Aa
Anxiety/Guilt
I have had OCD/Anxiety for about 10 years now mostly regarding health related issues. I wouldn't call myself a hypochondriac as I don't take every little thing that goes wrong with me as a bona fide illness but I've had a consistent fear of cancer over the years. I've been on Paxil, Wellbutrin and Fluoxetine with varying success although it never really helped in the long-term. I've also had a severe fear of HIV from encounters that numerous doctors have told me is no risk. A little less than a year ago I started my divorce (finalized now) and had a 3 month relationship with a woman that got started right before I left my wife. I know, I'm an *******. I've had numerous HIV tests since then past the timeframe that most experts say is appropriate and they have all been negative. However I've been stuck on the hyper-conservative outdated advice of the CDC that I have to get tested out to 6 months which will be 2 weeks from now. I know that my severe anxiety from this whole ordeal is due to my guilt from that I cheated and everything that happened. However I also know myself well enough that once this particular anxiety goes away it will inevitably move onto something else. I started taking Clomipramine for two weeks which was an absolute disaster as I experienced every side-effect in the book for that medication. I really don't want to go on a medication for the rest of my life and I need to find some way to move past the guilt of what I did. Anyone have any experience with something like this and have any thoughts?
Just let us know how we can help. There is no contest at MedHelp regarding who suffers the most.
Peace
Greenlydia
Peace
Greenlydia
Calmshell, thank you for your reply. I will definitely look into those authors. In the past a lot of anxiety I had came from that if I died tomorrow I wouldn't have done in my life what I wanted to. Not really cuz I felt constraints from society or family, just a fear that my life would be cut short or seriously altered by something bad. I've become more comfortable with the thought of death, but I know what is killing me with this particular situation is that I did something just about anyone would say is wrong and I feel like I will be punished by God or karma or whatever. I have apologized to my ex-wife as I feel genuine remorse for what I did (not just remorse from fear of what will happen to me because cheated). And with my HIV fear it's especially bad as I have only myself to blame if it happens. Things like cancer are a little more out of people's control, barring lung cancer and things like that. Thank you again for your reply.
I actually didn't see that there was an OCD forum. I will check that out as well. I don't mean to trivialize a forum for anxiety as I know there are people who have a much different condition than I do and suffer far worse but my OCD is much more anxiety based than a lot of people who have OCD concerning rituals and compulsive thoughts and such.
Calmshell, thank you for your reply. I will definitely look into those authors. In the past a lot of anxiety I had came from that if I died tomorrow I wouldn't have done in my life what I wanted to. Not really cuz I felt constraints from society or family, just a fear that my life would be cut short or seriously altered by something bad. I've become more comfortable with the thought of death, but I know what is killing me with this particular situation is that I did something just about anyone would say is wrong and I feel like I will be punished by God or karma or whatever. I have apologized to my ex-wife as I feel genuine remorse for what I did (not just remorse from fear of what will happen to me because cheated). And with my HIV fear it's especially bad as I have only myself to blame if it happens. Things like cancer are a little more out of people's control, barring lung cancer and things like that. Thank you again for your reply.
It's perfectly OK for you to post on the Anxiety Forum, but you might also want to check our OCD Forum. While those of us who suffer from anxiety and panic understand OCD, the vast majority of us do not live with it. I'm guessing you'd find some kindred souls over there. Just know that we are always here!
Peace
Greenlydia
Peace
Greenlydia
I can relate to your anxiety (of health, etc.) and guilt feelings.. I have had anxiety for about 5 years, generalizede. i have had heart palpitations, feared cancer off and on, other things, constantly wonder if i was "pleasing" enough for others, "good" enough, "on track" in my life enough, this/that, i mean the list could be 10 pages long...
I started to really (about 2 yrs. ago, when the anxiety was pretty bad..tense chest ALL day, general tenseness, CONSTANTLy overthinking many things, etc. ) look at why I was feeling all this, and that it was taking over my state of mind in way...
I began to read Eckhart TOlle, The Power of Now, and A New Earth (the last one was my fave.)....He talks of "mistakes", and how "nothing you could ever say ABOUT you, is you".
He had been a severely depressed man, striving to be "better/smarter" in his job, and literallywas suffering so much, one day thought ABOVE "thought" so to say, and realized something within/awareness. He says suffering is attaching to beliefs/thoughts how something/you SHOULD be, according to society/upbringing- that it is ego (false incessant thoughts- likes, dislikes, judgements about oneself /others, guilts, looking "to future/past") that tell us, "we SHOULD have done that, " "I should be like this/that" , "I "llike" this/that", I should have been this way, " if only I"..., etc etc. It is in the ego itself, that suffering lies, and attachment to thoughts, viruses really, dictated by upbringing, society, and what people simply "say", and we believe them.
When we disidentify..disattach from CONTENT, what "happens" (which we believe to be truth, whether, we do it, or others) we become happy, free...he also says, "we are a microcosm of the macrocosm", we are ONE with all atoms, molecules, we ARE life, and as my other fav. author Byron Katie puts it , "Your "story" and reality just don't match- reality is always kinder than our stories about it- but only always."
(she is similar in her books to Tolle in that she was VERY identified/rageful/ and very seriously depressed..didn't leave her house/bed for a couple years, and one day she was in an mental hospital of sorts, on the floor, and saw a roach crawl over her leg, and instantly she saw that she, and the roach, and the walls, floor, etc, nothing was separate. she immediately disidentified with her "story", and after a bit, started to do something she calls inquiring, looking into YOU, to see the truth, not societies, but yours..her books have helped me even almost MORE than Tolle's...she is incredibly smart and everything she wrote ..you can get them at library, made SENSe and TRUTH to me.)
I have seen guilt crop up within me over many things, so that I ruminate and constantly think it over, thinking somehow, maybe just somehow , i'm "bad". I re read a lot of Tolle's material and know deeply, one of his great quotes, and apply it a lot, into my life:
"Thinking isolates a situation and calls it good or bad, as if it had a separate existence. Through excessive reliance on thinking, reality becomes fragmented. ...nothing exists in isolation. The deeper interconnectedness of all things and events implies that the mental
labels of "good" and "bad" are ultimately illusory." another great one, dealing with guilt/mistakes , etc..( ego), is:
"You cannot truly forgive yourself or others as long as you derive your SENSE OF SELF from the past. Only through the power of Now, your own power, and there be true forgiveness. This renders the past powerless, and you realize deeply that nothing you ever
did, or was ever done to you could touch even in the slightest the radiant essence of who you are. "
So i hope i did not ramble too much (but I tend to, and ALWAYS mean to write a paragraph or two..)..hope any of this helps ? Do you have anxiety of other sorts as well?
It was so random that I stumbled upon Byron's works..i was reading Ok! magazine and it said 10 things Jenny Mccarthy likes..and one of them was Thework.com, and I was like, huh? so I googled it, and she really is AMAZING...Her book, "I need your love- is that true?", and "A THousand names for joy", are great, and have literally, in my daily life, helped me very much.....
She also says no good/bad...those are duality types of thinking, and this is where all her suffering had stemmed from.... things (including us, because we are nature, itself, and she says, when we say "I" am going to work, "I" did this/that, there is our mistake , all the time..it is thinking "you"/"I" , that we take things very seriously, whereas life is not PERSONAl...) this has been a big mistake in my life..i have been brought up to constantly thinking i need to be "good" , I need to do this/that, my family pretty religious, and my mother berating me most of my life..so I took everything I did, personal, so that if I made a "mistake", it felt catasrophic to me..with various things I won't list out, but I started to question, and re-read her books, and realized none of it, was true, no matter if society, or anyone else thought /thinks it was not "good" or, etc...not in accordance to this /that....Society in general I have found (in which my parents have very much been the same black-or-white thinking, ) can be inflexible, uninquiring to really what goes on w/people, etc..
One more quote from her, "You can enter the worst of your fears, and with inquiry, it doesn't matter where you go, or how you appear. Without a belief (story), you are all things. And if you get stuck in a particular identity, you have inquiry to unstick you." =)
Her inquiry is 4 questions she developed to her realizing her own happiness in a lifetime of depression/guilt, fear.....if u get her books, you'll see a lot of amazing examples of them..and my sister , when I come to her, with another anxiety, says, "do u listen to what u tell me of Byron Katie?!"...Hope anything here may have eased u, and gives u a calmer day..u are perfection itself, and anything you "did" is content, not You.....you probably know that deep down..:) , so keep us posted on here...sorry this was prob. too much writing! ttyl
I started to really (about 2 yrs. ago, when the anxiety was pretty bad..tense chest ALL day, general tenseness, CONSTANTLy overthinking many things, etc. ) look at why I was feeling all this, and that it was taking over my state of mind in way...
I began to read Eckhart TOlle, The Power of Now, and A New Earth (the last one was my fave.)....He talks of "mistakes", and how "nothing you could ever say ABOUT you, is you".
He had been a severely depressed man, striving to be "better/smarter" in his job, and literallywas suffering so much, one day thought ABOVE "thought" so to say, and realized something within/awareness. He says suffering is attaching to beliefs/thoughts how something/you SHOULD be, according to society/upbringing- that it is ego (false incessant thoughts- likes, dislikes, judgements about oneself /others, guilts, looking "to future/past") that tell us, "we SHOULD have done that, " "I should be like this/that" , "I "llike" this/that", I should have been this way, " if only I"..., etc etc. It is in the ego itself, that suffering lies, and attachment to thoughts, viruses really, dictated by upbringing, society, and what people simply "say", and we believe them.
When we disidentify..disattach from CONTENT, what "happens" (which we believe to be truth, whether, we do it, or others) we become happy, free...he also says, "we are a microcosm of the macrocosm", we are ONE with all atoms, molecules, we ARE life, and as my other fav. author Byron Katie puts it , "Your "story" and reality just don't match- reality is always kinder than our stories about it- but only always."
(she is similar in her books to Tolle in that she was VERY identified/rageful/ and very seriously depressed..didn't leave her house/bed for a couple years, and one day she was in an mental hospital of sorts, on the floor, and saw a roach crawl over her leg, and instantly she saw that she, and the roach, and the walls, floor, etc, nothing was separate. she immediately disidentified with her "story", and after a bit, started to do something she calls inquiring, looking into YOU, to see the truth, not societies, but yours..her books have helped me even almost MORE than Tolle's...she is incredibly smart and everything she wrote ..you can get them at library, made SENSe and TRUTH to me.)
I have seen guilt crop up within me over many things, so that I ruminate and constantly think it over, thinking somehow, maybe just somehow , i'm "bad". I re read a lot of Tolle's material and know deeply, one of his great quotes, and apply it a lot, into my life:
"Thinking isolates a situation and calls it good or bad, as if it had a separate existence. Through excessive reliance on thinking, reality becomes fragmented. ...nothing exists in isolation. The deeper interconnectedness of all things and events implies that the mental
labels of "good" and "bad" are ultimately illusory." another great one, dealing with guilt/mistakes , etc..( ego), is:
"You cannot truly forgive yourself or others as long as you derive your SENSE OF SELF from the past. Only through the power of Now, your own power, and there be true forgiveness. This renders the past powerless, and you realize deeply that nothing you ever
did, or was ever done to you could touch even in the slightest the radiant essence of who you are. "
So i hope i did not ramble too much (but I tend to, and ALWAYS mean to write a paragraph or two..)..hope any of this helps ? Do you have anxiety of other sorts as well?
It was so random that I stumbled upon Byron's works..i was reading Ok! magazine and it said 10 things Jenny Mccarthy likes..and one of them was Thework.com, and I was like, huh? so I googled it, and she really is AMAZING...Her book, "I need your love- is that true?", and "A THousand names for joy", are great, and have literally, in my daily life, helped me very much.....
She also says no good/bad...those are duality types of thinking, and this is where all her suffering had stemmed from.... things (including us, because we are nature, itself, and she says, when we say "I" am going to work, "I" did this/that, there is our mistake , all the time..it is thinking "you"/"I" , that we take things very seriously, whereas life is not PERSONAl...) this has been a big mistake in my life..i have been brought up to constantly thinking i need to be "good" , I need to do this/that, my family pretty religious, and my mother berating me most of my life..so I took everything I did, personal, so that if I made a "mistake", it felt catasrophic to me..with various things I won't list out, but I started to question, and re-read her books, and realized none of it, was true, no matter if society, or anyone else thought /thinks it was not "good" or, etc...not in accordance to this /that....Society in general I have found (in which my parents have very much been the same black-or-white thinking, ) can be inflexible, uninquiring to really what goes on w/people, etc..
One more quote from her, "You can enter the worst of your fears, and with inquiry, it doesn't matter where you go, or how you appear. Without a belief (story), you are all things. And if you get stuck in a particular identity, you have inquiry to unstick you." =)
Her inquiry is 4 questions she developed to her realizing her own happiness in a lifetime of depression/guilt, fear.....if u get her books, you'll see a lot of amazing examples of them..and my sister , when I come to her, with another anxiety, says, "do u listen to what u tell me of Byron Katie?!"...Hope anything here may have eased u, and gives u a calmer day..u are perfection itself, and anything you "did" is content, not You.....you probably know that deep down..:) , so keep us posted on here...sorry this was prob. too much writing! ttyl
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