YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

i cant figure out whats wrong with me. and doctors keep wanting me to explain it, and when i explain it, they dont get it... maybe someone out there understands what i'm feeling, and can help me figure it out. Help??!
all i can do is replay things over and over in my head, things that have happened in my life, times i was upset, sad, angry, times i felt bad for hurting someone else, times that other people have hurt me, just everything.
its like a movie in my head that plays and plays and plays. or bits and pieces of movies, but its always the same stuff, and i just feel disgusted with myself for all these things. i dont know why i'm having this, and i dont know how to get rid of it.??? i wish i could erase all my memory, even if it meant losing some good stuff. how do i make the movie pieces stop playing.

It may be nice to have a label (it feels validating), but you don't seem to be broken. The repetitive memories can often be a symptom of depression, if you're obsessing over it, it could be OCD, but, that behavior alone can't warrant a diagnosis. A lot of mental illnesses can manifest with obsessing over the past - they need to know more than that.

Can you examine more parts of your life? Perhaps your incessant focus on memories is a way of disguising other things in your life - people often focus on one thing to alleviate intense emotions. Having one thing to focus on is easier than confronting multiple issues; many people turn to drugs to alleviate mental issues, some turn to cutting, some turn to promiscuity - maybe this is your coping mechanism.

Hi, hamster. I'm no expert, but I tend to have similarly repetitive thinking as well, sometimes the same seemingly meaningless moments in the past or a thought I had 30 seconds ago and then have again... and again... and again... A therapist once told me it sounded like OCD without the C. OCD is an anxiety disorder. Are you taking anything for anxiety? Have you ever noticed it lessening at times?