Guys i was fine for a second, and then i wanted to rewatch one of the Chinese dramas and i started constantly looking at how long the episode is left without watching it peacefully . how do i stop this???? at work also i started getting anxiety of doing stuff wrong and getting fired.
We can practice some exposures with those compulsions. First, try to establish a limited time of watching the series without looking how many minutes are left (10 min. for example), and as it progresses, you increase that limited time (15, 20 min, etc.). Do not attempt to achieve at once, start with baby steps. With work, you can do purposefully wrong a task without telling others that it is an exposure, that way you sit with the distress of failure and uncertainty, which will decrease when the obsession reappears in the future.
Hi Aisha! Sorry to hear you're feeling some distress. First of all, kudos to you for watching a show you enjoy! But, what we don't want to happen is that you start to enjoy fun things less or that you avoid them all together. So, in these situations, I would just put off my compulsion. For example, if I thought I had a typo in an email. I would obsess about that typo and fear looking unintelligent. My compulsion would be to check my email over and over to make sure there were no typos. Instead of giving into my compulsion, I would tell myself "check in five minutes." Then, when five minutes passed, I would say "okay, check in another five minutes." I would do this until the urge to check went away. That allowed me to sit with the anxiety of making a typo and potentially looking silly without giving into OCD by doing any compulsive checking. So maybe applying that method can help while you watch you tv. Then regarding your anxiety about your job, it always helped me to apply the "maybe, maybe not" technique to those thoughts. "Maybe I'll get fired, may I won't." Maybe, I'll lose my job and my only way of supporting myself, maybe not. Who knows?" We don't get to have any certainty and I won't even know if I'll show up to work tomorrow and be fired. And no one knows this. Maybe I'll get an email in the next five minutes saying I'm fired! I don't know! Sometimes, humor helped me too! Using humor to respond to my thoughts made the thoughts less scary because it's hard to laugh and be anxious at the same time. So, I would tell myself "Oh yes!! I hope I get fired. I can't wait to have no money." Humor doesn't work for everyone but it helped me a great deal. If you're currently working with a NOCD therapist, you can ask them how you can find creative ways to respond to thoughts. In the meantime, here is an article that suggests ways for responding to thoughts. This was an article my NOCD therapist sent me when I first starting working with her and it's by Jon Hershfield, a leader in the OCD community! I hope this was helpful to you. You got this!!! :) Link: https://www.sheppardpratt.org/news-views/story/how-to-respond-to-unwanted-obsessive-thoughts/#:~:text=There%20is%20no%20one%20right,if%20you%20wish%20to%20entertain.
Hello, so I’m currently spiralling so so so bad and I want someone to help me and tell me what to do rn. I have dyslexia so there might be some misspelling 3 months ago I read a manga that triggered my POCD to start The manga was cute, I enjoyed it tbh, but it had pedophilic themes (idk why I continued on to read it?!) and in the end it got quite sexual. I was sick while reading it so sadly I don't have much memories. Anyways afterwards I read some comments about how this was smth only pedos like. And since then, intense POCD. Stopped eating, isolated nyself, tried to commit multiple of times and called 991 on myself too. I kept on going about and thinking if I wanted smth sexual to happen, I know I thought there would be a time jump. And thought that something sexual might have happened then. But I can't stop doubting myself or thinking "what if I liked it when it started to get sexual" and the memories of such feel so real that I can't ignore them. I've never ever enjoyed CP before, or manga with SA (honestly I don't enjoy smut much overall, but they're pretty common in romance mangas) but if it has sexual themes and the characters look like kids/are kids/a weird age gap ect. I drop it, but idk why I didn't drop this one. Then I realised that I had never been attracted to kids, and this scenario doesnt have to mean that I am a pedophile. I also have ALOT of trauma around pedophilia (CSA survivor, started making CP as a coping mechanism. It ruined my childhood and took loads of cptsd therapy to stop relapsing.) And I didn’t have a spiral for weeks, I did epr fully and thought I had finally figured out a way to ignore the intrusive thoughts. Nope lol, today I was insanely bored and decided to watch black mirror. “Shut up and dance” I knew that there was an episode that I had been warned about being triggering bht naive like I tend to be I watched it. And now I’m deeply spiralling again. I’m so tired T_T
I'm new and I'm really trying to control thoughts of replaying interactions I've had or things I think might happen with the people around me. This is something constant, and it causes me to repeat actions. Then I lose track of time and often end up being late. It has always affected my sleep and becomes a part of my dreams, which are also always vivid. It's always been hard for me to get up. I just constantly keep replaying different outcomes of things that it haven't happened yet going over every possible outcome with no correct answer. I'm scared of what I might say and do when at work because it's been getting worse lately. I've been terrified of socializing, because I feel like I'm going to lose it every time I speak to someone. I work directly with people doing their hair. I don't want my clients or co-workers to catch me in the act of one of my rituals or it to effect the job that I'm doing. It just makes me angry that I haven't been able to control these thoughts and it makes the rituals worse. Then I feel embarrassed after I finally stop repeating whatever it is, I'm doing. I feel like I can't trust anyone, and I’m terrified but I know it's not real. I can't afford to lose it/show it.
im getting so annoyed i cant stop thinking about time and death and everything how do i stay present and cope literally almost everything is triggering me its been weeks it feels like everything is moving so slow yet so fast and i can feel every second and i keep getting random memories of things i usually wouldn’t even remember they aren’t bad but its just another reminder of time passing and the only thing that helped just enough is xanax but i cant keep taking it every day cause i dont wanna get addicted i need like natures xanax or something how do i produce the same effect a xan gives without taking one for the love of god bro as soon as i think its getting better i start spiraling an hour later and wont be able to stop and its making me feel like i need to go to a psych hospital or something but then i feel like what if im not bad enough to go to one
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