Hi guys, Do any of you guys reassure things internally? Reassure things inside your head until you get it. Or is it just me? This gets very frustrating, overwhelming and repetitive. Should I just leave it alone whenever reassuring things internally comes up?
Yeah these are mental compulsions, very easy to be repetitive but not engaging is the best and it increases the chances of letting it go away
Yes, I live this way...it's very distracting and time consuming. I wish I could just use my time/brainpower thinking of other things. Sometimes to get out of it I switch into a happy memory. The issue with that is then it makes me feel all the more lost with my present, and I start analyzing about why I chose that specific memory and what it means, and I go down a whole other rabbit hole! All to say - I may not have advice for you, but know that you are not alone in this!
Mindfulness is key.
Ocd is really just a reaction to intrusive thoughts. Everyone gets intrusive thoughts but only people with ocd react. Ocd will circle between accusation and reassurance. Reassurance is ocd just as much as intrusive thoughts and judgement is. Self reassurance is ocds other half. Which is why we are supposed to avoid reassuring eachother. That’s so hard tho. Sending my best ❤️
OK, this might sound really dumb, but when you guys get intrusive thoughts, do they just come once and then go away? I’ve heard that repeatedly thinking about an intrusive thought is considered ‘checking,’ but it doesn’t feel like I have any control over how many times it comes up in my head. It’s not like I’m trying to check anything—it just keeps showing up, almost like it’s terrorizing me every time. I can’t seem to stop it from looping, stop remembering it, or prevent it from coming up. Every time it does, I feel horrified, and I already know it’s going to horrify me. I don’t think I’m actively trying to see if my feelings have changed, so is this still considered checking? How do other people get an intrusive thought and just move on? Doesn’t it pop up a million times for them too? I always thought that was normal, but now I’m hearing this could be a compulsion, and I feel really confused, scared, and lost. Is this why my OCD feels so extreme? Because I really don’t feel like I can control how many times the thought pops up.
When I was a child, before I knew this was OCD, I struggled with constant "magical thinking" compulsions (don't step on the crack or mom's back will actually break, etc). When I later learned this was OCD, it almost immediately solved it. Any time I got a magical thought, I would say to myself "that's just an OCD thought. ignore it." and it just stopped coming! Like seriously it fixed the magical thinking stuff forever. But of course the OCD has resurfaced in other ways. So naturally, I've tried to use the same strategy since I had so much success with it previously. But I wonder sometimes if telling myself "that's just OCD" is almost functioning as a reassurance compulsion? I hate how meta this gets. For example, I have ROCD that comes and goes. So sometimes I'll get a thought like "what if i'm still in love with my ex?" and then I'll tell myself "that's obviously just an ROCD thought" and will feel relief, almost like reassurance. But it comes back. So is telling myself that it's OCD a reassurance compulsion ?? It's just so weird because it worked so perfectly as a kid with the magical thinking thing.
Does anyone else experience a moment of clarity where you feel strong relief that the intrusive thought isn’t true, only to then immediately start questioning if you’ve only convinced yourself that because you don’t want the thought to be true? I’m pretty confident it would take some crazy mental gymnastics to actually successfully convince myself I didn’t do something that I deep down knew I did, but every time I resist the compulsions and try to sit with the uncertainty or tell myself to think about what is logical, I usually briefly know that this probably didn’t happen but am unable to move on out of fear I’m just in denial and have convinced myself of that.
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