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Too big an exposure


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Is there such a thing as too big an exposure? I am plagued by this rqdiation fear and I have an exposure which I could do-everyone else would feel this exposure was safe only me. I feel I am going to get cancer if I follow through,as are my family. I feel cruel and brutal to do this exposure...should I or shouldn't I? What if I believe forever I have killed us from my exposure? Something has to give, I have lay down and let OCD tramp all over me for a year and a half.

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41 minutes ago, Robin43 said:

Is there such a thing as too big an exposure? I am plagued by this rqdiation fear and I have an exposure which I could do-everyone else would feel this exposure was safe only me. I feel I am going to get cancer if I follow through,as are my family. I feel cruel and brutal to do this exposure...should I or shouldn't I? What if I believe forever I have killed us from my exposure? Something has to give, I have lay down and let OCD tramp all over me for a year and a half.

I wouldn't say there is too big of an exposure but there is perhaps too big of an exposure for you at this time. If you try to take out compulsions especially to something you consider really hard not to do when confronting a specific situation and it is too overwhelming to make progress with, it can set you back. Instead, it may be more helpful for you to consider an exposure that is less bad for you and work your way up to that one. The exposure part can be done with your imagination and probably should be in your case but just because its in your imagination doesn't change the fact that OCD makes it feel like a real threat still. The crucial part though is taking these ideas of it being cruel and brutal to do an exposure with your imagination and sort of turn them on their heads. These are ways OCD keeps you trapped by making you think that by wanting to challenge the almighty, all powerful, all knowing OCD, that you must be a horrible terrible person. The fact is OCD talks an awful lot of nonsense and interestingly enough never has the answers and nor can you provide it with any information that satisfies it. 

 

This is where you need to take the risk essentially. If you feel like you've had enough of OCD walking all over you and prohibiting you from living your life how you want to, you have to take the risk that it is in fact OCD that is wrong and that's all through ERP that you can do that. The latter part of my reply should answer whether or not you should do an exposure (again providing you don't do compulsions, if you do compulsions you should re-expose yourself to nullify the effect of the compulsion, just don't get stuck in a compulsive cycle of undoing the compulsion) but to the other part to do with "what if", I'll give you one bit of advice. Look at the start of that sentence and what you said. If it is what if, it's OCD and therefore you need to recognise that anything that comes after that within your message can be taken as reassurance seeking. You want certainty to know that by doing the exposure and not doing compulsions that you won't have somehow caused radiation related harm to you and your family but even if an expert said yes or no, OCD wouldn't care. It demands answers and certainty but will not accept them. Really, it's just about recognising the patterns of thinking there and realising is that something genuine or not. Do you absolutely need to know this right now and if so maybe that's OCD. Hope this helps.

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But I cannot get professional help, I am awaiting help from one of the OCD National Specialist clinics here in the UK, I have had my initial assessment back in April but the funding is so slow and the NHS won't give me another Psychologist locally in the meantime so what else can I do

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@Robin43How did this intractable obsessive thought about smoke detectors start?

I can understand therapists recommending practicing exposure to harmless substances. But not with a radioactive source, because everyone should show a health conscious respect to some substances.

So are therapists suggesting you cary out exposure to the 'idea of being irradiated'?

In which case it would be a mental exercise, that could reduce the power of the idea and that could lead to acceptance.

 

 

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@howardit was an ocd therapist. For my first exposure they got me to go and open the cover off our old smoke detector and touch all around the insides of it including the black ionistaton chamber, then go and wipe my hands all over my pillowcase and eat food. Now experts have told me I could have inhaled a radionuclide and all because of this therapist 

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@Robin43 Okay so why were you seeing an OCD therapist? Why did they ask you to do that? and Why would you do that?

Sorry you've probably explained all this, but I only read your OP on an old thread.

It just seems bizarre to ask you to do that.

 

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I was seeing an ocd tgerapist to ivercome a severe fear of radiation, they asked me to do this as an exposure task and please don't ask me why I done it because I question that everyday-WHY? The guilt and the questioning I do about why I done it never leave me. I guess she was a health professional and I was taking her advice to get better but now I am a million times worse off 

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Okay so what's done is done, forget that. It just doesn't make sense to do that sort of exposure.

You won't have any physical damage, or it's very unlikely. It's these 'I'm irradiated' thoughts.

So I'm assuming it was a registered therapist. How do you feel about therapists now. Or do you think another type of professional could help.

There are specialists in all types of OCD(as I'm sure you know).

 

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I cannot trust any therapists now. This particular therapist is a well known name in the OCD world. No one takes me seriously about the radioactivity risk (I mean other therapists). They dismiss the danger I was exposed to.

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It's difficullt if you started with a fear of radiation, then this happened, and that also impacts on how you see therapists. Do you think some anger towards therapists is playing into that?

It's like the therapist was just carrying out by the book exposure, but I can't see how that advisable, and I would have thought they could have come up with a better one.

I'll have a read of a few papers on radiation OCD and it's treatment. I suppose I respect radioactive materials(as a natural resource), but I'm also wary of it.

I'm still vaguely annoyed by a dentist who gave me a full mouth X-ray just to test his new equipment. 

 

 

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On 12/08/2022 at 21:36, Robin43 said:

Is there such a thing as too big an exposure?

In general terms relating to OCD I would say yes.  See below:

42 minutes ago, howard said:

It's like the therapist was just carrying out by the book exposure, but I can't see how that advisable, and I would have thought they could have come up with a better one.

My case was to do with checking my front door after I had locked it.  My therapist suggested 'try not locking the door, walk off and do what I was going out to do'.  That suggestion was firmly rejected and I explained why (I live in a relatively deprived area with fairly high burglary rates).

Like Howard says the therapist was just going for the 'ultimate' by the book exposure.  Less extreme exposures were tried and they did indeed help me a lot.

 

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3 hours ago, Robin43 said:

I cannot trust any therapists now. This particular therapist is a well known name in the OCD world. No one takes me seriously about the radioactivity risk (I mean other therapists). They dismiss the danger I was exposed to.

Robin, think of this. What good has a year and a half of worrying and ruminating done?

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18 hours ago, Robin43 said:

I cannot trust any therapists now. This particular therapist is a well known name in the OCD world. No one takes me seriously about the radioactivity risk (I mean other therapists). They dismiss the danger I was exposed to.

I have noticed a tendancy in doctors, to not criticise decisions made by other doctors and there could be several reasons for that(professional and legal). It might be the same with therapists.

So it seems that they treat fear of radiation in the same way they treat contamination OCD in general. Although they must be well aware that there is a range of different types of contaminants and that some require a unique approach.

I see many similarities in your situation to those experienced by Foreverobsessing. You both have had long term CBT(24 sessions if I remember right)) and have both had problems with the exposure. I wonder if your concerns about your exposure would be classed as PTSD. So she was offered EMDR and I think that can be seen as complimentary to the CBT. And I think that's how some other therapies can be viewed, as complimentary.

I can also see how doing any research online into smoke alarms and Americium-241 can compound the problem.

I think it's good that you can still discuss radiation, as therapists also try to get patients to rationalise the dangers in terms of risk assessment. So they and manufacturers point our that Americium-241 is a thousandth of the risk compared to natural background radiation.

I think it might be good to try to address this idea 'that you have been irradiated' first, and then deal with your fear of radiation in general.

What do you feel would be the best way forward for you?

 

Edited by howard
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On 16/08/2022 at 19:55, Robin43 said:

No one takes me seriously about the radioactivity risk (I mean other therapists). They dismiss the danger I was exposed to.

And you dismiss the idea the risk isn't as high as you think.

The truth perhaps liesomewhere between the two extremes, but you can't criticise them for being dismissive when you're doing the same in reverse!

3 hours ago, Robin43 said:

I think I have PTSD and I have told people that but no-one is listening. I know what OCD feels like, but this feels much much different.

It's different and it's not. I agree you do seem to have trauma issues, but you think obsessively about the trauma.

Hopefully your upcoming specialist therapy will help you untangle them for you a bit, so it's easier to see what is the effects of the trauma and where thinking about the trauma in an OCD way is keeping you stuck.

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