Anonymous
- Date posted
- 3y
🦋🦚🍀🦋🦚🍀
- Date posted
- 3y
Amazing question, journaling is what led me to NOCD (literally joined this community today). I’ve been journaling for 3-4 months but kept on going in a loop. My therapist (not NOCD therapist) told me journaling is good so I just started it but it never led me anywhere, it wasn’t productive at all!! That being said, I’m curious after my first few sessions if theres helpful journaling tactics for people with OCD using doing ERP!
AnonymousAnonymous
- Date posted
- 3y
Welcome :) Yeah I LOVE to journal as I love writing but in the past when I’ve journaled about my intrusive thoughts it didn’t help. Now I realise it’s OCD I know that’s probably because I was just feeding the thoughts! I’d love to do morning pages for example (where you just write 4 pages of your thoughts randomly) but again don’t want to do anything that’s going to make things worse.
autisticompulsiveautisticompu...
- Date posted
- 3y
Hi! My OCD IOP therapist LOOOOVED it when I journalled, and my NOCD therapist has encouraged me to keep up that work. As with most things, it *can* be a compulsion or something that feeds into rumination, but it doesn't have to be. It all comes down to approach and intention. If you're writing as a way to seek certainty, or to reassure yourself, or if you're going back and reading what you wrote over and over and getting caught up in it, those are red flags that compulsion is involved. If you're writing to process your feelings around a fear, or explore and understand your responses to it, or just to get it out onto the paper so it's not all in your head, those approaches are less likely to lead to compulsion. I think it's definitely valuable and worth trying--you just have to check in with yourself occasionally about how you're doing it. Best of luck!
AnonymousAnonymous
- Date posted
- 3y
Thanks that is SO Helpful!! Yes definitely have been guilty of re-reading in the past to seek certainty/check! So will be sure to not do this. Thanks again!
GodsgoodGodsgood
- Date posted
- 3y
I’d like to know too
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- Date posted
- 13w
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Anonymous
- User type
- OCD Conqueror
- Date posted
- 10w
How have others managed rumination/mental comps?
Been doing ERP for a while now, and overall my OCD is leaps and bounds better than it used to be. I'm not in a crippling panic state anymore thank God. However, at this point I am just trying to figure out how other people with OCD manage their rumination and mentally replaying things in their head? A lot of times I don't even realize that I'm doing it, I will just be doing an activity such as yardwork and while I'm doing it, I will be mildly ruminating about a topic and just find it hard to avoid doing so. My therapist suggested setting a timer every so often to see where my mind is currently at and trying to redirect to something more appropriate (or do ERP exercises). Sometimes it just feels so noisy even though I'm not directly paying attention to it and it ends up being very distracting and affects my productivity. Overall, it's much better, honestly thought it was gone entirely, but OCD is attempting to relapse a little bit I've noticed. Thank you for your experiences and I hope you all have a safe Labor Day weekend!
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