Real Event OCD: When Your Past Becomes the Obsession

Hello and welcome to the OCD and Anxiety podcast with me, Robert James, a coach and someone who's been through it too.

In today's episode, we're talking about real event OCD. What if the thing you can't stop thinking about actually happened? And what if OCD is turning your life into a living nightmare by thinking about this all the time?

Well, that's real event OCD and it's brutal because unlike intrusive thoughts that feel made up or bizarre this obsession is tied to something real something you said something you did something that happened and so your brain tells you this isn't OCD this is just guilt this is just the truth but here's the problem OCD doesn't need the event to be fictional to trap you it needs a hook a moment that you care about and feel ashamed of or can't solve perfectly.

And then from there, it can make you loop. It can make you go around in circles looking for certainty, telling yourself that you're a bad person, that perhaps you should confess to something. And of course, what happens if you struggle with OCD is you go around in circles with this in your head. Remember, if you are struggling with OCD and you would like to get some support with that, well, I offer a free discovery call to get that.

You can head over to my website robertjamescoaching.com there's a link in the show notes so many thanks guys i really hope that you enjoy please do subscribe and leave us a review it really does help other people to find this podcast and if you have any questions at all do please let me know off we go.

People tend to tell themselves things like, what if I'm secretly a bad person and I'm just in denial? I'm not allowing that to kind of come up to my consciousness. But, you know, underneath, if I really dig deeper, you know, maybe I'm a really bad person. And of course, this line of thinking is very ripe ground for OCD to kind of take over.

We may find ourselves, you know, really going back into detail into the past, trying to think about it again, trying to have more certainty about it and all the time kind of digging ourselves deeper and deeper into the OCD trap. The thing is beating ourselves up in this way over things that may have never happened is not healthy guilt. This is actually OCD's way of kind of getting us stuck. It's OCD's guilt and the difference is this. Healthy guilt, it moves on at some point.

OCD guilt, well it tends to loop and it tends to keep us stuck real event ocd loves to latch on to kind of unresolved moments from the past and of course life is full of them there's no such thing as a perfect past we all have things that we wish we'd never done but ocd convinces you that that yours is uniquely shameful or dangerous in some way it whispers if you don't fix this if you don't think about it then you're a bad person and you kind of need to do this.

In my own life, when I kind of go over my past, of course, I can think of situations where I think, well. Why did I behave like that in that social situation? Perhaps those people, you know, don't like me now. Maybe they think I'm a rude person. You know, why did I make that comment? You know, and of course you can think and think and think up until the point where you confuse yourself so much about what you actually said or what you actually did that you can't think straight anymore.

And all we're actually doing is performing compulsions and getting ourselves more and more stuck in the OCD.

Another important thing to realize about at Real Then OCD is that rumination feels like reflection, but actually it's not at all. It's quite the opposite. It's problem solving dressed up as healing. But OCD never lets you finish. It always finds one more angle, one more what if, one more kind of loophole to get you stuck again. And I've been there myself so many times.

Every time that I think about something kind of to the point where I begin to feel kind of comfortable with it, OCD is really good at kind of coming up straight away with another thing, a different angle, a different perspective. You know, another way to get us stuck. And before we know it, we're ruminating on that thing and we're trying to figure that out.

And it really is kind of never ending. So if you find yourself thinking about this event for the 400th time, you know, trying to figure it out, trying to have that certainty, you know, only to get very, very stuck again, try to pause, name it, you know, and then come back to the present. You don't need to figure this out.

In fact, the best thing that you can do is leave it all together and try to refocus your attention onto something else. And I think another thing that's really important to do with real event OCD is to make sure that we're not bowing down to those feelings of guilt. The feelings of guilt are completely related to this kind of fictional story that we're telling ourselves, you know, about the thing that we're obsessing about.

You know, whether it's completely fictional or not, you know, of course, there may be some truth. Maybe you were in a certain place. Maybe you were with certain people, you know, but we tend to tell ourselves a very negative story about all of the details. This is where the inner critic kind of comes on board. It starts telling us very negative things.

And we start feeling you know guilty about something that perhaps never happened at all and so if you start to feel that guilt well it's very much related to uncertainty and really with OCD what we're trying to do is we're trying to learn how to allow a little bit more uncertainty to be there in the background you know when you can do that when you can allow that discomfort that's when you can begin to kind of move past it if you're hearing this and thinking but but mine

is different i really get that i've been there too with that and i know how it feels but actually it means you you care enough to live it's not about erasing the past it's about learning to carry it differently and to to kind of allow that uncertainty to be there often when we allow the uncertainty in the short term we stop trying to to figure it all out well we begin to become a little bit more certain.

I know that's a paradox but often at the heart of OCD there is a paradox and when we can bring acceptance to that that's when we can move past it. So today see if you can try this. Notice when your mind starts pulling you back into that memory.

Label it that's the OCD. Take a deep breath in and choose to come back to the moment even if it's imperfect it even if you're still feeling uncomfortable because your past doesn't define your your worth your response does so that's it for today i really hope that that gave you something useful to work with and if you'd like some support with this i do offer a free discovery call it's a chance to explore what's been keeping

you stuck and whether coaching might be a good fit you'll find the link in the show notes or you can head over to robertjamescoaching.com many thanks and i'll see you next time.