strange voices in my brain?

[Cans01]

hello, I have opened many topics here and you have helped me a lot. The most important was my obsession with the number 26. (I will die at this age and every time I see this number, I perceive it as a mystical message by associating it with coincidences) Apart from this, for example, I see a car while walking on the road and the voice in my brain says to me, "Hey look at that car again or something bad will happen." Many things like this. The doctor has diagnosed ocd, but my brain is trying every possible way to prove to me that these are facts and not ocd.

[Handy]

They are thoughts not voices.

mtOCD comes in 2 flavors, preventing things from happening & 2, restoring things. 
 

mt is magical thinking 

[UpsAndDowns]

These definitely sound like OCD thoughts.

What would happen if you challenged the thoughts?  For example, if you refused to look at the car again?  Would that cause anxiety?

[Cans01]

yes i feel uneasy if i don't look at the car one more time or do something ocd ordered me. I was obsessed with the number 26 at the age of 15, I don't know how or where it came from. I thought that I would die in a car accident at the age of 26, and my whole adolescence was spent thinking about it. For some periods, this obsession was going away and I did not come across this issue. Whenever I focused on this issue, this number seemed to come to me more. I'm 25 now and I'm worried about next year. I even thought of not leaving the house for a year. This number is just one of my other weird obsessions, but it's definitely the scariest one.

[alyssa07]

1 hour ago, Cans01 said:

I thought that I would die in a car accident at the age of 26, and my whole adolescence was spent thinking about it

Hi @Cans01 !

I'm aware of how reassuring people with OCD can be dangerous and I am by no means a professional, but for the sake of how close my story is to your I'm going to share my experience  

When I was 11 I had a dream where a figure from my religion appeared and told me I was going to die on my 18th birthday. Being young and religious this obviously frightened me a lot because of my beliefs and much like you I spent the majority of my adolescence thinking I was going to die when I reached adulthood because "the universe" didn't want me to live to be a adult. Again like you I didn't think of it all the time but that didn't lessen the effect it had on me.

Crazily enough I ended up living past my birthday. 

But I had also learned to accept it so by the time my birthday did arrive I felt little to no anxiety about the entire ordeal.

The thing is your doctor is right it is OCD but no matter how many times I tell you this you're probably not going to believe it until you're ready to accept that fact yourself. You also have to accept that these thoughts have no power unless you ruminate and give them power. Is there a possibility you could die at 26? Absolutely. Is ruminating on that fact, or not leaving your house going to change that if the universe really wants that to happen? No. Does it scare you to hear that? If it does then good lean into it, accept it! That's what you do with OCD. Really you should even try and play into it. I used to inject comedy into when these thoughts bothered me, the thought would pop into my head and I'd acknowledge it go okay so I'm going to die on my birthday? Cool imagine if I died by getting ran over by a clown car that would be really embarrassing ...anyways! And then leave it at that and move on with your day, it's all about starving the OCD. :)

As for the frequency of seeing the number 26 you probably see more 7's in your life than 26's but because your brain is on alert about 26 you're going to see it on that small sign 50 miles away because your brain is hyper aware to it. The 7? you're not even going to register as it's not considered "sensitive" in your mind. That's just how it works.

it's just OCD and how your mind reacts to it don't look into things when it's not there!

-Alyssa :))

[Cans01]

yes you are absolutely right allysa, I even tried focusing on the number 36 once and it came across so much! Again, as in the number 26, I came across this number on strange coincidences. Things in issue 26 also happened in issue 36. But I don't know what scared me the most and when I was obsessed with this number, why did I focus? And why did I associate it with a car accident? All I remember is that before all this, I was extremely obsessed with death. And I loved cars too much. I think my obsession with death and my fascination with cars reconciled the two. When I was little, I saw the news that a 26-year-old person died in a traffic accident, who knows, maybe this event remained in my subconscious.

[alyssa07]

Absolutely! It's great you see that you know you're hyper aware because now you can use that to start chipping away at the power you've given the number. 

However, whilst it's easy to sit and dissect why you're feeling the way you are...it is a compulsion, it is rumination. You'll probably never know exactly why your OCD decided to latch onto 26 and I don't think it's worth the energy trying to figure it out. You seem to have come up with a reasonable explanation, but you don't need to think about it anymore, no point in going in circles.   Starve the compulsions and the obsessions will go, end of!

-Alyssa :))

[Angst]

I agree with the last comment that pondering on the origins of the thought is rumination.You are experiencing what is called magical thinking. There are plenty of references to it in other threads. The best advice is to do the opposite to the OCD command: so for example look at the car.

[Cans01]

The thought that ****** me off the most is, what if this number 26 is real, what if I'm really getting a divine message? I thought about buying a car the other day, I picked up the phone to look at the ads, I found a car and decided to buy it, and then I looked at the clock and saw the number 26. There are many examples like this. What if these are truly divine messages? What if I really see the future and this is a warning to be careful at 26?

[snowbear]

1 hour ago, Cans01 said:

What if these are truly divine messages? What if I really see the future and this is a warning to be careful at 26?

If that's what you want to believe then go ahead. But prepare yourself for a life of misery, avoidance, anxiety and limitation.

Alternatively you can shake your head disbelievingly, recognise it's all nonsense and get on with normal life, no OCD, no magical thinking, no limits set by insignificant numbers and unprovable thoughts about them.

It's your choice.

If you're looking for proof there's something divine sending you messages you'll never find it.

Again, your choice -

whether to believe that's because god doesn't send messages/ god doesn't exist

or whether to buy into the whole divinity, magical thinking and numbers thing and live your life out accordingly held back by your OCD.

Nobody can force you to believe one thing over another. Nor is there a right and a wrong answer about what to believe. But the beliefs you choose to live by have consequences, so think carefully about what you want the rest of your life to be like before you decide what to put your faith in.

 

[UpsAndDowns]

With OCD, it's hard to judge things in a rational, objective way.

I would say that it's 99% likely that your obsessions are caused by OCD.  The chances of it being a divine message I think are less than 1%.

But ultimately you'll have to learn to live with that risk.  I definitely don't recommend isolating yourself when you turn 26.  From my experience with OCD, turning inward usually just makes my condition worse.

There are many strange coincidences in life.  Because humans are adept at recognizing patterns, we often give them significance when there isn't any.

[PolarBear]

I find it fascinating how divine messages are always so cryptic. God was supposedly smart enough to create all that exists, yet the best he can do to send a message to someone is display a number on a clock?

 

[snowbear]

On 06/11/2021 at 13:21, PolarBear said:

I find it fascinating how divine messages are always so cryptic. God was supposedly smart enough to create all that exists, yet the best he can do to send a message to someone is display a number on a clock?

I agree. God, ghosts and invisible powers - all hide behind 'You can't see them so you can't prove they don't exist.'

I often say if god/ghosts/powers exist they're very welcome to turn up in front of me, in person, and say hello.   I'm still waiting for the invitation to be accepted...