- Date posted
- 3y ago
- Date posted
- 3y ago
Ur right! Because we’re so distracted with the context of OCD! I just finished an online course and it talked about changing your attitude about the feelings of uncertainty. “Want what you don’t want.” OCD gets the upper hand when you cringe and resists what scares us but flip it. Seek it out, welcome it, look at it as an opportunity to practice skills and sitting with uncertainty and doubt. Have this fighter attitude like bring it, can you give me more uncertainty. It’s fine that I’m feeling this way. I can feel this way all day ocd! It also said to turn ur back on the context, the story, it’s a mental disorder that just picked this theme bc it grabs our attention successfully. Turn your back on ur theme and sit with generic uncertainty. It’s about contamination, house burning down, etc., it’s a mental disorder, sitting with generic uncertainty and doubt.
- Date posted
- 3y ago
*it’s not about contamination*
- User type
- NOCD Alumni
- Date posted
- 3y ago
Yes! First good job! 2nd, get up and get out of your head and into your body! When we "sit with it" we don't actually have to sit! Do your exposure, feel the anxiety, as it decreases at least by half then go live your life! Take a walk, sing a song, draw a picture... allow the anxiety to be there yet live and do things you need or want to do... the anxiety will continue to come down on its own and your brain is doing its thing and you get to do a healthy distraction whole it does!
- Date posted
- 3y ago
Oh and be careful and don’t do mental compulsions. Your anxiety will not pass if you’re ruminating (trying to solve or figure it out). Mental compulsions can increase the anxiety and you’re sitting there white knuckling. My mental compulsions are often my downfall and for a while I was unaware of how much I was actually doing. Welcome the initial intrusive thought, not the analytical thoughts that come afterwards, those are compulsions
- Date posted
- 3y ago
This is good advice. I always just assume that every thought response is always an intrusive thought. Turns out, like you say, they’re the compulsions. Never seen it that way before
Related posts
- Date posted
- 23w ago
Feel guilty for not giving into compulsions like rumination and confessing? I feel guilt for having an intrusive thought, trying to shrug it off or just giving it a few seconds of thought and moving along. This sounds like improvement but I still struggle with the anxiety and the guilt. The shame. I’ll be okay and then I’ll remember I have OCD and my stomach will drop and I just want to curl up and cry.
- Mid-life adults with OCD
- Somatic OCD
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- NOCD Therapy Alumni
- POCD
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- Date posted
- 15w ago
I’m having a big OCD relapse and would like to hear anyone’s tips on how to be present and healthily deal with these intrusive thoughts and the “need” to preform compulsions. Thank you!!
- Date posted
- 12w ago
I cannot for the life of me stop ruminating or checking how I feel about thoughts or focusing on thoughts or creating more thoughts. I feel like I’m losing my mind. I want to scream. I try not to ruminate about the thoughts, but trying not to just makes me think about them more. I try not to check, but somehow, I still check. I want to let a thought sit in the background, but the more I try not to focus on it, the more I end up focusing on it. I don’t want the thought to expand because that feels like engaging with it, but I can’t just stop it from expanding. It feels impossible. People keep saying I’m in control of my compulsions, and maybe that’s true for the physical ones. But when it comes to the mental compulsions, I swear I have no control. It feels like I’m missing something that everyone else seems to have, like there’s some tool they’re using that I don’t have. Controlling mental compulsions has never felt possible for me. I’m starting to fear them. And every time someone says I’m in control and can just choose not to do them, I end up beating myself up even more when they happen. Or when I *choose* I guess. I don’t know anymore. If this is my fault, if I’m responsible for this, then what does that make me? I feel like a monster. I am at my wits’ end. How am I supposed to control mental compulsions when it feels like they control me? I freak out when they happen. They don’t bring me relief, they just make me panic. I want it to stop so bad.
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