- Date posted
- 2y
I feel confused
If I let the anxiety run its course, I'm supposed to feel relief right? But if I'm compulsing I also feel a form of release, do they feel different?
If I let the anxiety run its course, I'm supposed to feel relief right? But if I'm compulsing I also feel a form of release, do they feel different?
I don't know if you are supposed to feel relief. You feel anxiety, you let it be and you go on with the normal day stuff, and the anxiety goes away, just as it came. I guess in the ideal situation, as you are not paying attention, you would not notice. And then, after a while you might realize that you are not anxious anymore. I guess at that point you should also leave it at that (maybe praise yourself), and also not further engage in it. Because then you open the floor for obsessing and compulsing again.
But if you hit the SOS button on this app it literally says "experience relief."
The easiest way to explain it would be the compulsions provide temporary relief whilst riding the anxiety out brings long-term relief. Hope this clarifies!
I was wondering this as well. I did an exposure yesterday and it was so hard to tell if I was reassuring myself or not. And I eventually felt relief but at the end I was confused as to if I compulsed or if I did the exposure right.
Right? And then you question that bit, and then you question the next bit, and so on...
@The Overthinker And that when rumination kicks in :,)
Ah ok, i am not an expert. Maybe it means that in some time you notice that anxiety levels have dropped. If you did not perform any compulsions, it dropped by itself. You indeed also experience relief when you do a compulsion, and i guess the feeling will not be that different. The difference probably is that a compulsion only temporarily gives relief, but in the long run severes ocd, whereas the relief from letting it fade away by itself in some time causes persistent relief.
Hello all, I delayed a compulsion today for 5 hours, but my anxiety never went down. It kept getting worse and worse until I finally did it. Is this unusual? Is this normal? How long of a delay is typical for it to go down naturally?
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.
Does anyone else find that their compulsions actually make their OCD/obsession worse? I don’t mean in the obvious way, like that it strengthens the OCD cycle, I mean in the way that when I perform my compulsions, they make my anxiety so much worse in the moment. My main compulsions are ruminating, arguing with my thoughts, and memory reviewing, but they all just end up giving me more intrusive thoughts/questions, making my anxiety more intense, and making me think my intrusive thoughts are real. I’ve always read that you perform compulsions because they bring you relief, and I suppose for me, they more make me feel like I’m working towards “solving the issue” or “answering my question”, so then is that my version of “relief”? In reality, it just makes my anxiety worse because the more I ruminate/memory review, the more jumbled together and foggy my thoughts/memories become, which in turn makes me think that if I ruminate/memory review just a little more, I’ll be able to “push through that fog” and find my answer, which then also causes me anxiety because my brain feels foggy and hence makes completing my compulsions/figuring out my obsession impossible (which I guess is good because I’m not supposed to complete my compulsions). All of this is making me believe that I don’t have OCD and that my intrusive thoughts are true and that’s why I can’t shake them and that’s why I feel the need to figure them out and why I feel so foggy… Or is this just meta OCD playing it’s devious tricks on me? Has anyone else experienced this or is this not OCD and I should be concerned that my obsession is true?
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