Often I heard that the thoughts feel real cause you are scared of them, which I am, but I just don't feel that intense fear anymore, and the thoughs still feel real, like, they feel real like when I was scare, but at least then when the anxiety stop, I was like, weel it was just fear it wasn't true, but now I feel like the toughts are true and I just feel tired, but not scared
Exactly the way I felt this morning…like I didn’t care about the thoughts and then my OCD said “well you must want to do them”
Sounds like you are adjusting to your anxiety, which is what we call habituating! Keep being mindful of the thoughts without feeding them with more ammo/a spiral of more What If thoughts.
@NOCD Therapist - Alessandra R. I have been experiencing the same feelings as well. Would you say the habituation is a bad thing or common as we work through treatment?
This is called a Backdoor Spike. There are some helpful videos about it
my therapist suggested that some of my less bad rocd intrusive thoughts are actually mine, and not intrusive. She ended up taking it back when she saw the alarm on my face and saw how panicked I got. I feel really freaking anxious. We were only talking about it because I mentioned a lot of doubt surrounding those less bad ones, but it only filled me with more doubt. I don’t want those thoughts to be mine. I really don’t. I feel scared and so discouraged after this session. I feel scared about the worst thoughts, what if those aren’t intrusive. I feel so much doubt.
sometimes, to try and prove my fear wrong i’ll be like “ okay, let me think of this REALISTICALLY. would i REALISTICALLY feel this way or do this thing? “ then i come up with scenarios in my head on how i think i would realistically ( or logically ) do something but then my feelings go against that thing i thought of then i start getting anxiety and start to fear that i would actually want my fear to happen or that i’d feel a certain way that proves my fear true. it’s basically just checking how i feel about something i think of to try and prove my fear wrong, checking my emotions or checking how i think i’d realistically feel towards it.. but then i may react “ unrealistically “ it goes wrong and i freak out
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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