Afraid

[Plaguedbyocd]

Hi all. I woke up today with a horrible feeling that someone I love is going to die. I also have an issue with the number 3 (it feels like a bad number for this specific person I thought about) and I had set a countdown timer to wake up and when I cancelled it it had 3 minutes and 33 seconds remanning. So I thought omg that’s proof that this feeling is right Now I’m stressed about it. I’ve tried thinking rationally and it does seem to have reduced the anxiety a bit, but then I just think oh wow ok why am I not more anxious about this, it clearly doesn’t bother me that much which also stresses me out. Please help. 

[discuccsant]

Hi, 

so your initial obsession is that you're worried or that you fear somebody might die you're close to - to fear that is normal. And with that, you developed a lot of "What If…" questions, which in itself became like micro-obsessions: 

From the (irrational) question, "What if the number three means that somebody might die?" →  You derived the pseudo-fact that "Number three means somebody dies". It seems to me like, as if you have accepted the distorted reality deceptions from your OCD as a fact. And from that, you developed an irrational fear of the number three, which you in the end connect to your initial fear, that somebody you're close with is going to die.

And I think you need to SEE that this is a very false conclusion, you made, because you happen to have OCD. You need to question this very "fact" in itself. You need to re-label the meaning of the number three. Like: Is it really a bad number? Is it just something my OCD likes me to think it is a fact? Is the number three just like any other number? Is it really special?

So what could you do in this very situation? Well, begin to re-label the thoughts! Don't give them any meaning, because as a matter of fact, they got no!

Example: 

Incident: "I stopped the timer at exactly 3:33"

Wrong: "This is a very bad omen, as the number three is a bad number, and this could mean, that somebody close will die! Oh my god! This is horrible!"

Right: "This has no meaning it all. It just means that I stopped the timer at exactly 3:33. Numbers DON'T foreshadow something bad. That's just OCD making an illogical connection to something I fear. "

YOU can choose to give it the wrong or right meaning. You are the one who can change the association to this. You could just dismiss it as a random coincidence, without any meaning. But you do the very opposite and try to give it a meaning. You try to apply false assumptions onto this. You try to derive something meaningful from it, because you accepted a distorted OCD deception as a fact: That the number three is evil. 

You should start to challenge this.  

Edited July 1, 2022 by discuccsant

[Plaguedbyocd]

Thank you for such a thorough reply! That is very helpful and you’re right I need to break the association with the number for sure.