rumination

@A23 it’s not even an uncertainty thing. it’s like continuously thinking about previous thoughts i’ve had. OR having a thought and then questioning it

@kodyisland I've yet to implement a consistent meditation practice, but meditation is essentially practicing letting thoughts come and go. I just googled a bit to fact check myself on the science and found this "Meditation and yoga have been shown to reduce anxiety, depression and stress, and to improve quality of life (Gotink et al. 2015; Lin et al. 2011)"

@kodyisland A basic strategy tho is to catch yourself when ruminating and then disengage. I've had weeks or even months where this was effective, but its not always easy

@A23 i find it’s easy for me to catch it but i don’t really know how to disengage from if

@kodyisland This might be something better to explore in therapy, but I could share some other things in hopes of it helping. There's a compulsion called mental reviewing, it's rumination pretty much. You could tell yourself "response prevention" messages like "that was the past, time to live in the present" When you're questioning your thoughts, an OCD therapist might ask what exactly you're questioning and see if you have a core fear associated with these thoughts. Its common for OCD to be about character or morality for instance, so someone could question a thought like "gosh, why did I have that thought? Am I a bad person?" But that's just one example, it can vary a lot. Also there's spiraling, so when ruminating it's easy to spiral into doubt, negativity, etc. The disengagement will take practice, can't say I'm there yet myself but therapy and different techniques can help

@A23 awesome thank you i’ll give it a try. i’m at the very beginning of my ERP journey so i haven’t gotten many tricks yet

@kodyisland Best of luck! Hope to progress alongside with you 😁