A perfect storm of stress and hormones made the voices appear again, those insidious thoughts that come from the depths of my id, the thoughts that make me cringe because they are so not me.
When I say "voices inside my head" someone might erroneously think of a schizophrenic who hears voices and thinks they are real. The horror of intrusive thoughts for me (and other people with OCD) is that they appear and I know good and well that they aren't my intentional thoughts. But they are in my head, nonetheless, so I worry that they ARE my real feelings and that I'm so dense that I'm not even aware that that is how I must really feel.
At least for me, the voices sound like me except more rough and angry.
What "the voice" says are things that are the horrible, nasty, cruel things I might say if I had no conscience or empathy or concern about hurting others. Basically, it is like having an anonymous disgusting person launch Twitter attacks inside my head all the time.
That may be the most troubling thing of all.
If you cannot imagine what these voices sound like, I can give an example:
Me, seeing a classmate of N's who just happens to walk by and for whom I have no real opinion whatsoever:
My thought: "Oh, there's so-and-so."
The voice: "What a bitch."
Such a comment by "the voice" might be ascribed to potentially any female who just happened to walk near me in the grocery store. No one has to "do" anything to me.
There are worse things that "the voice" says, but I try to dismiss them very quickly by reminding myself that those are nonsense thoughts.
When I noticed these thoughts, I was reminded of John Green's interview about his latest book, Turtles All the Way Down, and his interview about his OCD. He said he's a terrible detective because he is so in his own head all the time that he can't notice much in the world outside him.
I have not read the book yet, but I have to wonder about the title, which is based on a philosophical and cosmological concept which goes back to Anavastha. Although it can relate to God, I think it is meant to describe what it is like to have OCD.
Anavastha means unstable or absence of finality, hence the turtles standing on turtles all the way down, forever and ever. What I visualize when I picture these turtles is what I imagine my mind to be when I am in an obsessive rut. There is no bottom to obsessive thought.
This concept relates, too, to the fact that scientists still don't really understand what causes OCD, although they know it is in the deepest parts of the brain. What is the cause? On what does OCD stand?
Turtles all the way down, of course!
When I say "voices inside my head" someone might erroneously think of a schizophrenic who hears voices and thinks they are real. The horror of intrusive thoughts for me (and other people with OCD) is that they appear and I know good and well that they aren't my intentional thoughts. But they are in my head, nonetheless, so I worry that they ARE my real feelings and that I'm so dense that I'm not even aware that that is how I must really feel.
At least for me, the voices sound like me except more rough and angry.
What "the voice" says are things that are the horrible, nasty, cruel things I might say if I had no conscience or empathy or concern about hurting others. Basically, it is like having an anonymous disgusting person launch Twitter attacks inside my head all the time.
That may be the most troubling thing of all.
If you cannot imagine what these voices sound like, I can give an example:
Me, seeing a classmate of N's who just happens to walk by and for whom I have no real opinion whatsoever:
My thought: "Oh, there's so-and-so."
The voice: "What a bitch."
Such a comment by "the voice" might be ascribed to potentially any female who just happened to walk near me in the grocery store. No one has to "do" anything to me.
There are worse things that "the voice" says, but I try to dismiss them very quickly by reminding myself that those are nonsense thoughts.
When I noticed these thoughts, I was reminded of John Green's interview about his latest book, Turtles All the Way Down, and his interview about his OCD. He said he's a terrible detective because he is so in his own head all the time that he can't notice much in the world outside him.
I have not read the book yet, but I have to wonder about the title, which is based on a philosophical and cosmological concept which goes back to Anavastha. Although it can relate to God, I think it is meant to describe what it is like to have OCD.
Anavastha means unstable or absence of finality, hence the turtles standing on turtles all the way down, forever and ever. What I visualize when I picture these turtles is what I imagine my mind to be when I am in an obsessive rut. There is no bottom to obsessive thought.
This concept relates, too, to the fact that scientists still don't really understand what causes OCD, although they know it is in the deepest parts of the brain. What is the cause? On what does OCD stand?
Turtles all the way down, of course!
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