lip obsession when speaking? please read!

hello, so i have been having this problem for a few months you could say. it all started a year or so ago where i was consciously aware of my breathing. it was an obsession where i would monitor every breath i took and felt like i was unable to break free from the thought. i was afraid that it would stay with me forever. then eventually i got over this obsession, but another obsession took over right after it. i was now thinking about my eyes blinking. it was so annoying and the thought just wouldn't get about of my head and i wasn't sure how to express the way i felt to someone i cared about. it was such a bizarre thing and it felt strange that people don't have this issue like i do, since it is an automatic process that we don't control......

after overcoming this issue with my blinking awareness and breathing awareness, i then started worrying about something else.... my lips. it was the weirdest thing. i guess the thought just popped up in my head and i thought "what if i never forget this thought".. basically i think about how my lips/mouth feels when i speak. especially when i say words with "p" or "b" or even "m" in them since my lips are touching and i think about every feeling and movement they make when i talk. i can't seem to speak fluidly anymore it takes soo much effort to pronounce everything. i'm so self conscious about it. it makes speaking so unbearable since i can't seem to speak without thinking about this. my thoughts are often repressed and i say things in my head rather than out loud because of this obsession. i forgot how to just live in the moment and not worry about what i will say next in a conversation.. i tend to stay away from people more often and have become pretty antisocial. which i hate. i've become a bit sad and depressed as a result from this isolation. i'm not sure how to get out of this. it's all because of this obsessive thought and control of my lips when i talk, that i can't seem to get out of my head.

i have been seeing a therapist but couldn't get myself to tell her this weird habit that i have. we seemed to go around the topic because i was afraid she wouldn't be able to help me. i will be seeing someone new soon and will hopefully gain the courage to tell her about it. i just want to know if anyone has had issues like this or the same issue. and how you overcame it? or any advice or insight on this ocd-like thinking.. i'm not sure how else to describe how i feel. i think it's called sensorimotor ocd. whatever it is, i hate it so much:( i hope you understood what i meant in this post. thank you so much for whomever is reading this and please respond. take care:) .

Hi -

I'm gonna move this topic over to the OCD forum as it has to do more with that than with Social Anxiety.

I hope that you'll be able to open up and tell your therapist about this. They are used to hearing about abnormal obsessions, especially when it comes to dealing with OCD.

- EGD.

hello ebrown314,

First of all, you are not alone. I cannot tell you how i am relived after reading your post. I registered to the forum just to post a reply. Still I am sorry for you just as for myself. I know how it is hard to get rid off these thoughts. (My native language is not english, so i am sorry if you can not understand what I mean)

While i was reading your post, my life just passed out of my eyes. I am 26 male and I have struggled with the breath issue some times. It never went out of my mind but it did not remain always just to relieve you. Just as you said, some other thoughts replacing with other thoughts over time. I would like to talk about my OCD shortly. Perfection and preserving what i own (such as lecture exams simply) led me to do repeatitive and irrational things such as washing hands... known problems. If I did not do these actions, i had been thinking all these beauties would be gone and i would ruin oll of them. Suprisingly, when I had no power to do anymore (I cannot tell how it is hard all time) really these beauties were going because I did not belive in myself after then.

I am more than being anti-social. I have not any single friend that I can hang out or talk to. I am trying to live my life alone on my feet. 6-7 months ago, I had spasm in my back related with disc bulding like that. And I could not even move my toe finger for 2-3 days. It was horrible being alone at that time. I have not seen or met anyone like me around. I would like to meet a somebody who can understand me, is just like me. I do not see myself as a normal person outside of my home to be honest. I am one example having the most intense of OCD, I know it. For the las years, I have been struggling to be seen as a normal person with the effect of being more than anti-social. I can not behave normally when somebody looks at me at least I think like that. I can not behave like what the social community forces me to behave one way such as walking straight, sitting straight, attitudes body movements, so on..
Anyway, I have passed through your concerns years ago. If she is expert, then there is nothing to worry about, she will know how the patients think. You should be ready to be humiliated by saying your words. But i am not sure she will end your problems from my experience. She can lower the degree of your problem with a pill but always remain in there will live with it. I am really sorry for us.. We are just 2 at the moment, severe OCD.

Hi!
First of all I wnt to tell you that you are not alone. Even though I was almost 100 % sure that I would never find someone els in the world with the same problem I found you. By the way I am a Spanish girl, and I am 25. I never told anyone about this weird problem, cause it’s so silly hearing it from another person. I consider myself quite optimist one and also I have a lot of patience which has helped me to handle the Ocd problem much better. I always thought that this OCD wanted to teach me something, wanted to teach me how to be more real, and I stil believe that. Even though I have lived in hell and I still do sometimes, stilI there’s a part of me which is grateful for having that. I don’t know exactly why is this happening to me (I have had sever episodes where I was not daring to pronounce letters like “m” “p” “v”… it felt as if I didn’t remember how should I speak… as if I had forgotten how to vocalize, and as if every time that I was about to speak I had to make a lot of effort to do something that I was supposed to do without any affort.

It has been one year with the same OCD problem. Before that one I had many other episodes related with eye contact, counting the number of times I blink, counting the breath… I have never gone to a psychologist and never explained my problem to anyone but I have managed to solve all my OCD problems at the time that I have recognized the benefits of it. The lips one is the longest one with difference.. it has beenon year to now with the same problem, even though now I am handeling it a bit better. I remember when I began with the conscious blink OCD. I remember it happened in my first day of Erasmus, and I remember that I was literally living in a jail of desperation. I began to notice that this was helping me to focus more on myself rather in what other people would think about me, because I was feeling that my existence was so unconfortable that nothing else mattered by that time. In consequence I was becoming a magnet for people, cause I was just becoming the best part of myself. I also tooked that OCD problem as an experiment. I was truly curious about what was happening to me… So let me tell you that I am sure that this problem is happening to us for a good purpose. It wants to teach us that we are not our body, we are something much more valuable than our body, we have to shift our focus in bring it from the outside to the inside. What actually happens to me is that I actually don’t mind what people think about me. I have never cared much about that, even though there’s this OCD thought which has nothing to do with my values that tell me that is very important what other people think and that I need to keep an image. The most difficult part of the OCD is trying to hide the problem from the other people, isn’t it? I can feel that I don’t trust myself, think that it’s more important my experience than others.. but in most of the timesmy OCD voice is louder than the one coming from mh true self.. I am beginning to learn how to make big changes in long term.. It would be amazing sharing the problem and the solutions with someone experiencing this same problem. You can send me a mail at this account: *mod edit*.

Hopefully hearing from you soon.. I wish you take it easy