I ruminated too much this morning and got distressing mental images (and confirmation) which sent me spiraling again. How do I stop thinking about this and how do I get back to myself? I feel destroyed.
Here is the best advice I can give. Go do something. Go for a walk. Watch a movie. Read a book. Play a game. Run an errand. Clean something. Literally anything. Your mind will make up 100 reasons to not do those things, but ignore them. Tell it you can think about that stuff later (that's a lie, but it might help to trick your mind) and then go do something. Don't try and fight the thoughts. Don't analyze them. Don't do anything about them. They are there. They are just thoughts. Let them be there. They'll go away eventually. But you've got things to do. Go do them. Do not stay still. Do not research or post or scroll or think about it. Right now, you should act.
I’m sorry to hear you’ve had to navigate this at the start of your day. I wish I could say I also had the answer to help stop the thoughts and make sure they never come back. But unfortunately I don’t. What I will say is that you will have to get to a place where the discomfort no longer overwhelms and that’s incredibly difficult because it takes time. You have to learn to sit with the discomfort and be okay with the uncertainty. If you’re not already in the process of connecting with a therapist about ERP, then I highly highly recommend it. There will be days ahead where it’s harder than others and there will be days where the distressing images will be fleeting thoughts. A prevention rip I’ve learned alongside my NOCD therapist is “Discomfort is not danger.” It get better,it truly does
I don’t know either. It feels like all I do all day is ruminate, and I have no idea how to stop because I’ve been doing it my whole life.
I should,,,,it’s hard. I’ve torn my thoughts apart and it feels like I’ve torn myself apart
Two things are happening: I get thoughts that just keep looping. They almost feel like song stuck in my head. Also, I’ll imagine something and I feel my stomach drop. Then as the seconds go by I keep getting fragments of the this thought but with different details. For example, it’s kinda like how a “vision” is portrayed. I’ll get a glimpse of the thought and then it’ll rapidly expand into something worse every few seconds. I don’t know if I’m causing this or if it’s just an automatic thing like any other intrusive thought. It feels unavoidable, idk if this is a compulsion or if it’s just another manifestation of an intrusive thought. Apart from that remembering an intrusive thought triggers the full thought again and then it just keeps looping or expanding. I don’t know how to stop any of this. Help?
So hard to not engage the thoughts because even though it's from the "past" (i don't even know if im remembering things correctly and it kills me) and i can't change it, I just NEED to prove it to myself that it didn't happen this way. If you'd asked me questions maybe a few months ago, I would have been able to lucidly explain things. Now I just feel like I'm in a constant swarm of thoughts, not knowing if anything is real. If my brain is to be trusted. Wish I could just get hypnosis to forget
Was just remembering and ruminating on extremely traumatic and disturbing drawings I looked at as a teen. I'm trying to move past it because I cannot go back and unsee what I've seen, it's so difficult though. Feeling like people would look at me with disgust and I don't deserve the love that I crave desperately.
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