What you definitely do deserve when OCD attacks your past

Disclaimer:

I am not a therapist or a doctor and nothing in this piece should constitute professional medical and/or mental health advice. If you are or suspect you are struggling with OCD, or any other mental health condition, a qualified and licensed medical professional should be sought out. If you or a loved one are struggling with suicidal thoughts, the national suicide hotline can be reached at 1–800–273–8255. There is also an online chat you can reach at http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/GetHelp/LifelineChat.aspx. If you are experiencing a medical emergency, please call your local emergency number.

Everyone makes mistakes. It may not even be fair to call them mistakes — everyone does things, that although they may have wanted to in the moment, or thought it was the right thing to do, that they will eventually regret. How much someone regrets a past transgression depends on an infinite amount of factors. Your upbringing. How in touch you are with your emotions. How well you can deal with personal failings. How sensitive you are to other people’s pain.

What many people do not know about OCD, however, is that it can also be a factor in how much you regret your past. My therapist once told me that anything can become an obsession for those who suffer from OCD, and this applies to events in the past.

Although I have had multiple flare-ups of OCD symptoms since I developed the condition (in what I suspect to have been) during puberty, by far my worst was the one I have dealt with in the past 6 months. Now I don’t necessarily want to talk about what I obsessed over, but I will say this — they were real mistakes. I severely damaged my relationship, and almost lost a person who I love like no other. However, after confessing all major errors, my obsessions got so intense, I became so dependent on compulsions for relief (in my case, confessing any and all mistakes, in overly-generous detail, to my SO), that, as the cycle got worse and worse, I began feeling guilty for things that were not even real mistakes.

I started feeling guilty for having checked out other people. I started feeling guilty for having ever watched sexually explicit material online. I started feeling guilty for all of my sexuality.

Now, I go into this level of detail for an important reason. Just because OCD latches onto something in your past, does not mean that it is automatically important, as I illustrate in the latter set of example. I was absolutely obsessed with these things for multiple hours a day. I could barely eat or work when it was at its worst. Sleep was my only real relief.

But this does not mean that it also cannot latch onto things that anyone would feel bad about. Where it gets scary is that it can bend, warp, and twist these memories. What you need to realize if you are dealing with this kind of OCD (generally referred to as Real Event OCD), is that no one is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes, and while OCD can attack perfectly human behaviors, it amplifies and focuses in on the mistakes we make especially well.

The logic that OCD is able to employ is, in the worst kind of way, almost perfect. It may not actually be logical, in these sense that an outside observer, reading your thoughts as if they were a transcript, would be able to explain what was wrong with your thinking. When you go to therapy, in the first few sessions at least, your explanation of what you are going through mentally will likely be challenged logically by your therapist. They will explain that this is why traditional Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is not used for OCD.

They will explain that OCD is not logical, in the real sense of the word, but it can turn your own internal logic, your own worst fears, your own moral compass, against you. This is why we do not attempt to reason with OCD. It will always have 20 questions to ask for every answer you find. In fact, it will probably have 60 questions just for the hell of it. Do not confuse your inability to logic with your OCD as a rational, logical failure. OCD is not logical or rational, and does not operate on those planes. To adopt the the old finance adage, your OCD can remain irrational longer than you can remain mentally solvent.

Now, I am not here to offer you reassurance. There are varying degrees of transgressions, but odds are they are not unforgivable. Few things are. Nevertheless, I can never give you the certainty you are seeking about who you are or how bad what you did was. No one can, not even yourself.

OCD 101 tells you that you need to go to a therapist and go through Exposure and Response Prevention therapy, possibly in conjunction with other treatments, including medication. However, as I know I did, I relied on articles much like this in the beginning of my treatment for temporary relief. And there is something actually helpful about realizing other people are going through similar struggles. Just be wary you are not using your newfound OCD reading kick as its own kind of compulsion. It will delay your healing and stifle your Exposure therapy.

Now what is important is that, due to the way it operates, OCD often makes people feel like they are undeserving of love, affection, forgiveness, or friendship. It tells you your mistakes are unforgivable. It tells you your thoughts are not OCD, that they are legitimate and that your guilt and anxiety and pain is all deserved. It even makes people deny they deserve treatment. Do not deny yourself medical care. Do not deny yourself a proper life. I struggled with this concept personally, especially in the depths of my recent bout of OCD.

Even if you are convinced that you made a terrible, awful, unforgivable mistake, you need to realize that your OCD will bend and twist and amplify it. It will always make it worse than someone without OCD would deal with it. At the very least, even if you cannot convince yourself that you ever deserve to be happy again, what you do deserve is the right to handle your mistake like anyone else, to process your emotions without OCD’s iron grip over your life.

If nothing else, you should go to therapy and go through treatment so you can see the way OCD distorts your thoughts, and so you can give yourself a fair shake. At the very least everyone deserves that, and this includes anyone and everyone reading this piece.