Can’t take much more

[Gingham]

I am at the end of my tether. I can’t keep going. OCD has totally broken me and I don’t know what to do or where to turn.

I can’t do anything well enough for my OCD even when I think I have done something ‘right’ it tells me I haven’t and I have to start again. It took me four weeks to get stepping on a mat correct and now, a week later, my OCD has said I didn’t do it right and have to do it again. But if I go and get it wrong again this could spiral into another 4 weeks of me having to spend all day trying to get it right but if I don’t do it then OCD will never let me forget. Never let me relax again. Now I’ve cleaned the flat wrong and I need to do that again. I mess everything up - even the simplest of tasks and I get it wrong. 
 

My GP, psychiatrist, private therapist and clomipramine can’t help. I am never going to be free from this and be normal and I’m too tired of feeling guilty the whole time for doing something wrong.

Sorry this is so negative xxx

[northpaul]

41 minutes ago, Gingham said:

even the simplest of tasks and I get it wrong. 

I have just read your post and I see this as something you have done 'right'.  I hear what you are saying and it is clear to follow.  By writing the post and pressing submit you have demonstrated you are in control and not your OCD thinking in control.

Having done one thing right, what can you add to that?

[Gingham]

Thank you northpaul, I just don’t know what to do…all I can think about is what I got wrong with stepping on the mat and I don’t understand why it was ok 2 hours ago and now it’s not.

I feel like every minute of every day is a game of Russian roulette and anything can go wrong at any moment. I hate it. I hate living like this. It’s not even living. I hate this - I can’t ever be free. I don’t know if it’s anxiety I am feeling or if it’s guilt - I don’t even know if it matters.

[DRS1]

4 hours ago, Gingham said:

I am at the end of my tether. I can’t keep going. OCD has totally broken me and I don’t know what to do or where to turn.

I can’t do anything well enough for my OCD even when I think I have done something ‘right’ it tells me I haven’t and I have to start again. It took me four weeks to get stepping on a mat correct and now, a week later, my OCD has said I didn’t do it right and have to do it again. But if I go and get it wrong again this could spiral into another 4 weeks of me having to spend all day trying to get it right but if I don’t do it then OCD will never let me forget. Never let me relax again. Now I’ve cleaned the flat wrong and I need to do that again. I mess everything up - even the simplest of tasks and I get it wrong. 
 

My GP, psychiatrist, private therapist and clomipramine can’t help. I am never going to be free from this and be normal and I’m too tired of feeling guilty the whole time for doing something wrong.

Sorry this is so negative xxx

You might never not have intrusive thoughts or images and even might have some compulsions if you get caught off guard from time to time but you can get a whole lot better than you are now.

 

The guilt you experience is hardly justified and this is a very common issue in OCD. We are made to feel like the guilt is justified in some way but I'd actually start looking at these unreasonable feelings as such. How many people with OCD feel incredible amounts of guilt continuously for days on end for something they did or didn't do? Not that many, even if they did do something "wrong" and felt bad about it. Start being unreasonable to OCD. 

 

By all means allow the feelings of guilt to be there but other than acknowledge that they are there, treat them like they are an intrusive thought, ultimately useless and meaningless. When OCD hijacks your feelings, use your values instead.

 

I think they key here is that you are trying to meet OCDs demands but you don't have to. If OCD is continuing to go with the logic that no matter what you do, you are doing it wrong then start doing it slightly wrong. Your anxiety is going to shoot up, yes but that's just anxiety and you can tolerate the feeling of it and let it be there and realise it can't hurt you or do anything. The same goes for the uncertainty, the thoughts, the feelings. You can just let them be there whilst you do what you want to do.

 

Strangely doing all these compulsions doesn't do anything despite us doing them other than reduce anxiety and give us false certainty for a brief moment (as there is no certainty). These are how we fight against intrusive thoughts, images, and to an extent how we may see trying to give OCD what it wants by doing the compulsions but...

 

We can let it win (figuratively) in that we just let the thoughts be there and see what happens. Fighting against OCD with logic and reason via compulsions is never going to get us anywhere because it's totally unreasonable. Instead, you can choose to not fight it, let it make you anxious and scared (and it is scary to do this) but by responding differently to the thought of it not been done right or the uncertainty around it, that is what will ultimately in the long run help you get better.

[Gingham]

I just feel as though even when I try to just carry on without doing the compulsion, it is there constantly in my brain and it doesn’t fade. This mat thing went on for four weeks with the same strength of panic until I thought I had fixed it. Then I have spent the last week telling myself that I did the correction and it’s ok now, but it still didn’t go away and now I’m trapped and I won’t ever be able to move on from if I don’t do it and do it correctly and I so badly don’t want to start trying to get it right because I could do it wrong and then end up trapped in trying to get it right…this is a never ending nightmare. I feel like I’m damned if I do, damned if I don’t. 
I just don’t see how I will ever be able to forget this error and forgive myself for being so lazy in not fixing it now while I can. 
I just want my head to stop.

[northpaul]

8 hours ago, Gingham said:

I just feel as though even when I try to just carry on without doing the compulsion, it is there constantly in my brain and it doesn’t fade.

It is good practise not doing the compulsions.  Yes, that will give rise to anxiety.  What can we do about that?  My plan would be to engage my thinking with some positive and mindful activity to distract myself away from the negative thoughts.

This does not produce instant recovery but if the determination is there to get better and I stick at it the positive results do come.  If I get to a point where I am in more control of my thinking than OCD is then I call that recovery.

[Gingham]

So when I am panicking about not having done the compulsion, is it right to respond to my ocd with ‘I don’t do that anymore’ FULL STOP and then just keep responding like that when I get the panic to correct something and carry on doing something else. My difficulty comes up because my brain seems to retain the ‘error’ for so long and I can’t spend my life distracting myself from a ‘mistake’ I made years ago.

[DRS1]

13 hours ago, Gingham said:

So when I am panicking about not having done the compulsion, is it right to respond to my ocd with ‘I don’t do that anymore’ FULL STOP and then just keep responding like that when I get the panic to correct something and carry on doing something else. My difficulty comes up because my brain seems to retain the ‘error’ for so long and I can’t spend my life distracting myself from a ‘mistake’ I made years ago.

I mean that's one way to do it. If it's against your values to engage in compulsions then you are choosing not to engage in them. If you feel like you need to let OCD know that (albeit OCD does not care because it doesn't take answers or certainty) then by all means. It's probably more self motivating for you than it would be affecting OCD in the slightest. It's more the choice of not doing the compulsions and sitting in the uncertainty and anxiety that affects OCD

[Gingham]

Thanks @DRS1, in terms of things being against my values, can you explain how that works with just right ocd where my compulsions are touching things in a certain way or stepping in a certain way? 
Sometimes I can see a link with my values (for example, if I saw someone struggling to reach something on a shelf my instinct would be to reach it for them but my ocd would stop me so I wouldn’t have to touch anything so ocd would prevent me from helping) but other times (like with my current mat issue), I cannot see how it links with my values - is it classed as a value to not want to be constantly thinking about it or feeling panic about it or dread going out in the car as it reminds me of the mat? I don’t know how I would define my values, if that makes sense?

[snowbear]

On 30/12/2022 at 20:40, Gingham said:

So when I am panicking about not having done the compulsion, is it right to respond to my ocd with ‘I don’t do that anymore’ FULL STOP and then just keep responding like that when I get the panic to correct something and carry on doing something else.

 

Absoultely right.

On 30/12/2022 at 20:40, Gingham said:

My difficulty comes up because my brain seems to retain the ‘error’ for so long and I can’t spend my life distracting myself from a ‘mistake’ I made years ago.

You don't need to distract yourself. You need to stop interpreting something you did in the past as an error worthy of continued monitoring.

You might even find that when you reframe it using a different way of thinking that it is no longer classed as a 'mistake', is no longer significant, and something you can just let go and forget about.

If you're stuck on the idea that you made a significant error it suggests you are stubbornly looking at the situation from one static viewpoint. Try instead to look at the past situation from a variety of viewpoints (there is always more than one way to see or interpret things!) and then adopt one of the alternatives that interprets what happened in a different light so it's no longer a significant mistake. For example, you can see something you got wrong in the past as an unforgiveable error, as a welcome learning opportunity, as a practise run in developing a skill, or as a normal part of life just doing the best you could at the time. The event is the same. How you choose to interpret it varies the outcome and how you feel about it. It's a free choice. You don't have to stick with the interpretation you made at the time. You're allowed to interpret things differently with hindsight, experience, and even just with the knowledge that choosing the OCD path will make you miserable, choosing a different path will make you happier!

 

[PolarBear]

On 28/12/2022 at 17:22, Gingham said:

I just feel as though even when I try to just carry on without doing the compulsion, it is there constantly in my brain and it doesn’t fade. This mat thing went on for four weeks with the same strength of panic until I thought I had fixed it. Then I have spent the last week telling myself that I did the correction and it’s ok now, but it still didn’t go away and now I’m trapped and I won’t ever be able to move on from if I don’t do it and do it correctly and I so badly don’t want to start trying to get it right because I could do it wrong and then end up trapped in trying to get it right…this is a never ending nightmare. I feel like I’m damned if I do, damned if I don’t. 
I just don’t see how I will ever be able to forget this error and forgive myself for being so lazy in not fixing it now while I can. 
I just want my head to stop.

How will you forget the error?

Start by realizing the error doesn't exist. There was no error. There is no correct way to step on a mat. 

Your mind is telling you that a mistake was made, but guess what? Your mind is capable of lying to you. It's lying about the mat and likely many other things.

Your job is to realize the lies exist and stop paying attention to them.