I’ve been struggling with magical thinking for at least 2 months now, and I feel like it’s getting worse. If anyone has any coping skills for this or advice on how to reassure oneself, please let me know :( I’m tired of feeling tormented by my thoughts.
@peridot31, part of the torment is you’re spending time engaging with these thoughts. I won’t give you reassurance but say that part of practicing ERP is to allow the thoughts to be. And view them without judgement. This includes how they make you feel. It’s like watching tv, you can’t tell when/what commercials will come but you can choose to watch or disregard them. If you choose to watch them & think they’re dumb, we’ll now you’re judging. If you choose to watch & not pay attention…I think you understand what I’m getting to. Hope this helps you. PS it takes practice and you can do it.
I have this too. I don't know if this is considered an acceptable strategy or not, but I've always just used distraction. I love true crime and mysteries and sometimes history, so if I feel it getting bad, I usually just drain out the thoughts by putting on a long video about one of those topics to keep my mind occupied on other things for a while, but that obviously won't work if you are at work or school. My mum, who used to have it badly but claims it no longer bothers her very much suggested to me a while ago that you should wear a hair tie around your wrist and anytime you find yourself having intrusive thoughts, you should tug on your hair tie to snap yourself back to reality. I haven't tried that yet though. (Not OCD permitted, when I thought about trying it I had intrusive thoughts tell me that if the hair tie was on too tight, or I accidentally wore it overnight, blood would stop going to my hand. 😐)
@Autumn.White Thank you :) yeah I’ve tried distraction before, and it’s definitely helped me in the past. I try watching lighthearted cartoons or YouTube videos usually, but recently the intrusive thoughts have been making it hard to focus on even watching things I enjoy. So I think I might just need a different form of distraction, and hopefully it’ll start helping again. That’s good it helps for you too though!
if watching videos isn't helping as a distraction maybe you could try something different, like excerising. For example cycling, but I wouldn't recommend that if you think your OCD could put you in danger by telling you to close your eyes, let go of the handles or look behind you multiple times etc. If you enjoy reading, you could try that as I can't think of anything of the top of my head that OCD could do to spoil that, but if you're like me you might just find reading very boring. Other distractions that may work could be: Taking online quizzes, Listening to loud music, Talking to someone, probably facetime or voice chat would be best as, when it's at it's worst OCD can make typing a pain. I've just thought that running could distract you too, not just cycling. Or maybe even drawing could help. You would think OCD would be able to ruin drawing, but it doesn't happen for me, and I only draw when my OCD is at it's worst because I am terrible at art. I really hope one of those things helps
@Autumn.White There are great ideas, thank you :) I’ll try reading or drawing, I do enjoy both of those things. Listening to music does help a but too, it usually has to be really loud/fast for me though. I can relate to typing being a struggle with ocd 😅 talking to friends does help overall though, so I’ll try to do that :) thank you again, I really appreciate it and I hope your ocd gets better to deal with too
I have a genuine fear of playing video games due to my magical thinking OCD. It’s driving me crazy. I get this overwhelming sense of anxiety when I play them. I have a correlation between video games and a health thing that started around the time I was playing video games a lot. Now I feel like every time I play a game it’s gonna cause that problem to come back. Any suggestions on how to conquer this?
i don’t want to do my compulsions. I feel like if I don’t somebody will get hurt, sick or die. It’s a very scary thought to feel like if I don’t do my compulsions it will be my fault even though it isn’t & nor will it happen. I know it’s magical thinking & my thoughts are not true nor will they come true. it’s just im so tired of doing these compulsions. im so tired of feeling like I can stop something bad happening if I don’t step on this or touch this 4 times. it even got me believing that if I do something I want to do & love, something bad will happen. I just want to be able to live & feel like I use to. I hate ocd. how can I calm this down so I can be able to navigate in my own life?
One of my primary themes is “just right” OCD, paired with magical thinking. I don’t actually believe something bad will happen, but I feel like I deliberately make up scary, catastrophic thoughts like “xyz person will die” just to pressure myself into doing the just-right compulsion and relieve the anxiety. It’s like I use magical thinking as a tool, even though I know it’s irrational. Does this still count as magical thinking? Can anyone else relate?
Share your thoughts so the Community can respond
