Basketball

Hey thank you so much for your advice. I’m actually doing ERP now with my therapist it’s going pretty good. It’s just any little stressor in life or bills or anything makes my OCD and my tension worse even basketball freaks me out especially when I’m playing I’m still thinking about the OCD.

@Anonymous That's okay!! It takes time! It's a journey. It's a process. It won't happen overnight. Just remember that YOU are becoming a stronger person because you are fighting this. Your time spent in battling OCD is not wasted. It helps shape your character. And remember, you battle against OCD in a counter-intuitive way. You battle is by doing NOTHING . You learn NOT to respond to it. You are doing a great job!!! You just baby steps every day!!

This honestly made me feel better. I’m definitely taking your advice. Question when the panic starts to come in what is one thing I can do. I literally panic about every thought I get when I start thinking deep into it whether I’m hot or my adrenaline is high due to my workout. I’m asking for advice I know ERP has a lot to do with it but it can also be overwhelming

@Anonymous - These are great questions! This is going to get a lot better! So don't worry! Okay, can you give an example? Don't worry if it sounds funny to write it down. You have no idea how my OCD has manifested in such strange ways--so nothing surprises me that anyone says. When you are playing basketball, do you have thoughts that pop up in your head? Do you think these thoughts are dangerous? In other words, do you feel that if you ALLOW the thought to play freely in your mind, that something really bad is going to happen? OR When you play basketball, do you have a worry about physical sensations? Do you feel like you are having panic symptoms? In what way are they related to the thoughts? I think answering these questions could help me advise you. But here's a partial summary of what you can do, either way: --------------------------------------------------- 1.) Repetative, intrusive thoughts When I was playing soccer, I had repetitive bad thoughts against God. I felt that if I didn't "neutralize" these thoughts in some way, that I was going to go to hell. So I spent my whole day thinking of words that would "neutralize" the perceived threat. (I didn't know that I was actually just doing compulsions when I did that.) How do you fix that? You learn to NOT RESPOND to the thoughts. You learn to let the thoughts run freely through your head. You don't try to stop them. You don't try to fix them. Even though the thoughts seem really evil and really nasty, you learn that are actually meaningless. It doesn't matter if they are in your head or not. When I first started doing this, it was the gateway to freedom. 2. Obsessing about feelings or physical sensations If you're having panic symptoms, this can take a few more steps. I don't have all the tools for this, but ONE strategy is this: You MOVE CLOSER to the symptoms. I've done this before. It's a way of training your brain that you just don't care if your body is feeling weird or not. So here's an example: When my adrenaline started going up and the anxiety was just spiking in my body, I told myself, "Wow, I feel this anxiety in my chest. I hope it gets worse. I hope my heart beats faster. This is great! I hope I feel like this all day!" When I did that, my symptoms subsided. I was training my brain that I didn't care if I felt that way or not. I have a good video from Nathan Peterson about this strategy that I could send you , if you are interested? -------- But overall, if you could give me a few examples of how you feel, we can talk about what kind of tools you can use. You are right that you don't want avoid basketball. That just feeds that OCD. That is telling your brain that it was right all along that basketball is dangerous. But the truth is that playing ball is not dangerous! And you can train your brain that it is not dangerous by using your OCD tools. :):)