What defines recovery? Felt like I was making progress, then experienced a setback, maybe a “lapse” this week. I realized I don’t know what recovery looks like and what actually defines being in recovery.
Recovery is different for everyone and it isn’t linear. You will experience setbacks but you should notice you’re bouncing back quicker or you feel better equipped to deal with them.
@thrutheweather This is great. Thank you for your response!!
I feel this post to my core. I had a huge setback last week. I look at where I was a year ago and I'm like WTF, I was doing better then! I agree that recovery isn't linear. You will always have bad days here and there because anything and anyone can trigger your anxiety, but now you're better at handling it. I think you have to make up your own definition of recovery. Like, "To me, recovery is having mild symptoms or being symptom free 75% of the month."
I was asking myself this same question. I have had a few minor lapses in the past week but I did find I was able to bounce back quicker and that the distress levels were overall lower. I wonder if that’s something you relate to?
I think also when u start to accept uncertainty a little bit easier with fewer compulsions carried out. This is something I’ve noticed in myself. I might double check a mark I spot on my baby but I instantly know that double checking strengthens my ocd. The distress is lower and I don’t obsess over the mark as much. This morning I wanted to check on a mark on his back, but I said nope and carried on with changing his clothes. So i finally ignored a compulsion which is huge since it became an automatic thing for me. Last night I also felt a new theme possible arising. It was a horrible intrusive thought but I just said yep it’s horrible but it’s just a thought and let it be. I was able to move on and distracted myself with a movie instead.
To the people who are in therapy and on their recovery journey when the ocd is tending to die down a bit is it normal for the ocd to keep switching themes until it fully dissipates? Has anyone experienced this?
I’ve been stuck in this cycle for the last month or two and am not sure how to get out of it. Basically, I will work on ignoring the thoughts and not responding or engaging plus limiting/completely eliminating compulsions. After a week or two of constant work, the amount of intrusive thoughts in a day goes down. The anxiety each thought causes also goes down with some, but not all, thoughts passing without notice like they would for a normal person. The thoughts that do stick cause anxiety and make me want to ruminate or do other compulsions but I make sure to limit them. After a bit, I’m in a pretty good head space. This is usually when it goes down hill. I’ll start to question if I even have ocd because some of the thoughts (once again not all) pass without notice. The difficulty resisting compulsions goes down and so does the anxiety, only increasing the questioning. I spend a while questioning if I’ve ever had ocd in the first place and then something sets me off or the questioning itself becomes a trigger and I get stuck back into the same ocd cycle with constant rumination, anxiety, and other compulsions. This lasts for a week or two before I know I need to stop and try and work hard to get back to ignoring the thoughts. And the cycle just restarts over and over again. Does anyone have any tips to stop this from happening? It’s really harming my recovery as every few weeks I dive back into the same negative place I was.
So I’ve noticed that my OCD has calmed down, I’m getting less intrusive thoughts but I feel more uncertain than ever. Is this normal for recovery?
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