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Compulsive thoughts

S

Shaun-Junior Bishop

Well-Known Member
Does anyone suffer from fixations but within your head? I try and explain to people that it doesnt feel as though i have ocd because my brain just keeps popping up with thoughts of deafs and its doesnt seem to greatly upset me just make me anxious but sometimes i have these what i call "phase out" phase where i completely forget the last few minutes of memory because i get really sucked into a daydream and its like it takes over my vision and i am inside the daydream and i completely forget what im doing and it really freaks me out and alot of the time its about people close to me dying so normally just my mum and grandmother.

Just wondering if anyone has this and could explain what it is or just some advise. Thanks
 
Oh, very much so! And when I say:eek:h this is not affecting me in a bad way ( with pleasing surprise), it then starts to affect me in a negative way.

Just this morning, for once, my husband was home ( our 28th wedding anniversary today) and I started to chat what was in my head and he suddenly said: is this the kind of thing you think of a lot? I said: I guess so and then, he surprised me with his insight when he said: perhaps it is because I am here, you have someone to share those thoughts with?

Like you, I do not feel they are to do with OCD.
 
In general it would seem that a great many of us tend to overthink and dwell on all sorts of things. In my own case compounded by OCD, where it is easy to contemplate worst case scenarios first rather than place them in their proper and often remote perspective.

Guilty as charged. :oops:

Some helpful reading: Rumination: Problem Solving Gone Wrong
 
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My diagnosis prior to ASD was (among other things) obsessive compulsive personality, so yeah, I am familiar with it.
 
I have that with the dying! I vividly imagine someone I care about dying and it becomes so detailed and real that I start becoming upset and I have to try to convince myself it's not real and to think about something else and I just keep wondering, "Why am I doing this??" :mad:
 
You should never be afraid of thinking freely. There are times, though, when it's important to give energy and attention to listening to others and following their stories. I would daydream in school. Teachers would shame me for it. That wasn't a corrective measure, just an embarrassment for me. Only later in life did I recognize that by making a serious effort to follow conversation, stories, and anything else happening around me, I could remain involved and develop the focusing techniques that many people take for granted. Even when I would read a homework assignment, my mind would wander. It was so wasteful. I would spend my time reading, but never internalize what I had read. Even today, it can take a lot of energy and concentration to remain very focused. It's a discipline I taught myself. It starts by pulling yourself back from the drifting thoughts. Don't let yourself get away with it. You soon develop the strength, energy, and attention to keep on the task. Volumes of negative thoughts affect my mood, so I like to minimize them anyway. I've had ADD all my life. It's a constant battle, but I have learned to manage focusing skills when it is necessary. I can still think freely, on my own time. Some days are tougher than others, but the objectives remain the same.
 
When I was troubleshooting cell phones on Motorola's assembly line, I used a sort-of daydream process to resolve the more oddball failures (to great success). To be clear, it was work-oriented daydreaming.

(For me, the line between work & play has always been blurred when it comes to engineering pursuits!* I refer to related tools/toys as "toyuls.")

*I consider it to be an ASD super-power.
 
I think you will find that daydreaming is common for those on the spectrum. I am a big daydreamer myself and when I was in year 4 in school my teacher wrote on my school report that I tend to daydream too much in class.

Even now I can get very immersed in my daydreams that I will sometimes even verbalise and act them out. But I believe there is a good side to daydreaming too, it can mean you have got a good imagination and that can be good for creative pursuits,but at the same time it can make you “off with the fairies” aswell.
 
I get wrapped up in thoughts that keep coming back about things I dread or fear.
Sometimes I wonder if the reason we can't keep our minds from thinking about these things
could be a type of self harm. Like skin picking or cutting. Things that hurt self.
If the thoughts are of a negative, fearful nature and we just keep thinking about them,
doesn't that hurt us on an emotional level?
And they are just as hard to stop as picking at a sore.

Good daydreaming can be creative and helpful. Making you feel good about something.
 
I can relate. Though i experience both postive and negative daydreams. Sometimes i can harness them to do something good. Other times i just experience them. I have to admit the good dreams seem to be heightened do to my aspergers. Is this a benefit?
 
Wolf Prince said:
I can relate. Though i experience both postive and negative daydreams. Sometimes i can harness them to do something good. Other times i just experience them. I have to admit the good dreams seem to be heightened do to my aspergers. Is this a benefit?
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Out of all the comments yours is most probably the one i relate the most to. I realised that sometimes i could harness them to trigger a thought or memory that i could go into for a good few minutes
 
I have always daydreamed and blamed it on ADD but I was told it was OCD because most people can stop their thoughts and just listen in class and focus on school.
 
Crossbreed said:
Perseverations are common to ASD. They are like OCD-lite. (Unlike OCD, they subside when there is closure.)
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Do you have more information on this, or a resource where I can read more?

I really struggle with this. I was diagnosed with OCD, but I really think (after reading the DSM for OCD several times over) that I'm missing half of the OCD diagnosis. I obsess, but I don't have compulsions.

Subsiding when there's closure is the lightbulb trigger...I had a situation recently (really bad blowout with some former friends, long story) and I couldn't stop thinking about it, day in and out, first thing on my mind in the morning and last thing on my mind when I went to bed at night, for months. (This is exactly the sort of thing that got me the OCD diagnosis). The thing is, after talking with someone who is still my friend and also a sort of fringe member of that group - I finally got the closure I need. And it was like a switch went off. The obsession subsided drastically. The grief and anxiety subsided. The anger subsided. I slept the best I have in months. Just from that one conversation - I got the closure I needed and it was just gone.

This is probably the most distressing 'feature' of my whacky neurology. It causes me far more grief than anything else and I'd love to get a handle on this one.
 
Adora said:
I think you will find that daydreaming is common for those on the spectrum. I am a big daydreamer myself and when I was in year 4 in school my teacher wrote on my school report that I tend to daydream too much in class.

Even now I can get very immersed in my daydreams that I will sometimes even verbalise and act them out. But I believe there is a good side to daydreaming too, it can mean you have got a good imagination and that can be good for creative pursuits,but at the same time it can make you “off with the fairies” aswell.
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This...I daydream constantly (I could be a writer if I weren't too lazy to write all this down lol!) I don't see this as a negative, as long as I'm not obsessing/daydreaming about something that's bringing me down. I use it to solve all sorts of problems, from personal to technical, or even just to have fun.
 
SDRSpark said:
Do you have more information on this,...?
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Just my experience, confirmed by others. It is hard for me to break out of a project-oriented frame of mind until its conclusion. Then, I can relax.

As I got older, I was able to do that with project steps, instead of whole projects.
 
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Crossbreed said:
Just my experience, confirmed by others. It is hard for me to break out of a project-oriented frame of mind until its conclusion. Then, I can relax.

As I got older, I was able to do that with project steps, instead of whole projects.
Click to expand...

I guess I never really saw these problems as "projects" and really thought about solving them, although, that's really what I wind up doing (and this latest adventure lead me down a real rabbit hole of self-discovery, as I wanted to clearly understand what happened so that it didn't happen again.)

Thinking of it as a 'project' might actually be a helpful approach to make it more manageable. Thanks!!!
 
Crossbreed said:
When I was troubleshooting cell phones on Motorola's assembly line, I used a sort-of daydream process to resolve the more oddball failures (to great success). To be clear, it was work-oriented daydreaming.

(For me, the line between work & play has always been blurred when it comes to engineering pursuits!* I refer to related tools/toys as "toyuls.")

*I consider it to be an ASD super-power.
Click to expand...


Sounds like what Temple Grandin talks about in her Ted talks.

working out things in your head.
I do the same thing.


The 2:00 minute mark or so.

I have similar perseveration
 
I have kind of obsessive thoughts around patterns and numbers that sometimes distract me. I have to fight with myself sometimes not to get distracted by licence plates when driving. Just seeing the 'wrong' licence plate can make my thoughts head off on their tangent.
 
Having mum and grandmother dying could be quite a worrying thought.
Emotionally loaded.

If you haven't experienced the grief of loved ones dying yet,
perhaps your mind is naturally curious as to what will happen during and afterwards,
and in particular, what will happen to you. How will this change things for you?

I suspect you don't have any answers or concrete facts to illuminate your future without mum or grandma in your life,
your mind may still try to look for answers.

some of those guesses (answers) may feel overwhelming and therefore worrying.

Are you the sort of person that can ask mum and grandma what changes will happen for you after their passing?
 
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