Feeling like a horrible person still

I hear and understand everything you just wrote, and I am so glad you shared those thoughts. When I read someone else feels like I have, it reminds me how powerful OCD can be, and it also reminds me to choose to take the ball of OCD voices and thoughts out of my head and set them on the ground next to me like a soccer ball, that is how I imagine it, so I can look down on it and tell it, “Oh no you don’t. I see what you are trying to do. I caught you! You just keep trying to scare me and keep me stuck, but I am going to keep moving forward anyway because that is how my brain learns, and every time I catch you, you shrink a little. Pretty soon you will be as small as a grape, and I will barely notice you at all and walk on past you.” I don’t know if that will help you, but I found that when I remember what OCD is and what it tries to tell my brain, I picture it as something that isn’t scary to me. After a while of catching it and telling it, “Nope, I know what you’re trying to do”, it became less and less loud and scary”. These days, I still catch it popping up, especially when I make mistakes or worry what people may think, but then my brain automatically switches to thinking, “Oh, you again.” And I’m not really affected by it. I just shrug it off. You will be surprised how your brain changes and begins to see OCD. It is like the scary Halloween mask came off and your brain just sees a plain old kid trying to get some candy if that makes sense.

I am sad that OCD is lying to you like that because you are not a bad person. Even though you pretended to care about what your friends were going through, that is totally normal! Humans are always seeking pleasure, fun, happiness, and it is normal to rather be doing fun things and to not like listening to what your friends are going through. Just so you know, you are proving that you are a good person because you make the effort to even listen. I used to never text back if my friends were complaining or sad about something, and I thought I was horrible, but in reality, my brain was just tired and wanting the relief I got from laughing and having fun. My brain gets tired easily, and OCD was exhausting on top of that. I just wanted to shut down. When I learned that my brain was still growing the emotional parts and some people’s brains grow in that area faster than others, it was a huge weight off my shoulders. I am just a normal kid, my hormones are changing, my body is growing, and sometimes I get this really uncomfortable feeling kind of like guilt that comes out of nowhere, and I wish someone would have taught me a long time ago that growing does that to us. That is a perfectly normal part of growing. In fact, wanting things made me feel guilty, but when I learned that is just part of a normal growing brain and everyone wants things they like, I was like, wait…so I am not selfish or weird or bad?? You mean it is ok to want things that make me happy more than I want to be around sadness or stress? Why didn’t anyone tell me that humans are programmed that way! Then I learned that I can learn to develop patience and empathy. I have started to actually set aside a little time each week to check on ONE friend, and I only give myself 10 minutes to listen to them right now, but next week I will set aside 15 minutes. When I call or text my friend, I usually tell them “Hey, I have to go to my next class soon, but I have a few minutes if you want to talk” and then I listen for about 8 minutes and try to imagine what it feels like to be going through what they are going through, and then I tell them I am sorry and I want them to hang in there and we will talk again. This is all stuff that works for me and it wasn’t learned overnight, but if it can help you or someone else to understand that we are wired to seek pleasure and and avoid pain, and OCD just latched on to a strong emotion I didn’t like and didn’t understand, and it used that to scare me and keep me stuck, then that is awesome because the suffering will end when you do the ERP and OCD shrinks (in my mind how I picture it).

And you know what- I just realized how reading what you are going through and writing to you because I want to help if I can IS empathy!! I am being totally genuine too. I know OCD sucks so much, but we are growing and we can grow stronger than OCD. Now I really do have to go to class :) and I still catch OCD whispering to me that “what if people talk about you in class”, but yep, it’s just that stupid grape and I’m going. Please hang in there. Honestly, there is success in front of you. Take one hour at a time or get through one minute at a time. It gets easier believe it or not.

I relate to this so much, especially the feeling of looking back at old interactions and trying to figure out what they say about you as a person. Something I’m learning in ERP is that sometimes trying to prove to myself that I wasn’t “bad,” manipulative, weird, etc. just keeps me stuck in the same loop because there’s always another memory or detail my brain can bring up. Maybe you handled every situation perfectly, maybe you didn’t. None of us can go back and get 100% certainty about that. I think the harder part is learning to let that uncertainty exist without putting yourself on trial over and over again. I know that’s WAY easier said than done, but you’re definitely not alone in struggling with that kind of loop. ❤️