I’ve had an extremely rough few weeks. As a bit of background, I’ve had depression, anxiety, OCD and ptsd for about 3 years now, with the OCD taking most of my control.
I get it mainly in the form of intrusive thoughts. The thoughts are awful, disgusting, harmful thoughts that I would never ever do - but my brain keeps saying ‘if there’s no evidence you didn’t do it then how do you know?’ Then when I try and be logical and say ‘it’s not something I would do and I would be in trouble or caught out or whatever if it was the case’ but then my brain goes to ‘BUT you could have just gotten away with it’ and then I’m stuck with all this guilt over a thought I didn’t do. It’s literally dibilitating ... I can’t function, it always circle back to the same things and I can’t break out. I’ve started avoiding going out in fear I’ll speak about it or if it’ll get ahold of me and I’ll shut down.
I don’t know how to retrain my brain
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Anonymous22222
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Sorry to hear about the suffering you are going through. Are you seeing any type of Therapist or anyone who is experienced with OCD? There is help for you- you have to trust in your logical thoughts and try to ignore these intrusive ones. Just reading about OCD and learning as much as I can about it really helps me.
You’re not alone in this. I suffer a lot from what I like to call “false memories”. I have Harm OCD and instead of obsessing over if I’m going to hurt someone it quickly turned into “what if you did hurt someone and you don’t remember” or “what if you do remember but you’re hiding it because you’re evil”. I have had times where I leave a friends house and then call them in a panic to check on them because my OCD told me I just stabbed them to death. I’ve googled news stories in my area countless times and really can’t hang out one on one with people right now unless it’s in a public setting. It can feel so so so real. It’s the most terrifying thing I’ve been through. What helps is to remind myself that OCD has told me several lies over the past few months, none of which have been true. I know just how debilitating it can be. At my worst when I believed these thoughts I could hardly move or eat. Are you seeing someone for ERP? Treatment has worked tremendously for me and I am learning to not associate fear or danger to these thoughts and just let them hang out in my head until they get bored and leave. I know it’s hard to believe, but it really does get better. My quality of life has drastically changed since when I was first struggling with the harm obsessions. I wish people talked more often about this kind of OCD and having these false memories. It’s very scary but you can get through this! I’m always here if you need to message. 💖
I think OCD just likes to create fear and terror however it can. I try to just remind myself that intrusive thoughts are ego-dystonic and that OCD doesn’t know me. I don’t think we’ll ever know why some of these thoughts pop up in our heads, and it’s just another uncertainty we have to accept. 😔
So sorry you are going through this but know you are not alone! It is as if you have just wrote down my feelings as I suffer from Harm ocd as well. OCD latches on what is most precious to us and tries to keep us captive. In my darkest days (in the beginning where I thought that I have just turned into a sociopath ) I wasnt able to sleep nor eat. It was horrible to the point where I knew I had to seek out help. I had seen 2 psychologist in 7 months who offered CBT but none of them understood OCD and its treatment with ERP ( I live in Germany). Through online support groups I have found a lovely therapist who specializes in ERP. It is important that you find a therapist who is an expert in the field of OCD and ERP- I am also on medication which takes off the edge of my anxiety. Wishing you all the best!
Do whatever you can to *not* be logical. Logic has no place in OCD; present a logical argument to your OCD and OCD will simply cheat and change the rules of the discussion. To the best of your ability, either let the thoughts simply "be" or learn how to agree with them either vaguely or aggressively. It takes time, but it's your way through.
I feel for you in what you are going through. Recently intrusive destructive thoughts have been disabling me as well. I don't get to see my Dr. till the end of the month and this is the worst I've ever had it. I plan on checking out ERP and CBT in the mean time I've been using Dietary changes and vitamin supplements to up my serotonin. As well as increasing my exercise I can say it's made it much more manageable. That being said I'm not out of the woods yet . I guess what I'm saying is, I feel I need to take a multifaceted approach to getting my life back from OCD and probably others do as well. If I could hug you to reassure you it will get better, I would but since I can't in just this case it's the thought that counts. Have courage friend your not alone and you are not your OCD.
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