Question about being stuck

@blazed Thank you for your response. And I understand what you’re saying, it’s just that “how I respond to it” is also a thought and to me those too are out of my control. So I work really hard to not let it get to me but it seems to always break through

@Anonymous You’re right you can’t choose the thoughts but you can choose how you react to them and if you do your compulsions.  When you do your compulsions you’re teaching yourself in a subconscious way that your OCD is a legitimate threat when it’s not but I can see why you feel it is it really does feel real. Ocd is really hard it’s gonna take some time to treat it. stay strong and keep working on it and eventually you’ll get to the point where your OCD will not bother you anymore.

@Anonymous I actually said the same thing to my therapist too lol. It seemed like everything was happening automatically but my therapist told me this wasn’t the case - it had just become habitual since I was doing it repeatedly every single day. My brain wasn’t taught how to respond differently, so it just responded in the way that I’ve always done it. Once you unlearn those thought patterns, you’ll notice your symptoms gradually reducing.

@blazed Thanks! I appreciate you sharing your experience

@blazed That has been my experience as well. It seemed uncontrollable because it was so automatic and so fast. Intrusivethoughtfearrumination. Now I find myself ruminating and put the brakes on and say…Wait! What happened? How did you get here? And I see that I had a thought or a feeling/fear and started spinning. Now I acknowledge the feelings, acknowledge the thought and ground myself in the present instead of ruminating. We have to see these patterns and then unlearn these patterns. It seems impossible, but it isn’t. Our brains can adapt.

@Brooke cookie Any suggestions on how I can work on this?

@Anonymous I would say for work or in public it’s OK to use distraction or avoidance to stay functional. when at home it’s hard but you kind of have to learn to just let the thoughts be there and not do your compulsions and if you do to a compulsion ,try to undo them by sitting with the uncertainty and saying well, maybe not , things like that just kind of be OK with it and let the thoughts be there and not fight them , it is kinda a behavior you learn slowly if that makes sense. I get it it’s hard it’s really tempting to your compulsions and sometimes the ocd feels real like you really need to do something but truth is with OCD , is what you really need to do is do nothing with it but it’s really hard and it takes a lot of time to get to that point where you’re OK with the thoughts and you don’t wanna do anything about them. I hope this helped.

@Brooke cookie Thank you for your insight

@Olivebig “I want out of this relationship” is an intrusive thought. It’s distressing. It doesn’t fit with your values. You have been feeding the OCD cycle by doing compulsions. That makes your fear and feelings more intense. That’s how you got to “what if these intrusive thoughts are actually just my real feelings.” You have to break the cycle. You cannot ground yourself back to reality with your compulsions. That is doing the exact opposite.