A lot of us go through horrible experiences with our OCD day-to-day to the point of we’re literally living in fear. Does anyone have any tips on how to self-soothe when your OCD is loud?
You can’t. Literally the only answer is to sit with it. You have to be uncomfortable. You have to allow yourself to be uncomfortable. It’s how your Brain heals from this. You’re gna have bad days where it’s loud and you question everything but all you can do is let it be and not argue with it until it passes. It sucks 1000 percent, but it’s the only Sure way to get through it.
The best advice I’ve ever gotten for getting through it is when you have a bad day is to tell yourself “ ok it’s practice time” and sit with it.
Yes I do! 🫶 Check out my most recent post, that has a good self soothing technique on it. Here are some others: - tell yourself you’re going to sit and set a timer for one minute and just breathe. Focus on the sounds around you, the feeling of you sitting on the ground, your breath, as best you can. - Keep a feelings journal. In order to avoid reassurance, focus on the feelings you had that day - and validating those rather than telling yourself whether your fears are true or not. Here’s something good to say to yourself: “I can’t tell you whether or not your fears are true.. but I am always here for you. I know how hard today has been for you, and I love you” - Understanding and having compassion for our intrusive thoughts. If you can trace it back to the source - for example, with my HOCD my real fear was that I’d never find love. So I decided to direct love to that part of myself - that was so afraid she’d never find love that she spent endless hours questioning her sexuality to try and figure it out. So when I’d get an intrusive thought about that, instead of freaking out - I’d say “I can’t tell you if that’s true or not. But I know that you are deserving of love and will find it one day”. Validating the feelings, but not reassuring against the fears - is the key. (This can be tricky to avoid reassurance - I wasn’t getting OCD thoughts about never finding love so I knew this was okay. But be careful here.) or you can say “I understand. It’s hard to not know whether this is true or not.” - other things: take care of your physical health needs. Doing that gives you something else to focus on, other than the thoughts. This is a good way of practicing self compassion. Especially when dealing with really rough intrusive thoughts - sometimes we may feel disgusted by ourselves or even nauseous. But here it’s even more important to be kind to ourselves - because we’re dealing with heightened OCD. Hope these help. ❤️
Yes it’s important to just let it be until it passes on its own, but I’d also say that it’s totally ok to take extra care of yourself on the harder days. Whatever brings you joy and peace and is fun, don’t be afraid to do those things. You just want to be careful that self-soothing doesn’t turn into a compulsion, otherwise I think it’s ok to do things that you enjoy to help healthfully re-direct your attention from OCD. Don’t stop living your life because of ocd.
❤️we all just want it to be over already, but do not set a deadline for your recovery (e.g. "i give myself 3 months to get better") and let yourself go at your own pace ❤️accept that healing is a very, very non-linear process with highs and very dark lows.. it's a lifelong process for us those with ocd, when you stop suffering you start learning ! ❤️WITHOUT ruminating on this, identify the root of your obsessive themes. they hurt so much because they go after your deepest wounds. clearing out the fear or pain that stands at the base of your obsessions will help (e.g. my sexual ocd came as an emotional outlet for my inability to accept a new family member in my life) (e.g. my solipsism ocd came from the deep fear of being alone and abandoned) ❤️the truth will always surface. even if you have no hope anymore and not even asking for reassurance helps, put that last bit of your trust in the other people that are in good states of mind and who are trying to help you. remember that you're living by a distorted mind and if you can't trust your own brain, have trust in others. those who love you are your life net when you're down in the slumps. trust me. ❤️ocd can be caused by chemical imbalance. if you feel like you need it, don't be reluctant to try medication. it's important to have the correct dose and the correct meds. it may change a lot before finally being effective, but it can help A LOT. it was lifesaving for me. (I personally took 125 mg sertraline at 14 years old) ❤️cliche, but the exposure part of erp is in you already. we get exposed to relentless obsessions and terrors already by our minds, our part is the response prevention. throw yourself into the depths of uncertainty and fear by refusing to act upon your compulsions. any learned behavior can be unlearned, our brains are changing! 🧠 it does feel like we can't risk because we can't "know for sure" and we better be safe than sorry, right? well, screw this. unlearn these behavior and live life your own way. ❤️connect with other people with ocd. community is our pillar as humans, especially those communities who share our suffering. ❤️we tend to ask for reassurance a lot and other just reassure us because it's rational to them, not being aware thar it only causes us more pain as we have distoerted thinking. teach your loved ones to respond to your reassurance in a way that doesn't feed the cycle. (e.g. reassurance seeking- "hey, are you ABSOLUTELY SURE that I didn't hit an animal on the way back home??" ❌️wrong response- "no, you didn't, I already told you, I don't remember hearing or seeing anything!" ✅️better response- "I can see you are really distressed right now, why don't we go cook something together/watch a movie/paint together/etc.." ❤️keep your faith close to you. there is something bigger around us that surrounds us with love and takes care of us. even if you don't believe in a god, spirituality goes beyond religion. for me, this higher being was the sky, and everytime I saw the giant clouds I'd tell myself that they felt my emotions and they're watching over in my suffering. strangely enough, this pillar i built in the clouds was strong and really did give me a helping hand. who's to tell these connections we make are not real?
My ocd gets so loud in the silence and right before bed when there’s no distractions. I always struggled with anxiety since my teens and guided meditation used to help… until OCD. First time trying guided meditation with OCD I had an intrusive thought of “what if you actually lose control and can’t follow these instructions?” And got even more anxious 🫠🫠🫠 had to stop, and haven’t tried to meditate ever since. Just curious to know. Sometimes I feel like I have the worst type of OCD. It will latch onto anything to make me anxious!
I have just recently realized that I had SO OCD. This began whenever I was watching porn and had an intrusive thought about the guy in the porn. It was more minor at first, it was a majority of what I was thinking about throughout the day but it didn’t feel as distressing at first. If I had downtime to think about it, it would affect me but if I was just going about my day I wouldn’t notice it. I began going through the compulsions of checking myself. This lasted for a while until another obsession occurred. Then it seemed as if my SO OCD took a step back. I would have flare ups but they would seem to pass. Recently, I had a very bad night of constant compulsions and looking at pictures and imagining things to check myself. After that night it was very distressing, it affected me to the point where people around me began to notice and ask me if I was okay. One of the big reasons I was so upset was my girlfriend, we have been together for over 3 years and I want to spend the rest of my life with her. I was thinking “Oh my god, if I am gay I can never be with her.” I would sit and cry about it thinking I would lose her and that might life would change because I was gay. I finally had enough and talked to her and my parents. We did some research and I was so shocked to find out that I had a form of OCD, it was like a weight being lifted off my shoulders just knowing that other people have been where I am and that I’m not gay. However, I may have naively expected the compulsions and obsessive thoughts to go away now that I knew I had an actual problem. But I found that the compulsions and thoughts were still there and I was going to put some effort into getting better. I have researched and now know what to do when experiencing intrusive thoughts, yet I still have been performing the compulsions which is just feeding into the OCD. I find myself having intrusive thoughts and then start performing compulsions to see if they are true. What really bothers me is when I have an intrusive thought that tells me that I do like something. But when I think about it I have no desire to pursue those thoughts. However when I feed into the compulsions they just seem to feed into each other. It is like my OCD ignores all the things that I know I like and goes straight to panic mode. I am also trying to do ERP and am going to start doing my best to get better. Does anyone have any tips for not performing the compulsions no matter how anxious you are feeling and no matter how real the intrusive thoughts seem to feel?
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