Found my rabies ocd trigger

[sportboy]

Have you ever tried medication?

Not yet. This situation is something new for me.

When I was 16 and and "got" hiv 7 times in one month, then I didn't know anything about ocd or health anxiety. Later I read that it's a psychological problem.

And always my ocd about disease disappeared when I accepted the fact that I have it. Like with hiv, I told myself that I can live 20-30 years with it and then would be cure for it. Same way with eye cancer or lymphoma.

I call and make an appointment with psychiatrist tomorrow. It would be long-term solution but I have to live somehow today and this week. I haven't been in therapy so I really don't know how to react to these thoughts.

[AntsyVee]

Well, I would suggest therapy first, but meds do help. They help you not dwell on those thoughts and get stuck in the anxiety spiral so that you can work your therapy program.

Yes, OCD is a psychological problem. People have an intrusive thought that turns into an obsession, like "I might have rabies." And then the compulsion is something like constantly checking one's body for bite marks, or looking up things on Dr. Google or doing into the doctor for medical tests. Then there is some relief for a time, but soon the mind fixates on the obsessive thought again or shifts to another obsessive thought and the cycle starts all over again.

Therapy is so helpful because you learn strategies to break down the cycle. The meds help your mind not dwell on the thoughts.

It will wax and wane. During periods of stress and big life events, it will get worse, and during calmer life periods it usually dies down a bit. It's like this for all of us with lifelong anxiety--whether it be OCD or GAD.

[sportboy]

I understand. Tomorrow morning I will make an appointment.

But let's take my situation. There is 2-3 minutes time period when I just stand here, watched how car was passing this place and googled some random things. And after that I got the idea and tried to ignore it. I think I wouldn't google random things when bats are attacking me?

How would people who has been in therapy would react? I feel like my anxiety spikes when I understand that I can't check this time period. I can't go back in time.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Not yet. This situation is something new for me.

When I was 16 and and "got" hiv 7 times in one month, then I didn't know anything about ocd or health anxiety. Later I read that it's a psychological problem.

And always my ocd about disease disappeared when I accepted the fact that I have it. Like with hiv, I told myself that I can live 20-30 years with it and then would be cure for it. Same way with eye cancer or lymphoma.

It's a variation, you will find a way through it. Sometimes you change strategy as old methods don't always work. But if you could learn to accept those others, that's a massive thing in your favour because acceptance is one of the hardest things I think you can learn to do and keep doing until your subconscious learns through observation that it's just not important.

So, can you alter this to work for the rabies issue? For instance, rabies is very rare, it's often non existent in countries and even then only occurs in very limited situations e.g. bat handlers with continual exposure or people bringing it back from abroad.

Really the same arguments apply. You couldn't get HIV I take it the way you worried about it (since OCDers tend to have quite outlandish ways of even contracting it)? So, the same applies here because you have no evidence to even consider the fear to have a basis. The facts all counter it. The rest is acceptance and the subconscious learning to mothball this perceived fear.

---------- Post added at 14:03 ---------- Previous post was at 13:33 ----------

Thank you for your response.

Yes, I do many compulsions in my mind. I think all the time about that evening, how I walked there, what I did, what I felt. So yes, this is a compulsion.

And I know you have to break your compulsion. Accept that it's in your mind but not react. But how I make difference between irrational thought and a real one? I think may be I'm wrong, may be something happened and now I think it's my ocd and ignore real danger.

Right, so you do have compulsions to target then. Break them down so you know what they are.

Obsessive thinking is more worry (future) or rumination (past). But if you have specific things like "I must think of X" or "I must repeat X statement in my head" then it will be compulsion.

Evenings and nights are best for me. Every day I go to sleep and think that yes, it's so impossible situation and irrational thought, it feels like my logic works during the night. And when I wake up, it starts again. My brain just forgets everything and it all starts again.

That's the case for a lot of people with anxiety, it's not limited to OCD. This is more likely about your overall levels of anxiety driving up obsessive-compulsive thinking. For instance, if you experienced a stressful event, these cycles intensify but in times of calm, they reduce.

Therefore you don't always need to challenge thoughts head on, you can weaken a disorder by pulling the rug from under it with healthy practices. For instance, relaxation work. The more your body is calmer, and gets used to being in that state, the more you will see OCD reduce. I'm yet to come across anyone with OCD say the opposite of this in their cycles on here.

In therapy I had to work on my GAD, which was the primary condition, as my OCD wouldnt' budge. Bringing down my 24/7 anxiety levels had an impact on the strength of my OCD and i could attack it head on more.

So, add more tools to your toolkit. And keep healthy life practices going, like things you enjoy.

With my driving ocd it's easy. I just hope that it's ocd threat and that I didn't kill anyone while driving. Then I distract my mind for some time and see that police didn't come to get me and everything is fine. But with rabies I have only one chance. If I make a mistake and hope that it's only in my mind, then I'm dead.

I think that's the selective nature of Cognitive Distortions. You mind could think of a driving offence so bad it would mean life imprisonment. That[s a one chance issue too just like this one.

You accept it is an intrusive thought, apply a wait period to expose yourself to the anxiety of not acting to neutralise the threat (compulsion), distract yourself to shift your focus, realise nothing bad has happened and see the fear dissipate.

So, you apply acceptance as well as self assurance, exposure to escalating symptoms, etc.

So, with the rabies fear how can you do the same as that? Can you stop yourself Googling about it, not be forced back to the site of the fear out of fear alone (wanting to go is different though) but also no avoid possible sites where it could happen, apply a wait period, distract yourself, etc. [/QUOTE]

So the main question is. How to know that my thought is unreal? How to make difference between ocd threat and a real threat?

The first thing is to recognise what is an intrusive thought and what is a conscious thought. Then you look at your conscious thoughts to see which are worry/rumination/irrational/illogical rather than logical/practical/rational/balanced.

Intrusive thoughts just pop into your head. Triggers can often be very subtle. There may be imagery or urges.

[sportboy]

Current situation with rabies is exactly like the situation with hiv. I went running and later found small abrasion on my leg. And it was exactly same, just an idea popped into my mind. "I got hiv". And my compulsions were same also. The pattern was 100% identical.

These thoughts are not so strong today, but still.

Oh, at first I didn't see your edits. I will take some time later and read them carefully. I have to go now.

[sportboy]

I tried to make an appointment with a psychiatrist and everywhere you have to wait atleast three months. So at the moment I have to deal with it without a doctor.

It's 8 days after my last "possible" situation to get rabies and the obsession is still so strong. It seems I just can't find a way to forget it. Sometimes the obsession gets weaker but at random moments it comes back and takes over my life again.

I think vaccinating isn't also a solution? I would doubt about efficiency and safety.

[AntsyVee]

No competent doc would give you the vaccine anyway, and there are harmful side effects with the vaccine. You don't have a possible situation to get rabies. Nothing happened. It was all in your head.

While you wait for the psychiatrist, can you get set up with a therapist? Did you order any of those books?

[MyNameIsTerry]

Well if there's such a thing as an anxiety disorder vaccine I'll be standing next to you in the queue!!!

For rabies? Nope, what you need to remember is that this is just acting on an irrational obsession. Would have getting HIV shots have done anything for you when you went through that? Would calling the police & hospitals have helped you with your hit-and-run theme? No, they would have reinforced the need for the obsession to exist though.

It takes 3 months on average for a lot of us in the UK with the NHS to get to a therapist, getting to a psychiatrist is a whole lot harder. It's not great because that time can be spent obsessing so I would suggest going the self help route to make a start, there is nothing to lose from it and everything to gain.

Look at your behaviour, work out the compulsions so you know what to eliminate.

[sportboy]

No competent doc would give you the vaccine anyway, and there are harmful side effects with the vaccine. You don't have a possible situation to get rabies. Nothing happened. It was all in your head.

While you wait for the psychiatrist, can you get set up with a therapist? Did you order any of those books?

Yes, I'm reading one of these books.

Breaking a compulsion just makes the idea weaker. I think I have to find something to believe in.

Currently my "what if" thought is about feeling a bat landing on me and biting me. I found only one injury on my hand later. There was 5 small dots with different distance between them. I don't obsess over this injury because then it means atleast 3 bites from a bat.

I have to find a way to believe that I would feel a bat landing on me.

I'm telling this story to all my friends to finally convince my brain that it's so irrational. I had one post about my hiv scare in this forum. Now I'm so embarrassed about it that I had to edit it and delete.

How to convince myself that it's impossible that within about 3 minutes a mysterious bat couldn't fly towards me, land on me, bite my hand( I was wearing a t-shirt), then fly away and I wouldn't notice anything?

[AntsyVee]

I find that writing my triggers down helps make them seem less irrational. It takes time and you keep having to work at talking to yourself. For instance, I'm very claustrophobic, and one of my huge triggers is automatic car washes. I could avoid them all together, but that doesn't help me. So I write my worries down on one column and refute them on the other. Then I sit and read the paper during the automatic car wash. Lol