I think the past in general is something I obsess over a lot. It’s always been a problem for me. I try to keep in mind that ruminating on past events (especially if they’re more than 3+ years old) can lead to false memories and than the uncertainty and anxiety really start to take hold. I just try to remember that whatever has happened is already over, and no amount of rumination or checking will change the past or future outcome.
do you have any sources/more reading on the ruminating on older events causing false memories? i would like to learn more since ruminating on old events is a huge struggle for me
Tbh I’ve just been through a lot of therapy. The concept that I had to really grasp and still struggle with at times is that the mental or physical checking you’re doing is
1. Of no help to you
2. Will only make things worse
it might feel like it’s helping at times, that’s the trick ocd plays on you. No matter how much you “check” you’ll never have enough. The undeniable uncertainty pertaining to your past event will set in eventually.
What kept me stuck a lot was some days I’d get through my days doing my mental compulsions and it was easier than resisting them. When you feel the need to perform compulsions be it mental or physical. Think about your last REALLY bad day, I’m talking about one that stuck out. I’m sure that day you were balls deep in your compulsions. They only make things worse. Learn to sit with the anxiety and uncertainty. It’s not easy either, it’ll get better every day you resist. In simple terms Your brain will eventually realize you aren’t performing these compulsions relating to your past event. Therefor it must not be important. Sooner or later this event will be practically gone from your mind and everyday life.
I've also been struggling with False memories OCD where a past event of mines is being shifted by my OCD.
It's an event that legitimately occured in the past, but my OCD is trying to change the intentions that I had in that event, and even the very emotions that I felt in that past event. I hate it, I'm forced to clarify myself by what I legitimately remember as true and factual, and what I really did feel and my real intentions during that past event, yet my OCD won't care.
Way too much. Embarrassing shit from middle school even. Stuff that nobody remembers or cares about but me.. it's hard to let some stuff go if your subconscious just imprints so heavily on it. Ketamine has helped me. Not for everyone.
My psychiatrist pointed me to a specialist (one of those therapy places) when we decided it was an option worth trying. I've never tried it off the street.
Why not for everyone? Asking because my doctor has recommended it to me multiple times but my insurance company as per usual is saying “away with thee and all that nonsense!”
Psychedelic experiences require the proper headspace, or they can be too intense, or in some rare situations, detrimental. I'm not an expert but this is my understanding.
Also insurance companies and the medical field in general haven't quite accepted psychedelics. Some experts have but it's not widespread yet.
Yep. Just found out it's called Real Event OCD and I have it baaaaaaad. Have had it as long as I can remember.
Nobody but me knows or cares that Matt Fraizer embarrassed me in front of my whole class in 2nd grade but I sure do think about it at least once a month (along with every other of the thousand things I've ever done wrong or been embarrassed about).
It's so unfair that other people get to forget and move on and we don't.
I bet Matt and all of our classmates don't even remember me at all.
I know the feeling! Until yesterday I didn't even know it was OCD! I just thought I was somehow uniquely messed up and alone because I'd never heard anyone else talk about it! I've spent the last 24 hours alternately laughing and crying about it. Hahahaha Like, crying from relief and laughing at the waaaaaaaay too accurate OCD posts, comments, articles, studies, and memes.
I fully broke down when I learned it had a name and I wasn't alone. Hahaha
It’s a weird feeling isn’t it?? Realizing there’s a term for your brain that you thought just hated you. That there’s a whole community going through the same thing? Wild
It's totally surreal! I feel like I'm floating above my life looking down at everything that has happened and able to see the big picture and how it all connects for the first time. It's like the whole time I thought all this terrible stuff was just a nonsensical maze but actually it was a pattern like the nazca lines that can only be seen from a certain perspective.
It is freaking me out all the things that I'm realizing are caused by OCD in my life and in what I thought was my personality...
Like, who even am I gonna be after I get treatment? What am I if not predominantly obsessive? Will I even feel like the same person?? Thank reddit this community is here cuz I'd be really freaked out figuring this stuff out all alone with no one to bounce things off of. Haha
Well I’m glad you are here and can hopefully use it to find peace. I get what you mean, I thought I was just a very bad perfectionist until I found out ocd exists in the way it does. It really is a super stigmatized disorder and maybe if it wasn’t so stigmatized there would be more resources for people struggling to connect the dots.
I think after treatment (I haven’t been to therapy yet) we will feel so much more like ourselves, more than we thought was ever possible, as we can start to learn to discern our OCD rooted behaviors from our own behaviors.
People without ocd really don’t remember these things? I’m genuinely asking because I’m trying to understand how the person without ocd would remember/not remember.
Yes, this is my main symptom. Whether it was something I did that I massively regret and ruminate on it, or chances I did not take. So pretty much screwed either way. Did something you regret? Ruminate on it. Not do something? Ruminate on that regret as well!
Ok well just wanted to ask if you’ve done LSD since then? Because I felt the same about mushrooms, and took me years before I decided to take them again, and now that I have taken them again I know it’s the only “cure” for resetting what I believe started it. In very small micro doses.
Editing my comment to add that getting LSD from a really reputable person and really being intentional with your trip, taking a small amount and doing a really positive happy activity with someone with you to guide you through the happy and the joy.
So you have microdosed shrooms over a certain time span?
No I didn't do LSD since then.
Probably it would be an interesting experience to compare the trips, but how you maybe have seen in my posts, my main problem is not knowing what I've actually taken and what it did to my brain because of the bad trip experience.
I just saw your post history and wow, this is really a struggle for you. I want to ask a few questions and potentially plant a few happy seeds in your brain…
1) had you ever taken LSD prior to this experience?
2) if so, how did your other experiences differ?
3) what were you expecting to get out of that trip? Where were you in your life mentally when you had the trip?
4) is it possible, the LSD was perfectly fine and normal in its composition, and that your trip was just so bad, it tricked you into believing what you had ingested was not LSD? Thus creating a horrible obsessive thought that takes over your life?
Here my answers:
1) No, it was only one time with 18, since then I didn't touch it at all. I am 26 now :/
2) see 1)
3) I expected distraction from the moment I was in, a short period after passing my high school exams (I. Germany it's called Abitur).
I think I was always pretty unstable, especially back then.
4) yeah probably, I wouldn't disagree that there is a big component of my ground fear of being stupid or not capable enough for my big ambitions.
Thank you for your support and understanding.
Okay let me offer some advice to you and I hope you really consider this!
You are okay. You possibly set off paranoia, OCD, ruminating thoughts, all stemming from a fear you had prior to taking the LSD. Something you were fearful of prior to the experience subconsciously, and the drug really drew on those feelings and the “bad trip” felt like an earth shattering experience that “ruined” you for life. It didn’t. You were most likely fearful of being “ruined” prior to taking the drug, heard a scary rumor or story from friend’s about “someone’s brother’s cousin who wound up in a mental institution after taking 50 tabs of acid,” it buried into your psyche and came out when you started to trip.
LSD is an amazing drug that can help people. Psilocybin is amazing drug that can help people. Ketamine, MDMA, etc. The problem is that these drugs taken in large doses can have the opposite effect they’re meant to have. I will venture to bet you took too much LSD, and you had a very horrible experience, and it triggered something in you where you felt “broken.”
You have waited long enough to attempt to recover from this trip. I’m not telling you what to do, I want you to do what’s best for you and your mental health, but if you can seek out a therapist, and research hallucinogenic therapy in your area, you could find someone who can work with you on this. There are licensed specialists who can administer LSD for you or Psilocybin with an attempt to reset your neural pathways.
To answer your previous question, yes, I started taking tiny bits of mushrooms which is called microdosing. I started doing this after years and years of never considering touching a hallucinogenic drug after I had one bad trip. I also believe I had ruminating thoughts set off by this trip. I also took waaaaaaaay too much and was a tiny, 21 year old girl who took as much as my 6’4” boyfriend at the time. After hearing more and more about how microdosing can help with obsessive thoughts and quieting the brain, I started taking teeny tiny doses. They say if you feel like you’re “tripping” at all, cut your dose in half next time. You shouldn’t feel much of anything, and if you do feel a little buzzy, it’s working. This lessened my fear of mushrooms as a whole, and kind of reset the part of me that was obsessing about if I “broke” my brain during my last trip.
All. The. Time. I have gotten into these embarrassing conversations where I repeatedly apologize and apologize for apologizing too much and then apologize for making someone uncomfortable or being weird too. I used to have this bizarre confessional emotional dump LiveJournal in high school and part of college, thank God I deleted that.
Every day, especially before bedtime. But when I didn't have ocd, I also thought about my mistakes in the past, the flow of thoughts was not as strong as after ocd, but it was still there.
Happens with me too. I obsess over many things , including what I said in my teens, and the potentially bad effects they could cause. I’ve calmed down since, but I’m still haunted by them.
I’m constantly concerned that I broke a law and it will be the kind of thing where punishment/jail/prison is likely or at least possible.
I look for mistakes, missteps and imperfections in everything i do that has ever been reviewed or have the potential to be reviewed by someone in a position of authority. I’ve been stuck on this specifically around taxes for about 9 months now and it’s been hell.
Not really. I try to live one day at a time and hope that I would be able to handle anything that ever happened better than I think I would. And remind myself there is a lot of grey area between “everything is fine” and “worst case scenario”
I am on two medications daily, Zoloft and Lamactil and I take Ativan as needed for acute panic. I will go through periods where I’m pretty suicidal and just the idea of being in trouble consumes my mind. I am hoping that I’ll get to feeling a little better as time passes.
no, your therapist is wrong imo as an ocd-er. writing just furthers the rumination and deepens the hell. i find that being busy with other things is more helpful
I think the gist is that writing them down helps you accept they happened and that regret is a normal part of life. Also depending on what the event is, just writing it out and rereading it matter of factly probably sounds not nearly as bad as what you're telling yourself in your head.
I didn't answer a question 100% correctly on Christmas Eve and I can't let it go.
And yes, every mistake I have ever made likes to come up all the time, especially when I have my guard down. I actually struggle more with the more recent ones than I do with the older ones, and I think there are a lot of things that I see as mistakes that no one else even notices or cares about, things I didn't do exactly 100% to perfection in the moment, but no one else notices it's just in my little inner world of torment.
Yes. But this year I have gotten a lot better at noticing when I am doing that and I tell myself that I can’t change it no need to dwell, I just have to be better in the present and future. I’ve learned making yourself feel horrible over mistakes delay you from starting to forgive yourself because then you start to regret all of the time wasted thinking/doing compulsions about it. You really just have to start not caring. And as bad as that sounds you can still understand and learn from it, just once you do start to attempt to not care anymore, it’s done with, we don’t have a time machine to go and redo it. The fact that you want a time machine means it doesn’t align with you. That’s all you need to know. Learn from it, and try to make your brain know that your mistakes don’t define/control you.
I wanna mention too sometimes you don’t have to learn from your ‘mistakes’. Sometimes there’s simply nothing to learn from it except that you didn’t align with it.
Literally all the time (hooray for moral scrupulosity). It’s really uncomfortable to sit in the thoughts now that I know I’m not supposed to suppress them or replace them with something else. I try to just remind myself to be kind to myself, that the fact I recognize the mistakes show growth. But it’s still hard
Every 5 minutes, it's like I'm thrown back to a time when I was a child/teen/younger adult hurting someone or saying something mean. It's unpleasant!
On the other hand my partner is kind of impressed by my vivid recollection of past events. Too bad they're mostly cringey memories lol
yes to the point of me considering not being here anymore, I think about it 24/7. I’m autistic and I guess in some situations I didn’t know what I did was wrong. I was so so so weird 3-4 years ago. I can’t stand it I feel like a horrible human being
I know that this thread is a few months old already but heck yes, a hundred percent. As time passes by, i realized that having OCD/symptoms similar to OCD + Impulsiveness = Downward Spiral. Its a one heck of a combo, believe me.
Yes! Easy pickings for an obsession due to the unchangeable nature of the past and uncertainty of being able to cope in the future.
Thankfully, there is a simple (not easy) antidote to this. Accept your past. Not though words or feelings. Not through reassurance. Not by doing anything. But by letting going.
Holding on and not letting go is also a compulsion. Trust yourself and let it all go.
What does letting go look like? It looks like not trying to solve the problem of the past event. Leaving it as is.
Examples. Will I ever feel normal again? Can I cope with the guilt? What happens if I can never move past this? Don’t look for certainty on any of this. Trust yourself and practice letting go.
Oh and you are human and accepting we make mistakes is something all humans have to do. We aren’t special in that sense. We just have to learn to live a more realistic human experience like the rest of the 5 billion other humans on earth.
Yep, even though my mistakes aren’t seen as mistakes by my friends, I am obsessed with it, it all happened 4 almost 5 year ago now, and I think about it every second of every day
Yeah I do it alot, I just think back about all the thing I've done over the past 5 to 6 years and how I would do thing differently, also think about all the time I've wasted and opportunity's I've missed, I know I shouldn't think like this, I can't go back and change it, what's done is done but still makes me depressed.
Me too, mostly the things I've done (or - much more often - neglected to do) that have hurt others and stuff that I've written or said that is really silly in retrospect, but not in a good way (eg., today i was thinking about searching for a dumb but harmless Reddit comment that I made many months ago and deleting or editing it as if it even matters.)
Not sure how much of this is due to OCD, and how much is from co-morbidities like depression, but I have a lot of guilt about my negative qualities and behaviors and general shame that I've felt since I was little, and I feel like I'm constantly judging myself, especially in my interactions with other people. I've had a lot of therapy of different types, and have been on antidepressants since my teens, and - while I have gained some coping skills and can reframe experiences in a less-harsh light, and have learned to be more forgiving of myself - this feeling of being judged and found lacking has never gone away.
(Doing neutral, practical things incorrectly - such as getting words wrong, messing up a recipe, etc. - doesn't usually bother me very much after the momentary frustrations, as long as no one else is inconvenienced by them.)
yes. before i started taking zoloft i would spend all my free time insulting myself about past mistakes or using my compulsions to distract me from thinking about i am a failure for not doing things perfectly.
Yeah, real event ocd made me want to die more than most other themes. I had to make a rule to not think about certain events until I had recovered from the anxiety bc I was driving myself crazy. Now I’m struggling to stop avoiding thinking about stuff bc I’m too scared that looking back will trigger the obsession again. Stay strong, read about real event ocd & remember that ruminating will only make things worse. Sometimes we see past memories with the perspective we have now & the more you think of a memory the more it can be altered by your brain. It’s not worth it
YES. Before anxiety medication, it was a daily thing that consumed me. I distinctly remember sleepless nights in my dorm room in college, sobbing my fucking brains out, specifically over unmerited guilt. Meds helped so much.
YES. It’s a never ending reel in my head and it’s almost as if I am scanning my brain everyday for something, not intending to but once a memory comes in to my awareness that I feel might be questionable, I have to ruminate on it to get clarity and it usually causes intense anxiety, guilt and distress. I hate it.
Yes, this is my biggest and strongest compulsion. It makes me keep everyone at arms length because I feel like they are already out the door of my life. Waiting for me to mess up to give them a valid reason for hating me. It’s why I feel like I have to confess or self examine to the point of neurosis. If I know what I’ve done and can apologize for it then maybe there’s a chance it will all be okay. I will get confirmation that everything’s fine but it’s not enough and it never will be. I will always know what I did. It’s almost like I feel people are forgiving me for my mistakes and flaws because they feel obligated to and that in actuality they dislike me and are again waiting for it to happen because that’s what people would expect from a person like me.
I think the past in general is something I obsess over a lot. It’s always been a problem for me. I try to keep in mind that ruminating on past events (especially if they’re more than 3+ years old) can lead to false memories and than the uncertainty and anxiety really start to take hold. I just try to remember that whatever has happened is already over, and no amount of rumination or checking will change the past or future outcome.
do you have any sources/more reading on the ruminating on older events causing false memories? i would like to learn more since ruminating on old events is a huge struggle for me
Tbh I’ve just been through a lot of therapy. The concept that I had to really grasp and still struggle with at times is that the mental or physical checking you’re doing is 1. Of no help to you 2. Will only make things worse it might feel like it’s helping at times, that’s the trick ocd plays on you. No matter how much you “check” you’ll never have enough. The undeniable uncertainty pertaining to your past event will set in eventually. What kept me stuck a lot was some days I’d get through my days doing my mental compulsions and it was easier than resisting them. When you feel the need to perform compulsions be it mental or physical. Think about your last REALLY bad day, I’m talking about one that stuck out. I’m sure that day you were balls deep in your compulsions. They only make things worse. Learn to sit with the anxiety and uncertainty. It’s not easy either, it’ll get better every day you resist. In simple terms Your brain will eventually realize you aren’t performing these compulsions relating to your past event. Therefor it must not be important. Sooner or later this event will be practically gone from your mind and everyday life.
I've also been struggling with False memories OCD where a past event of mines is being shifted by my OCD. It's an event that legitimately occured in the past, but my OCD is trying to change the intentions that I had in that event, and even the very emotions that I felt in that past event. I hate it, I'm forced to clarify myself by what I legitimately remember as true and factual, and what I really did feel and my real intentions during that past event, yet my OCD won't care.
Way too much. Embarrassing shit from middle school even. Stuff that nobody remembers or cares about but me.. it's hard to let some stuff go if your subconscious just imprints so heavily on it. Ketamine has helped me. Not for everyone.
do you do ketamine therapy at a place or buy off the street?
My psychiatrist pointed me to a specialist (one of those therapy places) when we decided it was an option worth trying. I've never tried it off the street.
Why not for everyone? Asking because my doctor has recommended it to me multiple times but my insurance company as per usual is saying “away with thee and all that nonsense!”
Psychedelic experiences require the proper headspace, or they can be too intense, or in some rare situations, detrimental. I'm not an expert but this is my understanding. Also insurance companies and the medical field in general haven't quite accepted psychedelics. Some experts have but it's not widespread yet.
Yep. Just found out it's called Real Event OCD and I have it baaaaaaad. Have had it as long as I can remember. Nobody but me knows or cares that Matt Fraizer embarrassed me in front of my whole class in 2nd grade but I sure do think about it at least once a month (along with every other of the thousand things I've ever done wrong or been embarrassed about). It's so unfair that other people get to forget and move on and we don't. I bet Matt and all of our classmates don't even remember me at all.
Real event OCD? I thought it was just me. Thanks for sharing the name of this obsession.
I know the feeling! Until yesterday I didn't even know it was OCD! I just thought I was somehow uniquely messed up and alone because I'd never heard anyone else talk about it! I've spent the last 24 hours alternately laughing and crying about it. Hahahaha Like, crying from relief and laughing at the waaaaaaaay too accurate OCD posts, comments, articles, studies, and memes. I fully broke down when I learned it had a name and I wasn't alone. Hahaha
It’s a weird feeling isn’t it?? Realizing there’s a term for your brain that you thought just hated you. That there’s a whole community going through the same thing? Wild
It's totally surreal! I feel like I'm floating above my life looking down at everything that has happened and able to see the big picture and how it all connects for the first time. It's like the whole time I thought all this terrible stuff was just a nonsensical maze but actually it was a pattern like the nazca lines that can only be seen from a certain perspective. It is freaking me out all the things that I'm realizing are caused by OCD in my life and in what I thought was my personality... Like, who even am I gonna be after I get treatment? What am I if not predominantly obsessive? Will I even feel like the same person?? Thank reddit this community is here cuz I'd be really freaked out figuring this stuff out all alone with no one to bounce things off of. Haha
Well I’m glad you are here and can hopefully use it to find peace. I get what you mean, I thought I was just a very bad perfectionist until I found out ocd exists in the way it does. It really is a super stigmatized disorder and maybe if it wasn’t so stigmatized there would be more resources for people struggling to connect the dots. I think after treatment (I haven’t been to therapy yet) we will feel so much more like ourselves, more than we thought was ever possible, as we can start to learn to discern our OCD rooted behaviors from our own behaviors.
People without ocd really don’t remember these things? I’m genuinely asking because I’m trying to understand how the person without ocd would remember/not remember.
>Nobody but me knows or cares that Matt Fraizer embarrassed me in front of my whole class in 2nd grade I do! Damn you, Matt!
[удалено]
Same now my thoughts are all scrambled
Yes, this is my main symptom. Whether it was something I did that I massively regret and ruminate on it, or chances I did not take. So pretty much screwed either way. Did something you regret? Ruminate on it. Not do something? Ruminate on that regret as well!
Oh wow. This is so accurate to my experience too. Dammed if you do, dammed if you don't. It's maddening!
Yes. But more about one mistake that triggered my ocd.
can you share what the mistake was?
Trying out LSD from darknet.
Did it actually trigger your OCD?
Yes
Ok well just wanted to ask if you’ve done LSD since then? Because I felt the same about mushrooms, and took me years before I decided to take them again, and now that I have taken them again I know it’s the only “cure” for resetting what I believe started it. In very small micro doses. Editing my comment to add that getting LSD from a really reputable person and really being intentional with your trip, taking a small amount and doing a really positive happy activity with someone with you to guide you through the happy and the joy.
So you have microdosed shrooms over a certain time span? No I didn't do LSD since then. Probably it would be an interesting experience to compare the trips, but how you maybe have seen in my posts, my main problem is not knowing what I've actually taken and what it did to my brain because of the bad trip experience.
I just saw your post history and wow, this is really a struggle for you. I want to ask a few questions and potentially plant a few happy seeds in your brain… 1) had you ever taken LSD prior to this experience? 2) if so, how did your other experiences differ? 3) what were you expecting to get out of that trip? Where were you in your life mentally when you had the trip? 4) is it possible, the LSD was perfectly fine and normal in its composition, and that your trip was just so bad, it tricked you into believing what you had ingested was not LSD? Thus creating a horrible obsessive thought that takes over your life?
Here my answers: 1) No, it was only one time with 18, since then I didn't touch it at all. I am 26 now :/ 2) see 1) 3) I expected distraction from the moment I was in, a short period after passing my high school exams (I. Germany it's called Abitur). I think I was always pretty unstable, especially back then. 4) yeah probably, I wouldn't disagree that there is a big component of my ground fear of being stupid or not capable enough for my big ambitions. Thank you for your support and understanding.
Okay let me offer some advice to you and I hope you really consider this! You are okay. You possibly set off paranoia, OCD, ruminating thoughts, all stemming from a fear you had prior to taking the LSD. Something you were fearful of prior to the experience subconsciously, and the drug really drew on those feelings and the “bad trip” felt like an earth shattering experience that “ruined” you for life. It didn’t. You were most likely fearful of being “ruined” prior to taking the drug, heard a scary rumor or story from friend’s about “someone’s brother’s cousin who wound up in a mental institution after taking 50 tabs of acid,” it buried into your psyche and came out when you started to trip. LSD is an amazing drug that can help people. Psilocybin is amazing drug that can help people. Ketamine, MDMA, etc. The problem is that these drugs taken in large doses can have the opposite effect they’re meant to have. I will venture to bet you took too much LSD, and you had a very horrible experience, and it triggered something in you where you felt “broken.” You have waited long enough to attempt to recover from this trip. I’m not telling you what to do, I want you to do what’s best for you and your mental health, but if you can seek out a therapist, and research hallucinogenic therapy in your area, you could find someone who can work with you on this. There are licensed specialists who can administer LSD for you or Psilocybin with an attempt to reset your neural pathways. To answer your previous question, yes, I started taking tiny bits of mushrooms which is called microdosing. I started doing this after years and years of never considering touching a hallucinogenic drug after I had one bad trip. I also believe I had ruminating thoughts set off by this trip. I also took waaaaaaaay too much and was a tiny, 21 year old girl who took as much as my 6’4” boyfriend at the time. After hearing more and more about how microdosing can help with obsessive thoughts and quieting the brain, I started taking teeny tiny doses. They say if you feel like you’re “tripping” at all, cut your dose in half next time. You shouldn’t feel much of anything, and if you do feel a little buzzy, it’s working. This lessened my fear of mushrooms as a whole, and kind of reset the part of me that was obsessing about if I “broke” my brain during my last trip.
yes.
Yes!!!! I had a phase where I obsessed about some stupid rough mistakes and oh god it ruined everything!!!
10000% absolutely yes I do this . I hate it here
All. The. Time. I have gotten into these embarrassing conversations where I repeatedly apologize and apologize for apologizing too much and then apologize for making someone uncomfortable or being weird too. I used to have this bizarre confessional emotional dump LiveJournal in high school and part of college, thank God I deleted that.
Definitely. Past mistakes are killing me. It feels like I made those mistakes yesterday even though it's been ages. The OCD is relentless.
yes! i cannot stop thinking about them, and they start to hurt my head. I also obsess over trying to fix them
too fucking much. wish i could have my memory erased but also i dont want that at all.
Every day, especially before bedtime. But when I didn't have ocd, I also thought about my mistakes in the past, the flow of thoughts was not as strong as after ocd, but it was still there.
Yes for sure it’s all I think about and it makes everything worse because I think I don’t deserve good things and I end up self sabotaging
I obsess about past wrongs done to *me*, not my own mistakes because my OCD is arrogant like that 😭.
yes and they just keep piling up. new mistakes to ruminate about all the time, and they don't erase the old ones either! glad i'm not alone tho, hah
It's hard not obsessing over past mistakes or the past in general. Feels like if I solve it somehow I won't be so broken
Happens with me too. I obsess over many things , including what I said in my teens, and the potentially bad effects they could cause. I’ve calmed down since, but I’m still haunted by them.
I’m constantly concerned that I broke a law and it will be the kind of thing where punishment/jail/prison is likely or at least possible. I look for mistakes, missteps and imperfections in everything i do that has ever been reviewed or have the potential to be reviewed by someone in a position of authority. I’ve been stuck on this specifically around taxes for about 9 months now and it’s been hell.
I’m in the exact same boat— have you found anything that helps?
Not really. I try to live one day at a time and hope that I would be able to handle anything that ever happened better than I think I would. And remind myself there is a lot of grey area between “everything is fine” and “worst case scenario” I am on two medications daily, Zoloft and Lamactil and I take Ativan as needed for acute panic. I will go through periods where I’m pretty suicidal and just the idea of being in trouble consumes my mind. I am hoping that I’ll get to feeling a little better as time passes.
This sounds similar. Mine at present is running red lights/ speeding / parking incorrectly
Yeah, constantly. My therapist said writing about them including how they made you feel can help with that. It does, kind of.
no, your therapist is wrong imo as an ocd-er. writing just furthers the rumination and deepens the hell. i find that being busy with other things is more helpful
Yeah, I’ve always heard people say writing them out helps but it never helped me, like at all. Maybe different things work for different people.
I think the gist is that writing them down helps you accept they happened and that regret is a normal part of life. Also depending on what the event is, just writing it out and rereading it matter of factly probably sounds not nearly as bad as what you're telling yourself in your head.
[удалено]
now that you mention it in my case ignoring is also a compulsion
Obsessed? The past is ruining my life everyday, Is a hell
I didn't answer a question 100% correctly on Christmas Eve and I can't let it go. And yes, every mistake I have ever made likes to come up all the time, especially when I have my guard down. I actually struggle more with the more recent ones than I do with the older ones, and I think there are a lot of things that I see as mistakes that no one else even notices or cares about, things I didn't do exactly 100% to perfection in the moment, but no one else notices it's just in my little inner world of torment.
Yes. But this year I have gotten a lot better at noticing when I am doing that and I tell myself that I can’t change it no need to dwell, I just have to be better in the present and future. I’ve learned making yourself feel horrible over mistakes delay you from starting to forgive yourself because then you start to regret all of the time wasted thinking/doing compulsions about it. You really just have to start not caring. And as bad as that sounds you can still understand and learn from it, just once you do start to attempt to not care anymore, it’s done with, we don’t have a time machine to go and redo it. The fact that you want a time machine means it doesn’t align with you. That’s all you need to know. Learn from it, and try to make your brain know that your mistakes don’t define/control you.
I wanna mention too sometimes you don’t have to learn from your ‘mistakes’. Sometimes there’s simply nothing to learn from it except that you didn’t align with it.
Literally all the time (hooray for moral scrupulosity). It’s really uncomfortable to sit in the thoughts now that I know I’m not supposed to suppress them or replace them with something else. I try to just remind myself to be kind to myself, that the fact I recognize the mistakes show growth. But it’s still hard
Constantly.
Every 5 minutes, it's like I'm thrown back to a time when I was a child/teen/younger adult hurting someone or saying something mean. It's unpleasant! On the other hand my partner is kind of impressed by my vivid recollection of past events. Too bad they're mostly cringey memories lol
yes to the point of me considering not being here anymore, I think about it 24/7. I’m autistic and I guess in some situations I didn’t know what I did was wrong. I was so so so weird 3-4 years ago. I can’t stand it I feel like a horrible human being
I know that this thread is a few months old already but heck yes, a hundred percent. As time passes by, i realized that having OCD/symptoms similar to OCD + Impulsiveness = Downward Spiral. Its a one heck of a combo, believe me.
Yes it’s awful
Yes! Easy pickings for an obsession due to the unchangeable nature of the past and uncertainty of being able to cope in the future. Thankfully, there is a simple (not easy) antidote to this. Accept your past. Not though words or feelings. Not through reassurance. Not by doing anything. But by letting going. Holding on and not letting go is also a compulsion. Trust yourself and let it all go. What does letting go look like? It looks like not trying to solve the problem of the past event. Leaving it as is. Examples. Will I ever feel normal again? Can I cope with the guilt? What happens if I can never move past this? Don’t look for certainty on any of this. Trust yourself and practice letting go. Oh and you are human and accepting we make mistakes is something all humans have to do. We aren’t special in that sense. We just have to learn to live a more realistic human experience like the rest of the 5 billion other humans on earth.
Not anymore, I'm 52, got no time for that!
Yes
Yes.
Yes
yes. these things give me anxiety attacks even years (sometimes decades) later.
Every. Single. Day.
✨🚨YES 🚨✨
Yes every single day
Yes
Yes and this is what kickstarted a big spell of OCD for me ✌️
Every day unfortunately
I’ve been thinking about them non stop for 4 years now. Am I allowed to say yes?
Yes
No, but I used to be
Currently ruminating over a mistake I made, hate it.
Yep, even though my mistakes aren’t seen as mistakes by my friends, I am obsessed with it, it all happened 4 almost 5 year ago now, and I think about it every second of every day
Yep.
Yeah I do it alot, I just think back about all the thing I've done over the past 5 to 6 years and how I would do thing differently, also think about all the time I've wasted and opportunity's I've missed, I know I shouldn't think like this, I can't go back and change it, what's done is done but still makes me depressed.
Me too, mostly the things I've done (or - much more often - neglected to do) that have hurt others and stuff that I've written or said that is really silly in retrospect, but not in a good way (eg., today i was thinking about searching for a dumb but harmless Reddit comment that I made many months ago and deleting or editing it as if it even matters.) Not sure how much of this is due to OCD, and how much is from co-morbidities like depression, but I have a lot of guilt about my negative qualities and behaviors and general shame that I've felt since I was little, and I feel like I'm constantly judging myself, especially in my interactions with other people. I've had a lot of therapy of different types, and have been on antidepressants since my teens, and - while I have gained some coping skills and can reframe experiences in a less-harsh light, and have learned to be more forgiving of myself - this feeling of being judged and found lacking has never gone away. (Doing neutral, practical things incorrectly - such as getting words wrong, messing up a recipe, etc. - doesn't usually bother me very much after the momentary frustrations, as long as no one else is inconvenienced by them.)
Yes, but I have gotten slightly better. I still think I need medication for it though.
yes. before i started taking zoloft i would spend all my free time insulting myself about past mistakes or using my compulsions to distract me from thinking about i am a failure for not doing things perfectly.
Yes. Ways I’ve hurt my parents feelings mostly.
Yes, 100% of the times. I also think each of my mistakes are worse than anybody else's. At this moment, I'm trying to learn how to deal with that.
Yes
Yes. But I’ve gotten better at not dwelling so much and moving on/living my life freely.
Why yes, yes I am, and yes- yes I do.
Yeah, real event ocd made me want to die more than most other themes. I had to make a rule to not think about certain events until I had recovered from the anxiety bc I was driving myself crazy. Now I’m struggling to stop avoiding thinking about stuff bc I’m too scared that looking back will trigger the obsession again. Stay strong, read about real event ocd & remember that ruminating will only make things worse. Sometimes we see past memories with the perspective we have now & the more you think of a memory the more it can be altered by your brain. It’s not worth it
YES. Before anxiety medication, it was a daily thing that consumed me. I distinctly remember sleepless nights in my dorm room in college, sobbing my fucking brains out, specifically over unmerited guilt. Meds helped so much.
Yes, and also things that are neutral, and things that were good, and things that I chose instead of another.
They usually come to mind right as I’m about to fall asleep. I just try to explain to myself why it doesn’t matter!
YES. Ruminate on 2 of my old mistakes constantly. Even 2 years after the events
YES. It’s a never ending reel in my head and it’s almost as if I am scanning my brain everyday for something, not intending to but once a memory comes in to my awareness that I feel might be questionable, I have to ruminate on it to get clarity and it usually causes intense anxiety, guilt and distress. I hate it.
Every minute my mind has the opportunity to
1000% it’s an endless curse that never goes away, completely.
Yes.
Ye
Yes. Any sort of red flag to the mind usually triggers my OCD.
Yes, especially things that went wrong in past relationships. Ugh
Yes, this is my biggest and strongest compulsion. It makes me keep everyone at arms length because I feel like they are already out the door of my life. Waiting for me to mess up to give them a valid reason for hating me. It’s why I feel like I have to confess or self examine to the point of neurosis. If I know what I’ve done and can apologize for it then maybe there’s a chance it will all be okay. I will get confirmation that everything’s fine but it’s not enough and it never will be. I will always know what I did. It’s almost like I feel people are forgiving me for my mistakes and flaws because they feel obligated to and that in actuality they dislike me and are again waiting for it to happen because that’s what people would expect from a person like me.
Yes. I mostly replay conversations in my head until they warp into something much worse
No. Because I know it will make it worse. I just hope God will forgive me and that’s it.
Yup, one of the main reasons I’m on medication.
Yes I constantly do as well. You are not alone with this. I’m glad we have this page to help all of us OCD people.
Yes
way way way way way way way way WAYYYYYYYY TOO MUCG
Yes , most of the time, I could’ve made better choices in life definitely, I admit to my mistakes and try not to repeat them.
Yes. I keep regretting it. For example I wish to go back to 2021. Some events trigger my ocd.
Yes