#actually ocd
Some people just don’t understand how validating a diagnosis can be. Like with my parents, they worried that getting a diagnosis would be “letting it define me,” and that “there’s no point in confirming what we already know.” But having a professional sit down and tell you you’re not faking or overreacting is so relieving. Of course, there are downsides and not everybody feels the need for one, but if someone wants a diagnosis, listen to them.
OCD has you doing the weirdest things. I have this contamination obsession with certain words. There are certain ordinary, everyday words that are Bad and Unclean and I cannot say, write, or even think them. One of those words is a synonym for scent, so my friend was asking me what my favorite scent was but she used the Unclean word. I wasn’t confident that I could dance my way around the word while still keeping the conversation going so I just… lied to her and said my nose didn’t work properly. I had to live in this lie for a while where I had to keep pretending that I didn’t have that sense. It came up more often than you’d think. Just a really weird thing to do, like what even was that? And I still have that obsession so I’m more than willing to do that again if necessary.
By Morgan R.
While working on my obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) in therapy for a little over a year now, one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that OCD loves to lie. Through these sneaky lies, OCD pretends to be a helpful friend who wants to keep us safe. But really, it only manipulates us into doing more and more rituals. When stressed and struggling with an obsession, I’ve found it’s helpful to identify when OCD is trying to tell a lie. Then, I’m more likely to resist doing a ritual or to fight through the discomfort of an exposure. Here are 10 common lies OCD tries to tell…and why you shouldn’t believe them!
1. I have to do rituals to feel safe or keep others safe.
While most people with OCD know their fears are irrational, sometimes in a stressful moment those fears can feel true. At times like this, I try to remember the relief and feelings of safety you feel after doing a compulsion will only be temporary. Doing rituals never makes me feel safe in the long run. Delaying a ritual and sitting with the anxiety is actually what gives me feelings of safety and control.
2. I have to do rituals if I want to feel less anxious.
Because of its cyclical nature, one of the main pitfalls of OCD is that it can grow quickly. Doing a ritual decreases anxiety, which feels really good in the moment, but the relief is only temporary. When the obsession pops up again, we have to do the ritual more and more for our anxiety to go away. With every ritual we do, we continue to learn that ritual equals less anxiety, even though it doesn’t work very well. Exposure and response prevention therapy (ERP) reteaches our brain that if we don’t do a ritual, eventually our anxiety will come down on its own. With every exposure we do, our anxiety comes down faster.
3. This anxiety will last forever.
This lie can feel especially true during an exposure or panic attack, but it’s not only false — it’s impossible. All anxiety will come down eventually. It might soon go back up again, then down, then up, etc., but it will come down. I pinky promise.
4. Just do the ritual one more time. It’s better than trying to resist.
This is one of the lies OCD tells me most often: “One more time!” It’s the same lie music directors and dance teachers always told us in practice, and it’s never true. Giving into the ritual only makes the obsession grow more, which means you’ll have to do the ritual even more times.
5. My thoughts make me dangerous.
Something my therapist told me this week is, “We can’t choose what thoughts we have, but we can choose what we do.” What many people don’t realize is everyone has weird, intrusive thoughts. While most people shrug them off and go about their day, the difference is people with OCD tend to overreact to these thoughts. We feel responsible for our weird thoughts and feel like dangerous people. Because of this, we obsess about the thoughts and engage in rituals to reduce our anxiety, which accidentally makes the thoughts come more often. This lie is simply not true; thoughts are just thoughts.
6. I shouldn’t tell people about my thoughts.
When my OCD tells me my thoughts are dangerous, it also tells me to keep them a secret. We don’t want people to know all the weird thoughts we have. This only makes the thoughts stronger; we fall deeper into the obsession. It also makes it harder to get help. It’s like saying “Voldemort” — you can take some of the power away just by saying it out loud.
7. I should be able to control my thoughts.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could try really hard and just stop having intrusive thoughts? Yes, that would be nice, but I’m sorry to say that’s not the reality. Go ahead and try, I’ll wait. Tired yet? As nice as it would be to have control over our thoughts, I repeat, “We cannot choose what thoughts we have, but we can choose how we react to them.” The more we react to the thought and try to stop thinking about it, the more we think about it. The less we react to a thought and treat it as just a thought, the sooner it passes.
A common way to demonstrate this phenomenon is the pink elephant experiment. Try it yourself here!
8. There is a high probability that something bad will happen.
This is a common lie all anxiety disorders try to tell, but one I’ve tried especially hard to fight back against and test out many times. What I’ve found is usually, it’s not as bad as I expect it to be, or the bad thing doesn’t even happen at all. Quite often when I do an exposure, the anticipatory anxiety is worse than the anxiety I feel when I’m actually doing the exposure. Our brains really like to keep us safe, which means our brains really like to tell us something bad will happen, even when most of the time it doesn’t happen.
9. If something bad does happen, then I won’t be able to cope.
What about when you take the risk or do an exposure, and the bad thing does happen? I also underestimate my ability to cope with something bad. We are far more capable of coping than we usually believe.
10. I need certainty.
OCD related fears come in all shapes and sizes, but one aspect that ties them all together is an intolerance of uncertainty. Whether you check a lock multiple times or reread a page over and over, the goal is to feel certain that the feared outcome won’t happen. The only way to feel free then is to embrace uncertainty. Instead of responding to a “What if?” by ritualizing and desperately trying to achieve certainty, it’s better to respond with “Maybe…” and work on accepting the uncertainty.
Please source your material! This is by Morganfromhttps://myocdvoice.wordpress.com/about-this-blog/
Source of article: https://themighty.com/2016/01/the-10-biggest-lies-ocd-tells-you/
If anyone knows any wholesome OCD jokes or memes send them my way and I’ll make a queue.
Fellow OCD sufferers, I know that a lot of us struggle with guilt, and guilt for feeling guilty, etc etc, but I wanted to offer a bit of positivity and love
You’re not a bad person for performing a compulsion when you feel like you should have been in control
You’re not obnoxious and selfish for asking for reassurance
Your intrusive thoughts are not your fault; intrusive thoughts of violence do not make you a violent person, and you are not abusing your loved ones solely based on the intrusive thoughts you have
ocd makes shit like having an internship or a job such a nightmare. im making sure to be professional, nice, engaged, etc, and my brain is just like “imagine.. imagine if you just fucking threw a rock at this person. imagine if they had a heart attack and died. imagine if you said this absolutely horrible insult.” and.. bruh
hello!!@igoteyelinerinmyeye is doing a documentary project to educate people on OCD, and they need people from california/los angeles with OCD who are willing to be interviewed or to send in a video of them showing what their life is like with OCD. it can be done anonymously too.
other notes from them:
Must either have/had OCD or know/known someone with OCD.
In person interviews (ONLY IF YOU ARE IN LOS ANGELES OR ANYWHERE ELSE IN CALIFORNIA).
Other ways you can share your experience without being personally interviewed because you can’t or don’t want to:
•submitting a voice recording sharing your experience
•writing down your experience
If you are comfortable with showing your identity but can’t be interviewed for whatever reason like location, disability, etc. You can submit a recording of yourself sharing what your experience with having or knowing someone with OCD has been like.
THE PURPOSE OF THESE INTERVIEWS IS TO BETTER EDUCATE THE PUBLIC OF WHAT OCD IS REALLY LIKE.
contact them if you would like to do this!
my therapist: you have disorders:
me: disorder? i barely know her! by “her” i mean me. who is she? i don’t really know myself haha! i know that was a weird segue but there is an inextricable bond between my mental illnesses and my struggle to form and understand my identity. how much of my identity is informed by my mental illnesses? is it healthy to use my astrological chart as a way to keep track of my character traits because i have trouble actually identifying things about myself? how much of the way my mental illnesses work against me is a result of societal influence? have you read the communist manifesto by chance?
my therapist:
baku:
anyway since theres never any posts about us on the site- if you have OCD, heres your reminder that you’re not a bad person, or a monster, or anythingbecause of your OCD. you are not weird, you are not a freak, and just because you have to perform certain rituals/or you have to do things a certain number of times, none of this has any baring on your personality or character.
you are still a loving, caring person. we have harder lives than other people. our rituals are exhausting. having to do things a certain number of times is exhausting. having constant ‘pop ups’ in our brain is so difficult to deal with. but we deal with it.
if you have OCD then you are an amazingly strong person and you’ll always have the support of other people with it behind you. if you ever have a bad day and you just need to vent, feel free to inbox me. we’re gonna get through this. all of us.
I don’t flinch anymore and panic when I have horrible thoughts about harming myself and drinking blood and on one hand that’s great but on the other hand i can’t feel anything???? ever???????? if this doesn’t bother me enough than doesn’t that make me a bad person??????????
How to stop obsessing over your best friend from 4 years ago and to stop crying while looking at every drawing he ever made for you wishing so badly you never had that falling out
how to stop counting the number of times your textbook says “the” on one page and being incredibly uncomfortable if it’s not an even number
Is this thing actually dirty or am I just calming my obsession
how to stop my tics being comorbid with my ocd so not only do I have to tense or twitch certain muscles but I have to do it until it feels right/a certain number of times
how to not cry when washing dishes because the bits of food touching the water grosses you out so much and literally gives you chills and an anxiety attack
how to think about what someone is truly saying without thinking about horrible things that could happen to them
How to use school supplies without using a paper towel
How to hug your parents without believing you’ll fall ill and die immediately
How to stop freaking out when I step on sidewalk cracks
How do stop rubbing your hands, on both sides of course, until they get red and puffy
How to not hoard every single pair of pants you’ve ever owned, including the ones with holes and the ones ten sizes too small
Why will I flunk out of school/kill a family member/face a disaster if I don’t sit in THAT spot, go through THAT door, or take THAT road
Why do my hands feel dirty when I literally just woke up and I showered last night
how to be able to get gas without the fear that someone is going to drop a cigarette butt into your gas tank when you’re not looking and your car is going to explode and you’re gonna die in a fire
how to not lose ur shit when something touches the veins on the inside of ur wrists bc they might get slashed by the tiniest contact and u might die
My mom has bipolar disorder and she has psychotic episodes sometimes. It’s be traumatizing growing up taking care of your mother when she acts like this. She can be violent and angry and just attack me suddenly because she believes I’m the devil. I used to have horrible breakdowns myself whenever this happens but recently she is in an episode and I have been doing well. I clean her bedroom and take care of her animals and clean the house and she hasn’t been violent this time around thank god. It’s just very isolating being in a house alone with her. I’m lucky we have a home and I try to remind myself that even if it’s so empty.
