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Topic Title: scared that I acted on thoughts
4 posts
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37828383sjsjs said 5 years, 6 months ago:
I need advice for my situation. I haven’t been diagnosed with OCD, but I’ve been struggling with Cheating OCD very much. It started with first thoughts. Then when school came around, I couldn’t look at people in the eye, talk, or even walk behind them without feeling like I had flirted.
This lasted for a while with reassurance and compulsions. I did some exposures so that I was finally able to return back to normal, but then I had a compulsion where I “checked for intention to flirt” for events that triggered me. Like: “Did I have intention to flirt?”
I had a lot of relief because every situation would turn out to be a “no”. This backfired really quickly and days after, I would start to feel “intentions to flirt”. It wouldn’t feel like a thought – it felt like in even normal everyday things, I had this “feeling” that I was doing it to flirt. It’s made my recovery progress take a step back. But sometimes, I would even bring up the feeling myself for exposure and now I feel like I’ve acted on thoughts. It’s like no matter how many times I repeat “no I’m not” in my head, the “intent feeling” will not go away. Which makes me think that I am acting on a thought. And the “intent” feeling feels very different from an actual thought.
Once, I was speaking to my younger niece when I had an intrusive “intent feeling” that if I held her hand, I would be doing it for the wrong reasons. And then I held her hand. And now I’m convinced that I had held her hand for those bad reasons, and even a minute after, I was already ruminating. This “intention” feeling feels against my will.
How can I reverse this? How can I look at a triggered situation more clearer?
jennifer1722 said 5 years, 5 months ago:
I'm sorry to hear you've been suffering from suspcted OCD but well done for making such great progress with your exposures. Do you think you could try that again with your new compulsions? One common compulsion is to repeat phrases in your head that try to argue with the thoughts, such as 'I'm okay'. Another common compulsion is to test yourself for a physical reaction or a 'feeling' to try to reassure yourself you don't have them. As you found out, this only relieved the anxiety for a short while and made it worse long-term. Ruminating is also a very common compulsion.
Deleted User said 5 years, 2 months ago:
Ocd can often cause fake memories; I experienced these firsthand. Sometimes you can feel sure something happened. But things change in your mind when u obsess over them.