HELP anyone who feels they are in recovery

Why do I feel likw going with the flow was so much beter for me and that talk therapy/counselling so bad for me? So I have come to the conclusiom over the past few months that I have probably always had OCD or the way that I prefer to describe it is that I have always had the potential for my thoughts and feelings to become what we know as OCD BUT and here is the big BUT. Throughout my childhood and certainly my adultlife i found ways to cope with my negative intrusive thoughts and feelings and that was to learn that 1) I couldnt run away from them and that they didnt mean anything 2) To continue on with with life and what everybody else does by going to work, studying, having hobbies, exercisinh and having dreams and goals to work towards. So as we know these are all things that are good for our mental health whether we have a condition or not and they are also things that we should be doing or aiming for. So the angle I am coming from is that i beleive all of them years i was doing self learnt erp on myself without even ever hearing of erp and I beleive this because I basically continued with life whilst avoiding any urges that I ever got to do compusions or try to find out what my thoughts meant. I then feel that when I decided to go to talk therapy over some bereavement that I opened up the floodgates to OCD because I was now asking the reason of why do i feel or think this when really it doesnt actually matter because i was doing just fine as i was in the first place If anyone on here that has managed to understand OCD and get on a solid path to managing it or recovering from it can offer me there insight to this it would be so so appreciated because I think I finally understand it but its got so bad that i now question everything including my intuition

Thor 22

Date posted: 41w

Same it really is terrible. I cant figure it out at all.

Anonymous

Date posted: 41w

Essentially, yes, I would say you are correct. The idea is to not give the thoughts any power and not to engage with them, as this only reinforces in your mind that the fear is justified. So you are correct to not give any power to the thoughts by 1. Not pushing them away, as that makes it worse and 2. Not assigning meaning to them. It's also good to keep living your life as you would if you weren't struggling with OCD. Again, takes the power away from OCD and also keeps you focused on more productive things. Talk therapy is known to not help OCD and in some cases, make it worse. A therapist not specifically trained in ERP can unknowingly give you incorrect information and unhelpful treatment. I'll use my subtype as an example - SOOCD - An OCD therapist will recognize this as OCD and help me with ERP and accepting uncertainty, which will help me to take the power away from OCD by helping me understand my core fears and accepting that uncertainty is a fact of life. A talk therapist, however, might hear my anxious thoughts and assume that I really am gay and in denial, and encourage me to explore my sexuality - which would only make my OCD worse and give it more fuel and "evidence." Not only that, but often times in talk therapy, the provider might try to dissect your thoughts and feelings with you to come to some sort of conclusion. They might think this will help ease your anxious mind, if you can settle the matter, when it reality OCD will just latch onto it more aggressively. I hope my rambling makes sense and I apologize if it doesn't. I'm about to go to bed haha. Wish you the best 😁

Wolfram

Date posted: 41w

I feel like I'm currently going in the right direction or on a solid path. I gained my insights through therapy though, this community, the education from therapists posted online, ocd and trauma specialist therapists, group therapy, doing what you said you did naturally and understanding why, understanding that I have been a square that society has been attempting to push into a round hole, lots of different philosophies and lessons from religion without permanently adopting any idea as a dogma. That's where I'm at and I'm almost undeniably happy all the time 24/7 at the moment. Ocd isn't an open wound anymore, it has scarred over. So to help answer your questions more clearly, what exactly are you asking? 😅

lu22

Date posted: 24w

Need advice No therapy and really confused

Has anyone ever felt like they got to a point with ocd where they are numb to everything don’t get anxiety much and feel like they don’t know if they hate the thoughts and don’t know if you would or wouldn’t do those bad things? Or feel like they don’t know if it’s ego dystonic or against your morals because you are so convinced that you are bad? Is this possible? Everyone always says on this app that however bad the thought feels they know deep down they don’t want it but is it possible to be so confused or so into believing ocd that you actually feel like you don’t know? I complain about the thoughts/feelings I get from ocd to my family and they say you don’t want it but it’s convinced me so well I feel like I don’t even know? I don’t even know what I feel if I’m anxious or sad or what i don’t even know. I had this thing where it kept feeling sometimes like I would want to smile or as if I was ‘secretly happy’ about ocd thoughts and that bothered me and this time I was having these ‘stabbing’ intrusive thoughts and I got that same feeling I wanted to smile or was ‘happy’ and then I got this horrible urge feeling when my mum came in the room which felt like I ‘wanted to’ act on the thought and from deliberately imagining the stabbing thought to test my emotional reaction - it felt like ‘I knew how it physically felt to stab someone and liked the feeling/it felt good’ and that tied in with the ‘urge’ feeling felt really real like I actually wanted it and then I was sat there with my mum and I was telling her about it and I even told her I would try testing things by holding a pencil to see if it feels like I ‘want to do it’ as kind of an exposure tactic since I was thinking I was bad or would do it and I held it and obviously nothing happened and I even imaginined the thought while holding the pencil while she was next to me and it never felt like I wanted to do anything or ‘act’ on the thought, after I gave it to her and she put it away and then I we was talking and then I had another bad moment where it felt real (I can’t remember if it was the same day or not) but I was deliberately imagining that thought and then i don’t know but I think I got that weird thing where it feels like I wanted to smile or was secretly happy and I don’t know how if i gave into the compulsion and I think I did smile or maybe I didn’t I can’t remember but that ‘secret happy feeling’ suddenly became amplified and felt like the thought of stabbing someone lots of times suddenly felt like I was happy about it would really enjoy it or like it I can’t explain it but it suddenly felt like a real feeling that I enjoy it and I felt like in those films where the evil person is happy about doing something bad and it felt so extremely real it feels 99 percent like it was my own feeling from inside and I don’t feel the same I feel like there is something wrong with me and I will want to do evil things because now I’ve discovered that there is something ‘good feeling’ about doing that bad thing and I’ve ’realised’ why evil people get a thrill over it like I can’t explain that feeling but I wish I didn’t have it but it feels extremely real like my own feeling and now I’m thinking I definitely can’t be helped and everything is over because I will want to do it almost like the same way someone is ‘lustful’ I will want to do that evil thing because of that feeling of feeling happy over doing evil it’s really bad I don’t know what to do. I feel like I’m suddenly evil and my ocd has never felt this bad before. But still I’m not crying I’m not anxious I’m just complaining about it to my mum and family members what do I do. It feels almost like because of that feeling where it felt like I was happy now I would choose to be evil or want to be because it felt happy feeling 🙁🙁 I don’t know what to do I don’t even know what that feeling was and then before I was about to sleep my head is like to me ‘you want to experience that feeling again’ and it feels almost like an urge that I want to experience that feeling or be evil and I don’t know because I feel calm I’ve been having ocd for almost 2-3 years so I feel numb nothing phases me, I had a few sessions of therapy online with NOCD but I stopped it and have never had therapy since now I wish I had been having it because maybe it wouldn’t have got this bad 🙁🙁

dee012

Date posted: 14w

back on this app! any advice?

(Long read) hello everyone. i was out of the country for about 3-4 months and traveling. my ocd was not that bad at all and I was able to handle it even if it came up. on my way back home, it immediately started. i have learned how to handle it better, but i am more sad and just “awaiting” for something bad to happen. for example, i have sexual themed ocd. pocd and family related stuff, and also my ocd targeted my pets for about a year and it manifested into compulsions that disturbed me and made me not want to be around my cats. now that i am around my cats, i feel like “what if i harm them or do something bad?” or “what if you do those weird compulsions that happened before?” , when i look back on the compulsions that happened, it doesn’t feel like me and it was clearly driven by ocd, but it makes me worry i am just a sick person. i know myself and i know im not, but i had such a weird childhood and then ocd from 15 years old and up. so when these weird compulsions had happened , whether it was for the pet ocd theme or pocd or the family ocd, it feels like some sort of proof. anyways, i feel a bit for content with myself but i know how real ocd can feel and i just remember feeling so hopeless and suici da l, i just don’t want to go through that again. i take a more spiritual route of life and healing, and i wonder if anyone has some deep spiritual warmups or practices i could do to maybe open up my mind more? maybe to realize this is all in the mind? but also to not fight it… Not fight it meaning not let it take over my life. i racked up so much debt in therapy and i truly think i can get through this alone i just need a bit of help. but i dunno. any advice would help! thanks everyone ☀️

lf5

Date posted: 8w

Is self recovery possible at all?

I don't have an official OCD diagnosis, although I am near enough certain I have it after a long year of distressing intrusive thoughts and compulsions that have strongly affected my life. Unfortunately though, I do not have the opportunity or the finances to get checked or go to therapy for a good few months at least. Due to this, I have taken it upon myself to teach myself techniques to tackle it and to reduce and not engage in compulsions, as I did not want to take the risk of getting even worse before being able to get help (and desperation lol). For the first time in the past year I feel like I'm finally making some progress in getting better since incorporating these techniques into my life as my symptoms have become more manageable (minus the obvious bad days) at the time being. Is self-recovery actually possible? Has anyone managed to recover without a therapist's help?

Be a part of the largest OCD Community

Share your thoughts so the Community can respond

HELP anyone who feels they are in recovery

Related posts

Be a part of the largest OCD Community

Be a part of the largest OCD Community