Just abit of help needed please

[ocdsufferer85]

Hi I don’t want to get into any kind of long ruminating posts as I’ve been handling things way better.

Just having a bit of a blip.

Trying to throw anything that’s concerning me into the big OCD pot and leaving it alone.

Just worrying about thoughts.

Unwanted thoughts and ideas.

Can anyone relate to a feeling of guilt over having unwanted ideas but your mind just delves more and more into those ideas, makes you feel confusion and doubt and like you’re a bad person for having more and more thoughts? Like you feel responsible for the rest of the ideas that follow on in your head, like you’re to blame for not controlling them?

Im struggling with blaming myself for questioning horrible unwanted nasty thoughts, it’s like as soon as someone says you MUST NOT think of something, my mind goes into overdrive, thinks and thinks and thinks until it’s such a mess and it’s flooded with the very thing I DONT want in my head.

Sorry to post this just wanted to let it out of my head! Theres been so many times I’ve not posted and avoided the forum and moved on myself.

Just a minor blip I hope.

Thank you x

 

 

 

[discuccsant]

Hi, 

yeah, that's classical OCD. That's why your intrusive thoughts are so persistent. You don't want to have the thoughts, so you try to repress them. It's basically like the "Don't think of purple elephant" thing. If you ACTIVELY try not to think about it, you'll basically think about it. So, obviously you don't need to feel guilty, as this is simply how our brain works. I would even go so far to say, that the attempt to not think about an intrusive thought, is basically the same thing as any other compulsion: You still try to fight the anxiety and to get some relief:

Intrusive thought → Oh god, I need to think of something else.
Don't do that.  

What you need to do, is to change your behavior pattern. The best way is to basically to not give the thoughts ANY kind of importance: Treat it like any other thought. What does that mean? It does mean that you simply don't care and re-focus on what you did before, without trying to ACTIVELY fight the thought:

Intrusive thought → Hmm. Let's look for a good show on Netflix.
That's the way it should be. 

Let me go more into detail, as this may be confusing for you:
What would you do, if you had a thought about the moon? Would you try to actively fight to not think about the moon? Would you even give it a second thought at all? No, you wouldn't even know, one second later, that you had some random thought about it. You wouldn't care. You would just, out of intuition, switch the focus on something else. The thought about the moon was basically completely irrelevant for you, that you had no real desire to "get rid of it", but just did so automatically and unknowingly. That's why everyone is telling always to "not react to the though at all" or "just treat it like any other thought".
You want to get back to this state of having no emotional attachment to intrusive thoughts. Right now, you're like some guy, who tries to fight off an annoying fly, while others in the very same room, wouldn't even notice the fly, because how irrelevant it's for them. I hope you got the idea. 

I wish you the very best and keep strong!
It's hard, but we'll both do it!

Edited January 19, 2022 by discuccsant

[ocdsufferer85]

16 minutes ago, discuccsant said:

Hi, 

yeah, that's classical OCD. That's why your intrusive thoughts are so persistent. You don't want to have the thoughts, so you try to repress them. It's basically like the "Don't think of purple elephant" thing. If you ACTIVELY try not to think about it, you'll basically think about it. So, obviously you don't need to feel guilty, as this is simply how our brain works. I would even go so far to say, that the attempt to not think about an intrusive thought, is basically the same thing as any other compulsion: You still try to fight the anxiety and to get some relief:

Intrusive thought → Oh god, I need to think of something else.
Don't do that.  

What you need to do, is to change your behavior pattern. The best way is to basically to not give the thoughts ANY kind of importance: Treat it like any other thought. What does that mean? It does mean that you simply don't care and re-focus on what you did before, without trying to ACTIVELY fight the thought:

Intrusive thought → Hmm. Let's look for a good show on Netflix.
That's the way it should be. 

Let me go more into detail, as this may be confusing for you:
What would you do, if you had a thought about the moon? Would you try to actively fight to not think about the moon? Would you even give it a second thought at all? No, you wouldn't even know, one second later, that you had some random thought about it. You wouldn't care. You would just, out of intuition, switch the focus on something else. The thought about the moon was basically completely irrelevant for you, that you had no real desire to "get rid of it", but just did so automatically and unknowingly. That's why everyone is telling always to "not react to the though at all" or "just treat it like any other thought".
You want to get back to this state of having no emotional attachment to intrusive thoughts. Right now, you're like some guy, who tries to fight off an annoying fly, while others in the very same room, wouldn't even notice the fly, because how irrelevant it's for them. I hope you got the idea. 

I wish you the very best and keep strong!
It's hard, but we'll both do it!

Yeah it makes perfect sense thank you, I am not new to all this, and I should know better than to post again on here but thank you for helping me out!  

Some days it’s just impossible to resist the compulsion to ask for help! 
 

Years ago when my current obsession started, it all came about because I read something that frightened the life out of me, and it involved someone saying “you must not say…..(insert the fear here”

so basically I was instantly wired with this fear of having any kind of thought around that subject.

I must not think such a thing… like your example about the moon, I must not think of the moon…

But of course it became the moon firing in my head, the moon wearing a hat, the moon singing, the moon dancing (haha I think you get my point)

It went from not only thinking the very thing I don’t want to think about, to having all these awful what ifs, and more and more horrible ideas and confusion and it just made me feel so so so bad! Because I blame myself for my mind reacting in that way and delving further….

HOWEVER….the more you try to suppress thoughts the more they’ll come so I had no choice anyway, I cannot win, I cannot control thoughts and I cannot control ocd.

SO……….ITS ALL O C D.

I will keep fighting on! And I hope you and everyone else struggling will keep fighting and winning x

 

[ocdsufferer85]

ALSO AN EXTRA COMMENT 

 

O C D SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!