Earworms ocd

@missjab Hii thanks

@Rogerdale So do i its called musical ocd its songs you dont like they make me feel anxcious

@Nameless000 Yea its songs that cause some emotion in me like distress and i hate it how do i not react

@🫀 You've already heard about "sitting with the distress" right? To make it easier to understand think of it as "moving with the distress". You will allow yourself to feel uncomfortabe but you will still do what you were supposed to do before getting interrupted by these disruptive thoughts. "Fake it until you make it" : trick ocd back by thinking that you're unbothered by its effort to disrupt your day and make you stuck in the loop. Move on with your day even though it feels wrong or "impure". If you show to ocd that its efforts to annoy you are unaffective in the long run, it will discourage it to continue. Trick ocd by thinking that you're unaffected by its intrusion. Show to ocd that, even though you're temporary distressed, you won't let it ruin your day and that you're going to move forward anyway. Ocd then will realise that its efforts will amount to nothing if you refuse to be affected by them, its objective is to make you stop in time and feed on your anxiety, but if you choose to move forward doing other things regardless of the distress you're feeling, then its initial attempt will amount to nothing but failure. This is how you beat ocd at its game. When you get used to this trick, things will get easier whenever ocd will try to attack you, and you will have made a significant progress.

@Nameless000 I understand but is it ocd or am i making it up

@Nameless000 And its so hard not to react

@🫀 I believe it is part of ocd. Everything can become a theme for ocd, the subtypes that are presented here are a generalised way to help classify and recognize the most common ones. This issue you have with botheresome music is just one of the many ways ocd manifests, in this case I think it is part of pure ocd. Having those songs ringing in your ears makes you feel impure and wrong, right? I felt the same way when I was going through some serious stuff and I had intrusive sounds of farts and random funny noises in my head (i know it is ridiculous but it is true lol) and it bothered me so much because it felt like it was invalidating and ridiculing the tough shit i was going through. Now it doesn't happen anymore, but if it were to I would just think that is just ocd trying to desperately make a reaction out of me. If I keep reacting it will just continue to happen. We have to break the pattern, with a bit of practice and habit it will become easier to ignore the noises in our head.

@🫀 also i understand that is very hard at first, it seems almost impossible. it took me two years to find myself in this place. It is just a leap of faith, a small step forward: not engaging with the trigger and avoiding doing a compulsion. Once you are able to that even just once you will have made a significant and everlasting progress that can never be taken away from you. I was afraid once to do this step because I was afraid of it not being ocd or because I was afraid to become suddenly better and realise that i never had ocd in the first place. All these doubts that kept me from getting better, and now, after making that step forward I feel freer than ever and somehow "normal".

@Nameless000 Thank you

@Nameless000 Great way to know

@🫀 You're welcome. Healing from ocd is never easy, often times is a grim, loneley and misunderstood journey. Sometimes there can be reality-shattering ocd episodes that can make you lose all hope, making you think that what happened is something that you can't ever get back from. It's never that case. All pain is temporary as nothing is forever in life. Even when you get significantly better relapses can always happen, but you will always find a way to get out of that dark place. And with habit and erp those noises will become fewer and fewer. There is always, and when i say always I really mean it, a light at the end of the tunnel. Nothing is truly ever lost. Good luck!

@Nameless000 Heyy ive been doing what you said and i feel better than when i paid attention or like you said gave it meaning

@🫀 That's amazing to hear!! keep doing this as long as you can until it becomes an habit. P.S. for the future: It is common and possible that you will occasionally go back into those previous negative habits. Setbacks are common, but it doesn't mean your efforts were in vain, because all of your small victories never just fade away; you simply have to resume your momentum and development from where you left off. It's similar to maintaining a streak on Duolingo: each time we have a day off, we'll work to extend our run of days without compulsions until it becomes an easy routine. You'll gradually develop a tolerance for discomfort, which will make ocd less likely to try to interfere with your day. By getting comfortable with being uncomfortable ocd will fail to weaponise that against you.

@Nameless000 Like my period comes in 2 days could it also be that

@🫀 i'm not really informed in this, but i know that there are times during the year in which anxiety is worse than usual so maybe it could be

@Nameless000 It cane back so i just acceapt the song cuz ive played it a few times and its less powerfull but still its a sad song so

@🫀 you're making progress, it's not easy but it is a necessary hurdle in order to move forward

@🫀 Hi idk about that 1st comment above but I’ve had this for some months now off and on and they say this is more prevalent with people with OCD I just attribute it to that