i'm so so so sick of my brain. my mum died recently due to some medication she took that had a bad reaction to the alcohol in her system, and my brain is like "what if dad did it. what if dad made her take those tablets and knew what would happen" but like i know my dad obviously didn't do it! he's a good man and loved my mum and had no reason to do it. my mum had problems with hearing voices and took meds for it, but would drink and get drunk when she was alone and when the voices were bad-
- but doctors were aware that she kept getting drunk so i'm pretty pissed at them for not letting us know that a person could die when mixing her type of meds with alcohol. anyway, i keep getting anxious cause y brain keeps going doing the "what if what if what if thing" (i have ocd) and like.... i don't want to think this about my dad but obv there's no way to prove whether he knew mixing those meds and alcohol would do that, and even so she's been drinking whilst taking meds for years so-
-it's not like my dad would have known, (even if he was aware that mixing could cause death) that it would happen that time. my dad even said when we found out the cause for her death that he didn't know that could happen... sorry i'm just being stupid. tag as 'greyballoon'
Hi darling,
I’m sorry for your loss lovely :( And I’m so sorry to hear that your brain is making things so difficult for you right now! As you might know, intrusive thoughts are a part of OCD and unfortunately there isn’t a button to switch them off. It can however be possible to learn to not have them affect you as much. Are you familiar with this four step program? It can be really helpful in being able to truly remind yourself that these intrusive thoughts are caused by your OCD and that therefore they don’t mean anything. This can eventually help to not have these thoughts affect you so much.
I understand that you’re angry with her doctors though! I think for your grieving process it might be good to schedule an appointment with them and ask them why they never told you about the medication not being a good combination with alcohol. This is completely up to you though! If you feel like it will help you, then it might be good to do so. If you think it won’t help you, then it’s probably best not to do so. One thing I’ve learned about grief is that it’s important to not push your feelings away. It doesn’t help. It won’t bring you anywhere, because you have to deal with them at some point, and postponing them might only make it harder in the end. We have a page on grief here that might be helpful for you to look through.
I don’t think you’re being stupid though lovely! Your OCD is just making this a lot more difficult than it already is, and death is incredibly difficult to deal with on its own. You know that your dad didn’t know and that he didn’t do anything. You know that. Your OCD might make you doubt of it, but that isn’t you. You know. Try to remind yourself of that. Maybe our OCD page series can be of help?
Since this is all so difficult for you right now, I think it would be really helpful for you to speak to a therapist, counsellor, or other mental health professional. You can read more about getting help here. CBT with ERP (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy with Exposure and Response Prevention) can be extremely helpful for those struggling with OCD. However I also think you could benefit a lot from counselling, as this can help you in the grieving process. You don’t have to deal with this all by yourself lovely!
Sometimes what seems impossible, is just hard.
Keep fighting beautiful ❤
Love Pauline