It’s scary not to know whether your thoughts reflect reality or they are a symptom of OCD. It makes sense if you’re asking yourself, “How do I know it’s OCD and not real?” because your thoughts are scary and your OCD is trying to convince you they are rational. This blog will give you the tools to recognize what symptoms you are experiencing are consistent with OCD. Plus, you’ll learn the first step towards coping with your OCD long-term. Remember that there is no substitute for professional help and that the most effective treatment will come from visiting a therapist and pursuing a diagnosis. These 9 pieces of advice are designed to help you through this scary time, remind you are not alone, and give you a doable path forward.
This post is all about “How do I know it’s OCD and not real?”
What is Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) refers to the presence of obsessions and compulsions in your life (find more information in the DSM-5-TR). If you have OCD, you will often be obsessed with disturbing thoughts that scare you.
This leads to compulsions that you feel compelled to do as a result of the obsessions and are likely to avoid the obsessions. These compulsions frequently have nothing to do with the actual obsessions and will have little role in affecting the obsessions.
For example, you may obsess over the thought that you will murder your entire family with the butcher knife in your kitchen. Now, if you live in a different zip code, state, or country than your family, this makes little to no sense.
That’s often the point of obsessions. However, as a result of this obsession, you feel compelled to lock and unlock the door thirty times when you wake up in the morning.
Symptoms of OCD include persistent, intrusive or unwanted thoughts and repetitive behaviors aimed at reducing the anxiety that comes from those unwanted thoughts. These behaviors are typically time-consuming and disrupt your daily life.
HOW TO KNOW IT’S OCD AND NOT REAL:
1. Notice any mental rituals you go through on a daily basis
Rituals are a key indicator and one of many manifestations of OCD. They allow the OCD sufferer to think that they have some control over their unwanted intrusive thoughts and whether they come to fruition.
Unfortunately, since intrusive thoughts originate from OCD, the rituals you go through on a daily basis play no role in your intrusive thoughts. You may get some momentary relief from the ritual.
This is because your OCD has convinced you that the rituals are the best way to avoid horrible, OCD thoughts coming to light. While it’s not comforting to realize that’s not true, it’s also an important step in drawing the line between OCD and reality.
Rituals are mental compulsions that you experience on a daily basis. Another way of saying it is that rituals are the result of your compulsions. They are your way of keeping your intrusive thoughts from becoming real.
The important distinction to make here is that your intrusive thoughts are not real. Any connection between your intrusive thoughts, and what happens in the real world is purely coincidental.
So, if you often find yourself going through rituals daily, it’s a good sign that you were doing that because you believe your possibly violent thoughts are real, and have a real impact on the world when they do not.
Your thoughts have as much impact on the world as anyone else’s, and believing that they have more is more of a burden than it’s worth.
2. Check in with any feelings of guilt you experience
Guilt can come from a lot of places. This is more true than ever when you suffer from a mental illness. You probably struggle with the guilt of having a mental illness and feeling like a burden to friends and family.
You may also struggle with the guilt that you can’t overcome your mental illness with the hundreds of coping mechanisms you’ve learned online and the sheer force of your will. Lastly, you may feel guilt because of the intrusive thoughts that pop into your head.
Keep in mind that intrusive thoughts are, by definition, unwanted. You are not creating your own intrusive thoughts.
Instead, your OCD is creating those thoughts and convincing you that the way to avoid those bizarre thoughts from happening in real life is to go through various rituals, also known as compulsions, which lead to compulsive behaviour.
Unfortunately, guilt is a common part of mental illness. When we are self-aware enough to realize that we might have mental health conditions, or that we are different from others, it’s easy to feel guilty.
So, it’s a good idea to look for any signs of guilt, because that guilt might indicate that you have a mental illness. It can be really scary to have intrusive thoughts that are violent and dangerous.
This is why it’s so important to recognize when you are feeling guilty because of those thoughts. When you feel guilty because of your unpleasant thought, that means that you are not responsible for creating them.
They are not coming from somewhere inside of you. That indicates you are an evil, violent, dangerous, or bad person.
3. Acknowledge mental compulsions
The hardest part of having mental illness is recognizing how you are different from other people. Depending on how obviously your symptoms differ from what people normally act like or experience, it can be hard to identify that your experience is not normal.
When we say that your experience is not normal, it is meant to be a comfort and not an insult. It’s hard to have a mental illness and recognize that you are different from everyone else and have to work so much harder to experience the same world that they do.
That’s why it can be incredibly freeing to recognize your mental illness. If you’re coping with OCD symptoms, the first step is recognizing them. We’ve already talked about rituals, which are one of the easiest ways to identify OCD.
However, compulsions are the driver behind that and those compulsions can be harder to identify. Compulsions can feel really natural to the person experiencing them. This is especially true if this person has experienced compulsions for as long as they can remember.
It’s hard to know what’s “normal” if you’ve never been “normal” or had normal thoughts. So, watch out for those moments when your brain is commanding you to perform a ritual or action, especially as the result of avoiding an intrusive thought happening in real life.
At this point in the process, you are not expected to fight these common compulsions or work through the intrusive thoughts. Right now, all you need to focus on is recognizing when you’re having OCD symptoms and how to use that as a tool to differentiate between reality and OCD.
4. Acknowledge when you’re experiencing distressing thoughts
If you have OCD, or you think you might have OCD, it’s not a surprise to you that OCD can be distressing. You will almost certainly have distressing thoughts that scare you. That’s why it makes sense that rituals and compulsions come with OCD.
When you’re having these terrifying, intrusive thoughts, it’s natural to want some way of guaranteeing that those don’t come to light. Of course, your OCD doesn’t work like that, though.
Even when you get temporary relief, those thoughts will either come back or come back differently. While there’s no easy way to hear this, the best action that you can take for now is to recognize distressing thoughts as distressing thoughts.
They are not your fault, and you do not deserve them. They are, however, a reason why you can get care from a psychiatrist or therapist.
The mental health provider can help you develop coping mechanisms, take medication, if you are interested in that, and find other treatment options that will limit your own thoughts. Don’t force yourself to suffer under distressing thoughts.
You deserve better than that and, if you get nothing else from this blog, hopefully, you remember that. We can often feel like mental illness is our fault.
When the people around us, don’t experience the same symptoms, it’s easy to feel like we have failed, or that we are weak. But, that’s just not how our bodies work. So, when you think of the distressing thoughts that you’re having, realize that you deserve to feel better.
5. Analyze the content of the thought
Intrusive thoughts are rarely rational. But, that doesn’t mean you can’t work with him. When you were asking yourself, “How do I know it’s OCD and not real?” a great way to differentiate is by checking your thought.
It might be scary to delve into an already scary thought, so do this with self-care and self-compassion. It’s okay to avoid this without a mental health professional to help you through it. It’s also okay to start and quit before you make progress.
The goal is to alleviate your stress and pain as quickly and as easily as possible. So, when you’re wondering whether your thoughts are realistic or just more signs of OCD, then it might be a good idea to look at your thought more closely.
While OCD is not rational, it’s possible to ask if your thought appears realistic. If your thought is that you are going to murder your family in their sleep with your butcher knife, then it’s hard to discount that.
The reason is that you will never believe you’re a good person because your OCD won’t let you. However, if you believe that your dog is going to get hit by a car and you don’t have a dog, it’s a little easier to see how that thought is a form of OCD.
If it feels helpful, then analyze the content of the intrusive thought that’s bothering you. Consider calling someone to talk about it or visiting someone so that you are not alone in your thoughts.
6. Always seek help from a mental health professional
The goal of this blog is to provide access to mental health tools that would otherwise be inaccessible. However, that still does not take the place of professional care. Mental health professionals are trained to help people like you with specific personalized treatment plans.
It’s understandable if therapy is not accessible. But, that should be the goal. This is a lot to handle on your own. If you’re struggling, it makes sense. It may not feel good to struggle, but it’s reasonable to struggle when you’re trying to handle a mental illness all on your own.
The benefit of working with a therapist is that they can diagnose you with OCD, if that is, indeed, what they think is relevant to the situation. Once they diagnose you, they can tie that into your treatment plan, and give you the best treatment of OCD for your specific situation.
Everyone is different and their mental illnesses all present differently. We may have similar experiences if we are diagnosed with the same mental health disorder, but that does not mean one treatment fits all.
So, if you are able, use this blog in conjunction with seeing an in-person therapist. Remember that a mental health therapist is trained to help you work through your mental illness and you are not.
You can use all of the material that your disposal online and still feel lost. That doesn’t mean you’re failing. It just means that you need professional, trained help like many people with or without mental illnesses do.
7. Attend support groups in your area to hear from others with OCD experience
It’s easier to feel alone when you don’t know anyone else who has OCD. It’s even easier to feel alone when you are still learning what OCD looks like for you. That’s why visiting a support group local to you can be so beneficial.
It’s amazing how good it feels to be around other people who share your experience, even if they are nothing like you. It may be sad and it may be scary to hear about other peoples’ experiences, but you will finally believe that you have a valid experience.
People around you can explain that your experience is valid over and over and in different, seemingly effective ways. But, if we’re being honest, you probably won’t believe them because they don’t have OCD like you do.
Once you hear other people with OCD talk about their experiences, things will change for you. You will feel seen, and that is massively important when you are dealing with something as difficult as OCD.
When you’re not sure what’s real and what’s OCD, hearing someone else talk about that same fear will help you ground yourself in the present. No matter who it is, mental illness is a struggle just as mental health is a struggle.
Don’t underestimate the value of being around other people who can understand what it’s like to live in your head. Maybe they are of a different race, gender, or religion, or they live in a different city.
But, you share something that brings you together instantly. Plus, you may even meet people who are farther along on their journeys, and they can give you advice on what has worked for them in the past. Maybe one day, you can do that for someone else if you attend these support groups.
8. Notice repetitive behaviors that you’re compelled to complete
We’ve talked about rituals, but sometimes the word ritual can be too strict. People might hear “ritual” and think of religious rituals that they have never experienced anything like. Or maybe they think of sacrificing humans, and that doesn’t fit with their experience either.
So, maybe it’s easier to ask yourself if you’ve ever undergone repetitive behaviors. The difference between rituals and repetitive behaviors is a matter of semantics, it does feel different to talk about the two of them.
Rituals feel a little bit more planned, even if they aren’t, and repetitive behaviors do not. Repetitive behaviors can overcome you in a matter of minutes. For example, you’re locking the door and imagining going to work and getting fired.
Then, you unlock the door, open it, close it, and lock it fifty times because that will keep you from getting fired. One of the most important distinctions here, to help you differentiate between reality and OCD, is that the behavior has nothing to do with the thought.
You are not rushing out the door to get to work on time or talking to your boss about your worries. There’s no way for you to control someone else’s choices are actions regardless.
Yet, you are still performing a repetitive behavior that helps you feel in control, especially concerning the troubling thought.
9. Talk to a family member about your obsessive thoughts
Even though your family member likely won’t understand what it’s like to have compulsive behaviors or intrusive thoughts, they can help you check the reality of your thoughts. So much of the time, our struggles come from us not knowing what’s normal and abnormal.
We struggle to function with our mental illness and assume everyone lives with the same reality that we do. So, naturally, we assume we’re weak and incapable until we can develop the self-awareness to realize we have a mental illness.
This goes for anyone in your life who you trust and value. These people are the ones you can openly share your thoughts with and they won’t judge. They will know you and trust you, no matter what you tell them.
The people who truly know you and care about you are the ones who will know that your scary, intrusive thoughts don’t reflect the real you. In a lot of ways, they’ll know there’s no way they reflect the real you.
It’s important to find someone you trust and who you feel comfortable being vulnerable with. Once you do, you may learn how uncommon your thoughts are and how unrealistic they are. This won’t stop them from happening, but it’s the first step towards getting healthier and happier.
