setback today

TW health/somatic ocd and breast cancer i recently celebrated one of the biggest goals for my ocd by getting my bloodwork done, which i compulsively avoided for years due to severe health ocd. i celebrated that ! everything ended up looking great. but ocd doesnt stop just because i met a milestone. today I found a raised red lump on my breast. i was horrified. im currently on vacation too. i cried for 6 hours and made my bf cancel all our plans today so i could sit in urgent care for 3 hours. the doc assessed me and says to get an ultrasound to follow up. she said she cant be sure of anything but its likely a cyst. im 26 so logically a cyst makes more sense than cancer but ocd doesnt listen to logic or test results or doctors. all day i was researching breast cancer, body checking all over, doing breast checks, going on reddit and chat for reassurance and asking everyone i knew for reassurance. its a big set back. the bump on my breast is real. but the ocd has blown things out of proportion. i just want to enjoy the rest of my vacation:(

Anonymous

Date posted: Yesterday

I think about pre-freak outs/stresses as a way for us to brace/cope with difficult news or events. 99% of the time those events don’t happen and we have stressed out for nothing. Our bodies are full of lumps and bumps and bruises, most of the time the body just takes care of things, those things disappear, and you forget all about them and move on. I will bet you your situation will be exactly the same. If you just stay on top of your doctors appointments, blood tests, vaccines, and good habits (sleep, water, food, move your body, be outdoors, have social interactions) you should be fine in life. It all comes back to this last paragraph. Everything else is background noise.

Manta

Date posted: Yesterday

I totally get where you’re coming from. Health OCD fuckign sucks when there’s actually something there. I’ve had some success and some failure dealing with similar obsessions and here’s what I’d say.. 1) if you’re in a rough patch, try and regain some agency over the OCD by tackling a small little compulsion. For example, I don’t like the number 3, but it’s not a big deal compared to anything else my OCD thinks about. So if I have a rough patch, doing a bunch of things in 3s can help me feel like I have power over the OCD and help me be less stricken by it. 2) we have to just try our absolute hardest to accept the uncertainty. No amount of googling or checking is going to convince u that you don’t have breast cancer. So schedule an ultrasound for due-dilegence, and just try your absolute hardest to remember that we sit with uncertainty every day. Your car could crash tomorrow and you could be injured, you could be in a plane crash etx. All these horrible things are possible but we live through tbe certainty about what tomorrow will bring. Our ocd just focuses on one of these pockets of uncertainty and magnifies it. So is there a chance you have breast cancer? Yes. Is there a chance you don’t have breast cancer? Also yes! 3) finally, I like to focus on my sleep. Getting enough sleep really helps my ocd be quieter. So that’s a good place to start

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