Can your period make ocd worse

@d2eaa Thank you. It’s so hard when the thoughts are just in your brain, and you feel like you’re the one thinking them or these thoughts will come true. But I feel much better now 💕

@d2eaa Yes!! You will get better again! Just today I was realizing the anxiety episodes are part of the process. It takes pain of going through fear to get to the other side. But it will get better!

@Tea and Honey I’m so glad. I have a sore throat and I’m literally shaking from the thoughts. I’m so afraid rn :(

@myfunnyvalentine You don't have to be afraid of the thoughts. I'll paste something for you that I have posted here

@myfunnyvalentine The key is to STOP fighting off the thoughts. You need to just accept that they are in your head, and that they are MEANINGLESS—so it doesn’t matter if they are there or not. —————— Don’t ever fight the thoughts. This is very important for OCD recovery. ERP therapy trains us to never fight the thoughts. If you try to fight them off, they’re just going to get worse. My therapist explained it like this: Imagine a tree planted by river. The leaves from the tree fall off and float down the river. You watch the leaves fall, but you don’t try to stop them. You just let them float down the river. This is the same with ALL intrusive thoughts. It doesn’t matter if these are bad thoughts about God, violence, sex, attractions, etc. All intrusive thoughts are the SAME. You just let them fall off the tree and float down the river. Here’s another analogy: Imagine a swarm of angry bees around someone’s head. The bees can’t really bite or sting, but they are very annoying as they swarm around the person’s head. They’re not really harmful to the person, but they are disturbing just because they are there. This is the same thing as the intrusive thoughts. They can’t really harm anything, and they don’t have any real power. But they are distracting and disturbing because they are there. If you take a stick and try to fight them off, they’re just going to swarm around even worse and get even stronger. It doesn’t work to try to fight them off with a stick. They will always keep swarming. In the same way, we can’t fight off the intrusive thoughts. It’s impossible. Besides, the thoughts are meaningless, and they can’t hurt us anyway. So don’t try to fight them off. Here’s one more analogy: Imagine your little brother is always saying mean things to you. Sometimes he shout means things; sometimes he whispers mean things; sometimes he shows you ugly pictures that he has drawn. He’s always trying to tease you and always trying to get you upset, and he’s always saying horrible things to you. If you shout at him to stop doing it, he’s just going to do it more. You have to accept that you can’t stop what he says. But if you ignore him and don’t give him any response and don’t get upset , he will eventually get bored and stop trying so hard. It’s the same with the intrusive thoughts. You can’t stop them. But if you get upset every time they come into your head, you are giving them power. You OCD (like a little brother) is going to feed you more of the things that “rile you up.” But if you don’t get upset and don’t care if these things are coming into your brain, then you can go about your life as normal. In this way, you are showing that these thoughts really have no power over you. Your OCD will try to trick you into giving “meaning” to the thoughts by saying maybe you will like them or maybe you will accept them, blah, blah, blah, blah blah blah. Don’t listen to the OCD. Practice strict ERP no matter how you feel and no matter how the OCD tries to tell you the danger you’re in if you start ignoring the thoughts. The truth is the thoughts don’t mean anything, so you can ignore them. You can’t make them go away (like the bees), but you can give them no power by acknowledging that they are meaningless.

@Tea and Honey Wow thank you so much for this!! To be honest, I’ve had a wonderful 4 years with my ocd being so manageable. But in retrospect, I think i genuinely forgot how the anxiety and urgency felt. Because when I had episodes, they were manageable. This time around, I know all of ocd’s tricks, but I still fall for them, and I think it’s because i genuinely forgot the level of fear and anxiety that I felt during recovery, and that’s why it feels like I’m back to square one. Thank you so much for this post. It means a lot that you took time out of your day to write this for me. I just have to accept this will pass. And I got better before. And even after my flare up I got better for a little, since now I’m on a new theme. So I know it will get better again.