[Trigger Caution] Exisential OCD

Recently I have gone extended time without my OCD crippling me. I still have it since it can't really disappear but I just wanted to post to talk about what has been bothering me. I have existential OCD so I worry about mortality. I have gone an entire week in which my OCD was crippling me to the extreme. All I could think of was of death and I cried a lot during those nights. I knew that death is a natural cycle and it's unavoidable for every single human on earth but I just had such a hard time accepting that. What helped me was exposure. . Exposure might be hard since you are literally exposing yourself to something you are uncomfortable, however, It did bring some clarity and peace once I was able to get the courage to do something and not let the compulsion happen. These experience really taught me that recovery isn't impossible. You might be discouraged to do it but I recommend finding the courage to do so little by little,
I AM NOT A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL - I am simply listing what has helped me in my personal journey of OCD.


Note: Finding a freaking CBT specialist is really hard. I also wanna push myself to offer advice to people on this forum but it is quite difficult to reply to people due to my ocd.

I've had phases in the past where I became obsessed with my mortality. These thoughts, I believe might have morphed into my current obsession with health and fears of contamination, but I'm not sure. I'm curious though: you say exposure therapy helped you with existential OCD, and I'm wondering what that kind of exposure therapy entailed.

Every now and then I get worried about death being the end when I think about ending it. But existential OCD Is just one of those things I can't have due to my beliefs. I thought this was going to be about... well I don't want to give anyone my intrusive thoughts. To me, mine seems worse than existential OCD. All I can do is not even think about it trying to "fight" against it, then it slips out of my mind. And that's how I deal with it.. forgetting it is there, until a trigger comes along. For the record, my OCD is mostly inactive now. I'm basically recovered.

Would those beliefs happen to be spiritual? No judgement here, just curious. It would make a lot of sense if they were.

What was your OCD like? How did you defeat it? May I ask how old you are?

naps wrote:Would those beliefs happen to be spiritual? No judgement here, just curious. It would make a lot of sense if they were.

What was your OCD like? How did you defeat it? May I ask how old you are?

I guess they are spiritual, since they involve spirits. I'm in my 20s. My OCD started off with feeling guilty about something and then it spread to other areas like an infection. I ended up doing things over and over, in a certain pattern, or else I would feel guilty. Lots of "What if" thoughts, thoughts about harming my mother, trying to harm people on purpose, even though I knew I wasn't. It involved anything I could feel bad about - germs, being dishonest, not doing things I was told, not doing things "right" or perfectly. I don't quite know how I defeated it. All I did was keep contesting it, which would make it even more painful at first. Eventually, very slowly, it let up more and more. Sometimes magical thinking helped. One day, I was told not to "let" my thoughts bother me. The person who said this might not have understood what it was like, but it really did help me somehow. The thought of professional help being in my future also somehow helped me put some thoughts to the side or quiet them.

I still do some things, like thinking that doing something a certain way represents this or that in my future and I can't help but choose the better way even though I know it doesn't actually do anything. If I try ignoring it and just doing what I was going to do, I feel dysphoric and nasty.

Good for you, then. I guess you could call what you did a diluted form of exposure therapy, same goes for the OP.

data-mirror wrote:Sometimes magical thinking helped. One day, I was told not to "let" my thoughts bother me. The person who said this might not have understood what it was like, but it really did help me somehow.

I've had that experience too: interpreting someone's offhand comment a certain way and finding it really helps you. Never once did these comments come from a professional, so don't put all your faith in therapy, but don't discount it either. Everyone is different. You could benefit.

data-mirror wrote:I still do some things, like thinking that doing something a certain way represents this or that in my future and I can't help but choose the better way even though I know it doesn't actually do anything.

That's just magical thinking, which I believe is harmless, although I suspect if left unchecked it could easily become OCD.

It's not harmless to me. It's a little stressful. "Hey, if you walk them down that way, it'll increases your chances of escaping this place..." "But if you don't..."

data-mirror wrote:It's not harmless to me. It's a little stressful. "Hey, if you walk them down that way, it'll increases your chances of escaping this place..." "But if you don't..."

My experience has been that true, pure, magical thinking is just fun. What you are describing is magical thinking being possessed by the OCDemon. Probably not uncommon.

Do you think if you tried to stop your magical thinking it would help? If not, then it's OCD.

naps wrote:
My experience has been that true, pure, magical thinking is just fun. What you are describing is magical thinking being possessed by the OCDemon. Probably not uncommon.

Do you think if you tried to stop your magical thinking it would help? If not, then it's OCD.

I do try to stop it. Help me, naps. Let's nap together.

Exposure for me was just to jump right into the thoughts. It was painful and I cried when I first did it but I did feel better. The idea behind it is just to become less sensitive to something by experiencing it so that in a "way" you can get over it.