No anxiety?

@lillie 💞 Right can’t ever just not be anxious

@djflorio But I feel like there has to be reason for the thoughts. I know the reason is like fear or something but it scares me that maybe that isn’t the real reason.

@Secretidentity - I understand where you're coming from, and I used to feel the same way until I learned more about how thoughts work in general. The brain is basically a thought-generating machine. It produces thousands and thousands of thoughts per day (some studies suggest that our brains produce the equivalent of 2 novels worth of thoughts every day). We don't have control over the thoughts that it randomly produces, we only have control over what we pay attention to. There is no rhyme or reason to what thoughts it produces, other than it spits out things that it has heard before, or thoughts that may be relevant to your current feelings. In other words, if you are currently anxious, your subconscious will produce more thoughts that are related to anxiety. This is all to say that the fact that the thoughts are there in the first place really doesn't mean anything about "you." Consider this: Let's say you randomly have the thought, "I want to eat a salad for lunch today." Then when it comes time for lunch, you're REALLY in the mood for pizza, not salad. So instead of getting salad, you get a pizza. Now in this scenario, the thought clearly didn't line up with what you really wanted. It didn't line up with your true desires. But you most likely wouldn't be bothered by that at all, because "I want to eat a salad" is a pretty mundane and harmless thought. You wouldn't worry about what it "means" about you. On the other hand, if you randomly have the thought, "I want to hurt someone," you might become alarmed, and try to disprove the thought. In doing so, you trigger the Ironic Process, in which the thought arises more often. In reality, the thought, "I want to hurt someone" is no different than "I want to eat a salad" in terms of its randomness. Neither of them actually mean anything about the real you, and neither of them require you to worry. I hope some of this helps.

@djflorio It did. I do appreciate. There was a sentence in there that did trigger my rocd a little bit but I feel like the triggers are good so I can learn to not let it bother me as much. I just hope one day I can beat it and feel semi normal again.

@Secretidentity - I'm going to guess that it was something to do with the "subconscious may produce thoughts based on your feelings" bit, which might have been interpreted as, "that means these thoughts about my relationship are based on me actually not wanting to be in the relationship" (or something like that). If that's the case, my apologies! But you're right, it's always good to look for ERP opportunities. At the risk of providing reassurance, that's not exactly what I meant (if that's what triggered you). It's more like, if you are anxious/worried about your relationship, thoughts about your relationship will likely arise. That doesn't make the CONTENT of the thoughts true or false, it just means there will be more of them. They're arising because that's what you care about right now. The "maybe, maybe not" response is always applicable.

@djflorio Yep you hit it on the nail that was the one. OCD is very frustrating

@unkindledhishiron What do you do about it?

@Secretidentity You just let it be and not fall for its trap. You go about your day and you live by your values.