Does anyone here has OCD and specially Pure O OCD? I would like to talk with other people that have this.
This weird and difficult to explain mental illness has completely destroy myself.
Pure O OCD
Does anyone here has OCD and specially Pure O OCD? I would like to talk with other people that have this.
This weird and difficult to explain mental illness has completely destroy myself.
as someone who used to be terrified of "germs", i had to gradually expose myself to situations i perceived as high risk in order to realize that they weren't as bad as i thought, eg eating food that has sat out for a while or even a piece of food that fell on the ground once
And doing that you could fix it? Do you still think about germs but less or it stopped completely?
In my case I think it's more difficult because I mostly have mental obsessions so I can't do that exposure thing you say because my mind obsesses about things that I can't solve most of the times so the obsessions has no end.
The psychologists I went advice me things like meditation or things like that but they didn't work at all.
i don't really think about foodborne germs at all, just the usual stuff like washing my hands after using public door handles and keypads because they're most likely covered in shit or can give me a staph infection, which seems more reasonable
mental obsessions are understandable too, there is the urge to solve a problem but you find it transmutes into a different problem with a different form, but the underlying anxiety doesn't seem to go away.
actually, you might find it helpful to watch this documentary:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQWsfdwa14U
at one point a psych forces him to think about his son dying in a boxing match and it gives him some relief because he has never actually allowed his obsessive thoughts to proceed that far; his entire mental world was focused on preventing even being able to imagine a bad thing happening
Former clinical psych student whos sister had ocd and
This. Just remember brains build habits and normalize things. Like this anon my sister made herself a self treatment plan that involved acting against her thougjts and compulsions.
This weakens it.
Tldr ocd is an anxiety disorder, anxieties is your Brain thinking its protecting you, and whenever you give into an obsessive thought or compulsion your brain goes "sweet I saved your life" and will entrench and normalize that behaviour for later.
However every time you act *against* it ans nothing bad happens, your brain goes "oh guess that wasnt so bad.." and the obsession/compulsion weakens. Bit by bit.
This is kind of a watered down easier said than done thing. You absolutely should seek all the treatment you can. Just saying, you arent doomed, help and treatments and actions to mitigate exists.
informative post thanks doc
I have it as well op and I've made it go into overdrive by doing compulsions, struggling with it, but I think the key to go beyond that is just to accept leaving the question / obsession unanswered, even if it's pissing you off to no bounds
Doesn't ii stop you from doing things you did with no problem before? That is my problem, I could deal until recently with some obsessions, I always had them in my head repeating over and over but now the obsessions are affecting things I do daily. They are a kind of paranoia, worrying about things that make no sense. For example recently a new obsession appeared about having fear of paying with my debit card in stores because I think some little restaurant is going to copy my debit card and then use it to steal my money. And I have many like that.
And it doesn't stop. I have had this for 8 years now but since some months ago the obsessions have got out of control. Now it's a new obsession every couple of days. And it's affecting everything I do in my daily life.
>there is the urge to solve a problem but you find it transmutes into a different problem with a different form, but the underlying anxiety doesn't seem to go away.
Exactly that is what happens to me. I have an obsession and I try to solve it but then I can't solve it because it then turns into another problem or the solution that I come up with then has other problems and I can't figure it out how to stop the fucking problem and stop worrying about it.
Same for me, literally going nonstop and it even pops up in my dreams lmao, and for me it's a sexual based one so it's even more fun (it's not), With OCD we all have the same goal of not wanting something terrible to happen to us which is fair, but unfortunately we have a neurodivergent brain which makes us go haywire about it, I think the only way out is to do ERP + meds but you can't cure ocd like you can't cure autism, but you can definitely mitigate the disorder and the worst in all it that I can't provide you reassurance about your fear and you can't do the same for me, because OCD will make us doubt that as well, I just keep going on by reminding myself that it's all just a bluff from OCD no matter how real it feels
Have you been in therapy for OCD?
Nope, I'll try NAC + CBT + exposures on my own, and I'll go to therapy as a nuclear option
>NAC
That is lie a nutritional supplement? I just read something but, do you know more about it? Could you give me a quick response of what does it does to your brain that helps with OCD?
Oh I haven't tried it yet, I've also read that it can be effective as treating OCD symptoms, I had experience trying Zoloft in the past and it had "lessen the OCD alarm" so to speak, just wanted to try an alternative to SSRI since they have side effects and I don't want to rely heavily on them
There are only two effective treatments for OCD: therapy and medication. Anything else is snake-oil.
You should prefer therapy, but if you can't get a good therapist a high dosage of an SSRI is your best bet. At least 200mg is a therapeutic dose for OCD.
Yes, SSRIs have side effects and you'll have to rely on them (taking a pill once a day? unheard of.) But you have to weigh it: would you rather be constantly anxious or take a pill everyday for a couple years?
The only side rffect I've gotten from Zoloft is it makes it harder for me to cum. But this has been a positive; I last 30 min + in bed.
How long have you been taking Zoloft? What therapy has you tried and for how long?
CBT and i've been on Zoloft since 2019.
What was your type of OCD?, mental (Pure O) or physical?
I do that. I do the things even if my obsessions tell me it's dangerous or whatever. Some reduce their strength but others stay there and each time I do the action my mind starts thinking about it again. One of the general things people with OCD do is to avoid those things that are the source of your obsessions, for example let's say someone is obsessed about dying in a car accident, so to stop thinking about it all the time he is in a car he reduces the times he travels in cars or stops doing it, traveling in public transport for example. I keep doing the action that is the source of my obsession but each time I do it my minds starts thinking about the obsession again. So some reduce it's strength but others not, and each time I do the thing my mind starts thinking about it. Sometimes you can stop doing something that is the source of an obsession because it's not an important thing and you can avoid it but when the obsessions start getting into your daily life and the most basic things you do is when you can't escape from them anymore.
In my case, just a few months ago I didn't have much of the obsessions I have now. I was much better just a few months ago. And now I have stupid obsessions about things that I have been doing all my life with no problem and never worried about them but now my mind just started obsessing about it. It's incredible how the fucking stupid human mind works. An example of this: let's say you have always gone fishing on your boat with no worries, well now suddenly your mind gets obsessed with you dying drowned. All your life doing it with no worries and now you are so obsessed about it and so afraid of doing it that you can't stop thinking about the danger.
>What was your type of OCD?, mental (Pure O) or physical?
Pure O.
Your fear isn't disgusting things -- it's being unable to forget disgusting things. You need to accept the possibility, and perhaps the reality, that you will never forget.
I have it, honestly I just try to distract myself with any activity as soon as I start ruminating on a fear. But I also take meds so it's probably easier for me to do that lol
>just expose yourself to the stuff you fear bro
Well what the fuck happens when my "compulsion" is trying (and failing) to forget disgusting stuff? And I mean real disgusting stuff like, I don't know, spoiled rotten cooking grease oil, I don't wanna stare at it, it makes me puke.
Could you give me some other examples of your obsessions so I can understand it better?
I have always had doubts about these 2 things. I wish to know what you other people that has OCD think about them:
1) Is it good to learn about OCD or not? When I first started having OCD (Pure O) I didn't like to read about it because I thought that if I started reading a lot about it then it would be worse because my mind would get more afraid and obsessed about it. So I tried to ignore it for a while in the hope that it would go away if I just ignored it. This obviously didn't work and during all these years I have had to read about it because it didn't just go away.
2) Is it good to write down and analyze your obsessions? I have thought about writing down all my obsessions to analyze them one by one to see if doing that I can convince my mind that they make no sense. I don't know if this would be worse because I would think about them more. What do you think? Have you done this?
Depending on what variant of OCD you suffer with, different things work for different people. It can often be the case that you logically know that you are obsessing about something insane, but still have a "gut feeling" that it's legitimate.
At the end of the day, it basically boils down to wanting some kind of "certainty" where you will realistically not find any. Uncertainty causes anxiety, so your brain kicks into "problem solving mode" to try and address it - but these obsessions often have no "real" solution. It's the mental equivalent of being Sisyphus. You can keep pushing the boulder up the hill and think you are making progress, but you will never reach the top. It's just a never ending spiral of rumination. It's helpful to take a step back from the situation and just look at it with almost a lens of apathy and just trust and assure yourself that things are likely going to be fine. It can be liberating to accept that "it is out of my hands" depending on your case.
>just trust and assure yourself that things are likely going to be fine.
I used to think that when I started having OCD (Pure O). That it was something temporary because I was living a bad situation and that when I started to return to a normal life that it would go away. That didn't happen and all that I have read about it is that it never goes away and is not possible to cure it, that you only can reduce it's strength. So ignoring it didn't work. Now I can't just ignore it.
>It can be liberating to accept that "it is out of my hands" depending on your case.
One of the ways to reduce the obsession about something is realizing that you can't do anything to be sure that there is no danger. That you will never be sure if it's completely safe so it makes no sense obsessing about it because you can't control it. That is one of the mental techniques I use to deal with my obsessions.
>One of the ways to reduce the obsession about something is realizing that you can't do anything to be sure that there is no danger.
I find it helpful to equate it to other equally unlikely scenarios. "What are the chances I will get struck by lightning?". It's not impossible, but it's not something you think about every day as a "just in case". I hope that makes sense.
I don't know how other mental illnesses are, like autism or schizophrenia. But I think this must be one of the worst ones because it affects you every day, almost all the time. I can maybe have some minutes or hours where I'm distracted with something when I'm not having the obsessions but that is all. I have them all the fucking time repeating in my head.
I know what you mean. It almost becomes a baseline "default" way of thinking, and any time you aren't actively and heavily distracted by something else, you fall back into it again. It's like drowning and only being able to get air infrequently as a temporary moment of respite before being pulled back down again. Having a mentally engaging hobby and meditation have helped me somewhat. There are a lot of hobbies that are great, but they can be too "passive" and will still let your brain run wild while you just go through the motions. Something that gets your neurons firing is always preferred. Weed can sometimes be helpful, but can also worsen it for other people as well (paranoia, etc) so be careful on the latter.
Another hard aspect of Pure O OCD is that it's difficult to explain to others. Even the regular OCD about washing hands and checking can be understand by someone because there are ven mainstream movies about it but not about Pure O OCD. People will think it's just something that you are making up because they don't see anything wrong with you on the outside.