urge to do something inappropriate and then I moved and pressed my finger more than I really wanted to (I mean on the inner part).

I'm trying to not see this through my OCD glasses. I'm trying to see that I was just helping my brother, that the feeling of annoyance was probably caused by OCD, that the fact that I moved my finger doesn't mean I abused my brother, and that I don't really have to understand what happened and why it happened. But it doesn't feel right. This incident involves an intimate, personal area and it seems like I should give it more attention than I am right now.  

Hey Cora,

it so happens that I was talking about something similar with my therapist the other day, these situations where you're trying to treat something as OCD but it seems too important to let it go..or in my case that I fear there will be real, imminent consequences if I don't.

She called them little alarm bells that go off in your head. It's like if your phone is faulty and it's giving you notifications that you have to do something urgent, even though you don't really. In the beginning, you don't know these alarms are going off because of a fault with the phone, so you naturally respond to them. Eventually you find out that it's probably just the phone that is broken, but you can't get it fixed immediately. You just have to learn to ignore the notifications and go about your day. If you pay attention to them, you'll never be able to get on with your day.

It's the same thing here, it's just that the notifications/alarms are coming from your own brain. You just treat them like everything else in OCD. Yes it seems important but you have to go against the OCD, to try to take off those OCD glasses and see these little alarms for what they are (misfirings of your brain trying to tell you that something is very important) and keep going.

[PolarBear]

2 hours ago, Cora said:

The anxiety around the incident (I'm not sure what else to call it) with my cousin has been less overwhelming compared to how it was a few days ago. But, of course, I'm still struggling with past memories, and it's awful. 

Today, out of nowhere, I started thinking how about a year and a half ago my brother needed help in the bathroom, with wipping more exactly. That was, and it still is, a huge trigger for me so in that moment I felt very anxious which within seconds changed into annoyance. I very clearly remember that I was extremely annoyed (maybe it was still anxiety but it just fel different) and because of that, while I was wipping his bottom, I had the immense urge to do something inappropriate and then I moved and pressed my finger more than I really wanted to (I mean on the inner part).

I'm trying to not see this through my OCD glasses. I'm trying to see that I was just helping my brother, that the feeling of annoyance was probably caused by OCD, that the fact that I moved my finger doesn't mean I abused my brother, and that I don't really have to understand what happened and why it happened. But it doesn't feel right. This incident involves an intimate, personal area and it seems like I should give it more attention than I am right now.  

You shouldn't be giving it any attention. At all. You do not need to analyze what happened. You do not need to explain it. You are allowed to leave the whole thing completely alone and get on with your day.

[Caramoole]

I just wondered if your little Brother has some extra needs/help with things?  Can't remember exactly but I recall he is around 9 or 10???  Mostly, he should be managing these sort of things for himself at that age (obviously there may be circumstances that need special help) but I wonder if that is another reason that in the first instance you feel a little irritated and annoyed/awkward and having had those thoughts they then escalate into obsessive, worrying ones

[Cora]

Thank you very much, @malina and @PolarBear, for your advice!

On 13/11/2021 at 19:21, Caramoole said:

I just wondered if your little Brother has some extra needs/help with things?  Can't remember exactly but I recall he is around 9 or 10???  Mostly, he should be managing these sort of things for himself at that age (obviously there may be circumstances that need special help) but I wonder if that is another reason that in the first instance you feel a little irritated and annoyed/awkward and having had those thoughts they then escalate into obsessive, worrying ones

@Caramoole, no, my brother doesn't have extra needs but unfortunately we didn't teach him early enough how to do these things on his own. So when this happened he was like 8 and still learning. And yes, it was very triggering and upsetting. 

[Caramoole]

That wouldn't help you because it might have made things feel just a little bit more personal.  On a practical level (not for OCD reasons particularly) try and make sure that he's looking after himself a bit more with dressing & such