OCD Ocd, anxiety, guilt and shame

[SoSadGuilty]

Hmm... well, I guess you meet with them once or talk over the phone and ask them some questions about...

Ok cool I might start that thread. Things with a purpose are good for distracting from thoughts.

What form does your OCD take @sun seeker? How are you managing it?

 

[SoSadGuilty]

Ok cool I might start that thread. Things with a purpose are good for distracting from thoughts.

Wh...

@sun seeker do you mind if I send you a private message?

 

[sun seeker]

What form does your OCD take Link Removed?

The obsessions have to do with two topics, mainly: that I might cause harm, usually death, to someone by my negligence; and that I will be abandoned. I go through cycles with this. For a long time it won't be a huge problem and then it takes over my life. I also do tons of ruminating over the past, as you describe, worrying that things I have done are the worst things ever and have caused a lot more harm than they probably did. If you look at the list of 10 top cognitive distortions, somewhere on this site, I think this would be #3 (mental filter). If I read or hear about or watch something about something another person has done, I comb my mind for anything I might have done that bears the slightest similarity, and agonize over whether it really was that bad. I go over my posts here over and over and over, making sure I haven't said the wrong thing. I constantly worry that people would think how horrible I was if they really knew me. I worry obsessively about whether I am being fair and honest, and the problem with this last is that my mind gets so confused because of both the anxiety and the particulars of how I was abused, that I lose touch with what exactly the truth is sometimes. My therapist understands this and does a lot of helping me re-orient to reality.

Where my symptoms differ from yours is I do have overt compulsions, and they mostly have to do with being sure I am not causing harm to others. I can get into grooves with safety where for instance, I am terrified of poisoning someone, so I can be up half the night throwing things out and disinfecting everything in sight and washing my hands several dozen times. Fortunately it's not like that all the time. When it is, I know the exhaustion. That's why I can sympathize.

 

[sun seeker]

do you mind if I send you a private message?

Not at all, go ahead.

that I might cause harm, usually death, to someone by my negligence; and that I will be abandoned

And I realize that to the small child I was when the trauma this came from began, those two things might feel like one and the same.

 

[saraemerald]

I have OCD, the form people often refer to as Pure O i.e. It takes the form of covert mental obsessi...

I can TOTALLY relate to everything you said. I have posted my own threads about the same thing. It's awful and I am looking for answers too.