I Doubt Everything:(

[Positivegal]

Hi Smarties,

These days I am suffering..ummm I can say from Irritating behaviour of my ownself..I am doubting everyhting like Did I lock my door or not?..I know I locked it..but even though I feel that I didnt locked it..Couple of times it happened like I went back from school to home to look whether my stove is off or not and my door is locked or not...

I am not at all feeling confident on myself nowadays..as I feel sometimes I doubt myself ...

Do you think is this lack of confident on myself or it is a common human syndrome thinking like that??

Greatful to receive your advices and feedbacks..

Regards,
Pg..

[sixx1984]

I cannot offer you any advice because I am exactly the same way.

I always doubt whether or not I've actually done something. Even if I know I have done it, I always doubt my own mind and think - I'd better go back and check.

If I am on my own in the house overnight, it takes me about an hour to make sure everything is turned off/locked/etc... Even if I have checked everything - I have to check it again because I just don't believe myself or trust myself to have done it properly. Then I check it again. And again.

I have these arguments in my head. I want to just go to bed, but something is making me check everything a hundred times - even though I know logically that everything is fine. Something in my head says - you'd better check everything again because if someone gets in the house or something catches fire it'll be all your fault.

My boyfriend thinks I may have a form of OCD. But I don't know anything about OCD, so I don't know if this is a symptom of it or not.

I also suffer from a lack of confidence and low self-esteem. I am working on changing this, so maybe when I regain my confidence - this sort of behavior will disappear.

Anybody with any advice for positivegal and myself?

[garentee]

It certainly sounds like OCD.. My brother has had serious bouts of OCD in the past.. to the point he has to check if he locked something 6, 7 even eight times. If you want this to stop I suggest getting some help. Its nothing to be ashamed of.

[Harmonium]

I'd suggest conscious personal development. My experience with looking for help elsewhere is you are just paying a trained monkey to make generalizations and think for you, which is perfectly fine if you cannot take conscious dirrection for yourself. Just be amazing..

[Positivegal]

Dear sixx1984,garentee,Harmonium..Thanks for stopping by and advicing..

Hi sixx1984..Yes,what you said is sometimes also happens to me ...But now I feel its lack of confidence only, no OCD please.So, now I feel that I should build confidence and I am in that process slowly.. and I am checking it once or twice not more than that..

Regards,
Pg..

[jtracy]

I doubt myself a lot too. I will check and recheck things like making sure I have turned the stove off. I think it comes, at least in my case, from a lack of confidence in myself. I'm not sure when you know that this is OCD, although it may have to do with how many times you repeat the same behavior in a day (and I generally only check any given thing once in a day). I am very aware that I am capable of making mistakes, even really stupid ones (which I guess can be said of anyone so maybe it is a common human problem), and what's worse is that I am aware of the possible consequences of making those mistakes. We have a tendency to imagine the worst thing happening. "If I have left the door unlocked, someone will come and rob my house".

I am practising telling myself not to worry, that I probably did the right thing, in order to avoid coming all the way home to check on things that most of the time really didn't need checking. I am practising trusting myself to do what I was supposed to. But it is a challenge to be continually worked on.

[sixx1984]

hi everyone,

I really hope it's not OCD and just simply a confidence problem.

I tend to be fine around other people - if I am staying with my parents or boyfriend, I do not have a problem. I think this is because I, in a way, can share the blame if something does go wrong. I trust them to check things are safe, turned off etc... I only really have an issue with the door being locked. Even if they have checked it, I must check it myself or actually see them check it. I think this stems from feeling unsafe. There have been a couple of burglaries near my parents house and my boyfriend works temporarily in another country (non-english speaking and neither of us speak the language). The area he lives in is quite nice, but it is surrounded by really bad areas where a lot of the thieves and illegal immigrants live. I worry that we will get targeted. So I get very paranoid about having the door locked.

All of my "issues" really appear when I am staying on my own. I don't repeat the behaviour throughout the day. It only occurs if I have to leave the house during the day and at night before I go to bed. However, when I'm at my boyfriends house - everytime I walk past the front door I always check that it's locked.

I am reluctant to go down the OCD route just yet. I think it is a confidence problem and also a problem with trusting myself and being a little paranoid. Something which, with a bit of work, I can hopefully overcome. And something which will hopefully subside even more when my boyfriend leaves the crappy country he is currently living in and moves somewhere more civilized!

Best of luck to everyone with similar issues.

[Parthon]

Nah, that's just a confidence problem. OCD is more like, lining the pencils up on a desk, or walking around the house making sure all the light switches are facing the same way, ie: down. It's the obsessive and compulsive parts that make OCD really bad, just being excessively worried isn't OCD.

But there's many way to tackle confidence issues. Introspection and discovery is a good start. Look at yourself and ask "What is it about me that makes me not trust myself?" Do you have some kind of limiting belief around being worthy that holds you back from trusting yourself? Do you believe yourself to be trustworthy, or do you believe you are dishonest? If you lie a lot, even just little white lies and embelishments, you will trust yourself less and less as time goes by, because your own mind can't trust itself when you tell it to lie for you. It can't trust it's own knowledge anymore, and it reflects into your awareness as uncertainty. It's also not a matter of how big the lie is, but how much falseness creeps into your life.

Another way, is to doubt the doubt. Ask "Is this doubt real? Why am I having this doubt? Can I be doubtful about being doubtful?" See what comes up from this experiement.

You could also just start putting little habits in place to boost your confidence. If you worry about whether or not yo locked your front door, use your keys to lock it. Make it so you can't leave until you've locked the door with your keys. The actual physical act of taking your keys out and locking the door is a lot better that wondering whether or not you pressed the little button or whatever.

In the end, it just sounds like a major confidence issue.

[Positivegal]

Hi jtracy,sixx1984,Parthon

Parthon your advice is awesome..Thanks

It´s absolutely Problem of low confidence level..

Ok, let me tell you Why I check and recheck the stove is ,I had fire accident when I forgot to off the stove..so,That phobia is still in my brain and that makes me to recheck abt the stove and once I forgot my keys and I was having no keys with me, had to wlak in snow almost with home shoes to frnds place..tahts the another reason why I check for keys and also about locking of door..

From Yesterday I am just saying to my self that I am going to check only once..that´s it,If I feel then 1 mortime..so not more than twice..Now,I am not checking more than 2 times..

Hurray! I am done with Probs..It´s all about the confidence levels you ahve in yourself..

Regards,
Pg..

[bbdream8]

Doubting is a natural reaction for human to protect themselves but extreme cases of doubting everything will be detrimental to your overall life.

You can doubt but what is it that cause you to doubt everything? Is it an experience you had or events that trigger this? Identify the problem and we will go from there.

Cheers
Vincent
Personal Development Blogger

[Positivegal]

Originally Posted by bbdream8

Doubting is a natural reaction for human to protect themselves but extreme cases of doubting everything will be detrimental to your overall life.

You can doubt but what is it that cause you to doubt everything? Is it an experience you had or events that trigger this? Identify the problem and we will go from there.

Cheers
Vincent
Personal Development Blogger

HI Vincent,

Thanks for your advice over here..

As I mentioned I had some bad experiences with keys and someother so may that´s the reason and for safety purposes being more careful making me to check,think,do the things again and again..But I am working on it..seeing some progression..

Regards,
Pg..

[bbdream8]

It is great to hear that you are making progress. Just keep on going at it and good luck to you.

Cheers
Vincent
Personal Development Blogger

[172]

Hi PositiveGal! I like your screenname. It's ironic that you feel this way given how you see yourself (screenname).

Here's my 2 cents...

Doubt is FEAR, IMO. At least it has been in my own life. When I start raising doubts about everything, I realize it's just a convenient reason for me not to do the thing I am most afraid to do but still want to do.

And, FEAR? It's a useless emotion. I spent many years, holding back from doing things because I could come up with excellent reasons why it was irrational, why it was impossible, why it would be too difficult, why I wasn't in a position to do it, yada yada yada. Then, one day, my best friend, my SO taught me that fear is okay....but it's never okay to yield to it. You may feel fear, come up with doubts to mask that fear, but you still have to DO it. And, once you DO it....the doubts and the fear subside. Then, one day, you'll look up and you will have accomplished things QUICKLY that you had previously held hardfast doubts about.

He calls it "kicking fear in the balls" (I love that) And, it's true. The other thing I learned, is that when you get in the habit of moving past fear and the doubts and doing ANYWAY, it becomes easier to face fear and do great things and the doubting habit begins to wither away. So, instead of seeing the reasons why something won't work, all you really see is the fact that you WILL make it work. Doubt doesn't rule you anymore.

Recognize when that feeling comes up in you and call it what it is....FEAR. Then, go ahead and move past it and DO. DO. DO! Best wishes to you. Kick fear in the balls.

[Stephen]

Originally Posted by Positivegal

I Doubt Everything

That's an excellent place to start from. (seriously)