Fear For The Safety Of Others

[Yvy]

I don't know either about the OCD but I'm going to read more about it and let you know if I find useful things. My diagnoses wasn't OCD fully but parts of OCD.
I don't know how it is with the shame for me because I think that I'm not ashamed but it seems that I'm so ashamed of myself that I don't even know it. Do you know Brene Brown? She has some good TED talks about shame etc. But I do recognize the fear to annoy other people!!! And maybe you should set a 'limit' to how many times you ask a second opinion. Because I think it's not really about what happens in the 'now' or the opinion but it's about something else that we do this.

For example today I'm having quite a bad day. I'm trying so many things to not have these awful thoughts but I've come up with someone I treated in 2011, I am afraid that I didn't treat her well or didn't help her well, or not soon enough, or that she had something bad that I didn't notice. Stuff like that. Stop thinking about that almost seems impossible. But when I tell someone it helps a bit but my mind comes up with other things anyway 'what if she did this, what if it was like this... but what if blablblabla.' I find it so hard to stop this. But I have the idea that behind all this mess in my head is a feeling. Because sometimes I lightly feel sadness coming up. But I'm so afraid to let that come. Maybe my mind chooses to rather get crazy then let those feelings come up? Do you recognize any of this?

So when you go home you mostly don't have it? How do you do that? (or maybe you don't know) Because I have it all the time now and I want it to stop. I sometimes don't know what to do anymore. My therapist says it takes time but it's for like 5 months now that it has become this worse and I have panick almost every day. Being at home alone is awful because I make more horror in my head and being on the job is 'dangerous' too because new triggers on the way there.... Sometimes I almost feel like giving up or that I can't cope anymore. But maybe that's just the negative voice again.

Did you already write your specific fears down (although they differ in your job) maybe you can find a pattern in them?

It sounds great to have a large garden and growing your own food! But how does it get worse in summer? Doesn't this give you rest? Or what do you mean?

 

[Yvy]

Four Steps for Conquering Symptoms of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz, author of Brain Lock: Free Yourself from Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior, offers the following four steps for dealing with OCD:

• RELABEL – Recognize that the intrusive obsessive thoughts and urges are the result of OCD. For example, train yourself to say, "I don't think or feel that my hands are dirty. I'm having an obsession that my hands are dirty." Or, "I don't feel that I have the need to wash my hands. I'm having a compulsive urge to perform the compulsion of washing my hands."
• REATTRIBUTE – Realize that the intensity and intrusiveness of the thought or urge is caused by OCD; it is probably related to a biochemical imbalance in the brain. Tell yourself, "It's not me—it’s my OCD," to remind you that OCD thoughts and urges are not meaningful, but are false messages from the brain.
• REFOCUS – Work around the OCD thoughts by focusing your attention on something else, at least for a few minutes. Do another behavior. Say to yourself, "I'm experiencing a symptom of OCD. I need to do another behavior."
• REVALUE – Do not take the OCD thought at face value. It is not significant in itself. Tell yourself, "That's just my stupid obsession. It has no meaning. That's just my brain. There's no need to pay attention to it." Remember: You can't make the thought go away, but neither do you need to pay attention to it. You can learn to go on to the next behavior.

Source: Westwood Institute for Anxiety Disorders

I found this. Don't know if it's helpful, but I"m going to try it...

 

[sun seeker]

And maybe you should set a 'limit' to how many times you ask a second opinion. Because I think it's not really about what happens in the 'now' or the opinion but it's about something else that we do this.

Yes, I agree. From what I've read about OCD (if indeed that is what this is) they tell supporters to limit how much reassurance they give. I can understand that. It's a temporary fix, and the mind will always come up with something else to be afraid of. But oh, it feels so good at the time!

But I have the idea that behind all this mess in my head is a feeling. Because sometimes I lightly feel sadness coming up. But I'm so afraid to let that come. Maybe my mind chooses to rather get crazy then let those feelings come up? Do you recognize any of this?

Totally. Some of my trauma has to do with neglect and emotional abandonment. There's other stuff that came after that, but that's the core problem, much of it too early to remember well. I've come to see over the years that my symptoms cycle between times when the fear is uppermost and times when depression is uppermost. Very rarely there is a break when I have neither. Upon more observing, I see that the fear and OCD symptoms are a frantic attempt to hold on to anything good I have in my life, because any loss puts me back into that desperate childhood place of absolute devastation and hopelessness. Depression sets in when I've already failed and lost those good things (not meaning that someone has died, usually it's more subtle than that). So on one level, the fear of accidentally hurting someone is the fear of how it would be to go through the grief of losing them.

There's more to it than that, though. That's one part of it but there is also this extreme sense of responsibility and of being unworthy and deserving of punishment if I make any mistakes. Also the belief that I have to work and achieve all the time or I'm a useless waste of space, which makes it hard to really relax when I have free time.

I am at a crossroads now where I need to find more stable work. It's hard because there are a lot of things I don't feel able to do. I am signed up for an employment program starting in April that hopefully will help, and meanwhile I have been doing a lot of exploring and thinking about what I would be able to handle. I think whatever I decide to do next, or in addition to the work I do now, I need it to be something where I don't hold the responsibility for the safety of others. It's just too stressful.

o when you go home you mostly don't have it? How do you do that? (or maybe you don't know) Because I have it all the time now and I want it to stop.

I don't do anything, it just is. Sorry, I wish I could give you a recipe! It sounds awful.

Did you already write your specific fears down (although they differ in your job) maybe you can find a pattern in them?

No, once I thought of writing down every fearful thought I had in a day and realized there was no way I would get anything done. There are just too many of them, sometimes they come faster than I would be able to write. Perhaps the act of writing them down would be a centering activity and slow down the fear, though.

It sounds great to have a large garden and growing your own food! But how does it get worse in summer? Doesn't this give you rest?

Because it's a huge amount of work, especially at harvest time. The more work I have, the more stressed I feel and the more symptoms I have. It brings on the feeling of never being good enough no matter what I do (now that one, I do know where it comes from). Also there are survival fears (if the deer get into the garden and eat all the vegetables then I won't have any for winter) and hurting-others fears that come up. For instance, the summer before last I did lots and lots of canning. Maybe 300 jars. Somehow I got so fixated on the possibility of botulism and that if I didn't boil something half to death I would be harming anyone I offered it to that I was in a panic for long stretches of time, getting up in the middle of the night to scrub the sink over and over, things like that.

 

[sun seeker]

I found this. Don't know if it's helpful, but I"m going to try it...

Thanks for posting. I'm familiar with this, but I still don't know how to get through Step One. How on earth are you supposed to know when something is a reasonable fear and when it isn't?

 

[Yvy]

Yes, that's a good question. I think we don't know that really well because everything feels as real fear. And maybe learning that by writing it down and seeing patterns in that. Because when I wrote down the things I could see that it were the same things over and over again that made me afraid, the same thoughts. The fear keeps repeating itself and isn't that smart really, it's like a cd that keeps playing on and on. But if you know the words and tune you'll be able to recognize it. Talk to other people about the situations: see if they react in the same way, see if it really is a dangerous situation. I think our brain needs to learn about what is dangerous and what is not. Now we think everything is.

I found these video's on youtube which helped me a bit, I can't put a link down here I thought. It's from Katie d'Ath OCD, if you type that in I think you'll get the videos. She explains about OCD and about the vicious flower. How the things we do like the rituals help in the short term but not for the long term... And that you have to learn that you can cope and that the anxiety will come down without performing a ritual or response. Pfffff very difficult. But I think what she says is true. What do you think?

Those last days / weeks I get the idea that I can't cope. And it seems to be getting worse. Maybe because of the short term fixes I do...