This might help people

Hi there.

I had my first session for OCD therapy recently. My psychologist is away on holiday and I won't see her for another couple of weeks.

She asked me to keep a note of my intrusive thoughts and obsessions and I will be doing this until I see her again. The weird thing is that just writing it all down seems to be helping some obsessions and has taken some of the fear away. It's mainly helped with the sexual and harm intrusive thoughts. Maybe writing them down is acting as an exposure exercise? The mental health obsession is still going strong though and a couple of new ones have popped up to replace the harm and sexual ones. However, I'm confident that my psychologist knows how to help. She has a really good reputation.

Anyway, I'd just like to share that with people as a suggestion.

Dear CloudShark:

This is very kind of you to share this tool you learned in OCD therapy... right here on the OCD forum. Listing all intrusive thoughts and obsessions. Thank you so much and hope it continues to help you and I hope it will help others as well. My most reliably persistent intrusive thought every single evening, repeatedly into the night is "I ate too much" Hey, I just listed it.

Thanks again!

atina

No worries atina. OCD is a horrible affliction that most people misunderstand - it's often portrayed in a comical way when it is in fact debilitating and terrifying! If I can help other people with what I'm learning in therapy that can only be a good thing.

Keeping a daily diary of intrusive thoughts has helped with the harm and sexual stuff. However, I'm now doubting that I have OCD because of that and have started to Google OCD like crazy.

I hope you've had a good weekend.

Dear CloudShark:

Before it became OCD, it was excess fear, more fear than we could handle. For some people, that fear took on the psychosis route, for others- panic attacks; for others... social phobia and yet others, OCD. And for many, a combination of routes.

So even if you didn't have OCD, it is still excess fear roaming around. I am looking into this very fear, the root cause, more so these days. I sure hope I succeed. It is a mind boggling debilitating thing, this fear, being so intense. But I believe, really, that there is a way. My goodness, it takes so much out of me, it takes so much courage and persistence.

(I can hardly stand it sometimes. As bad as the fear and my life experience so far, it seems unbearable at times to heal, which is what I believe i am doing, being in the process... incredible).

atina

Hi atina,

My psychiatrist described the fear as being a train running along a circular track. Different people get on and off the train and they aren't important. What you should be doing is stopping the train. So, I guess you both have the same idea. It makes sense to me!

People do recover though and I've read and seen Youtube videos of people who say they have fully recovered after severe OCD. So, like you I believe it's totally possible. You help a lot of people on this forum and I'm sure you can turn that to your own OCD issues.

Dear CloudShark:

I critically read and listen to everything I read and hear people say. So I don't take it as reality when a person on youtube or anywhere claims anything, especially being fully recovered from anxiety/ OCD. Really? I doubt it. A person may .... temporarily "fully recover" until the next time. How does one know they are fully recovered? Can they predict the future? Can they predict they will not obsess with the next significantly distressing event that happens in their lives?

As far as working on my OCD, I am, specifically anxiety, the root cause. But again, it is not like a born again supposed Christian experience as "I am saved" and I am good now for the rest of my life. Some therapists call this expectation the "salvation fantasy"- happily-ever-after.

I don't think anything meaningful works like that. It is all a journey and it is about the process, about making progress, about moving on to a better place, never a destination.

Having realistic expectations, I believe, is necessary.

I like your doctor's analogy of the train, about needing to stop the train rather than obsess about the particular people (obsessions) going in and out of the train. And to connect with the unrealistic Salvation Fantasy, the Full Recovery Fantasy (which I believe it is)- it is about stopping the train again and again, slowing it down. Ooops, here it goes again, the train, stop it again. Or it started again, better go on a walk or if it is bed time, well, it is about time I do go to bed and relax into unconsciousness.

atina

Thank you for sharing this CloudShark. My psychologist has explained intrusive thoughts to me like this: people have weird thoughts all the time. The only difference between you and everyone else who doesn't have ocd is that once I have that thought I run with it. I have found that my ocd is almost like that whack a mole game. I get one thing under control and two or three more pop up. I haven't gotten brave enough yet to start writing down my fears and exploring what would happen if they actually came true. Mostly because I fear someone else finding them and reading them. That is something that my psychologist has suggested to me though. As a form of exposure therapy.

Atina, you're right to be skeptical about these recovery stories. I suppose it's wishful thinking on may part. My OCD tends to be episodic and it waxes and wanes. It's always there, but to varying degrees.

I like what you said about the "salvation fantasy" and I'm going to take that on board!

livingwithocd16, I can relate to being afraid that someone will find your notes. I have the same fear too, but:

A, I only live with Mr Shark and he isn't interested in reading it. He's had enough of giving me reassurance and knows it all anyway as I have to 'confess' things to him.

B, The note book is well hidden and nobody else would find it!

However, it has really helped and so has the psychologist. People think that OCD is all about germs, so I've gone for about 30 years assuming I was some kind of creepy weirdo. It's such a revelation and relief to learn that other people have the same problems and it's got a name - OCD!

Dear CloudShark:

It was a relief for me too, after TWENTY years of OCD (and Tourette Syndrome) to find out there is a name for this and that, and that I was not the only one. I too felt like a weirdo,big time weirdo and a freak of nature. It was a horrible feeling all those years.

Unfortunately, the discovery of OCD and Tourettes as diagnoses gave me the incorrect understanding that I was born with those maladies, that I was born faulty.

It is only recently that I am understanding that it didn't have to be this way, that if I had a safe home, that it would have been very unlikely for me to develop either one of these grouping of symptoms. I could have been free of all the misery brought about by these two groupings of symptoms.

we are all born with a predisposition for anxiety- to being overwhelmed at a young age with more fear we can handle and without the guiding, comforting of a parent.

atina