I was doing well for several days, but today I'm struggling with rehearsing and replaying conversations. I'm getting myself worked up over slights and feeling misunderstood. Does anyone else struggle with this?
Yes, I get this a ton. Working with my NOCD therapist I've been able to reduce these mental compulsions quite a bit so far, and don't feel like they have near as much hold on me. I'm recognizing them when they happen, rememebering they are not helpful, and redirecting to my value driven activity. You can remember it with the three R's: Recognize, Remember, and Redirect. Probably the biggest part that's helped me is just realizing that all the mental rumination on this stuff has not paid off in the past basically at all... most of the rehearsing I do doesn't come up in the actual conversation, and playing stuff back through afterwards doesn't help because the conversation already happened. So it's totally just a compulsion to bring my anxiety down and is just wasting my time and burning up my mental energy, and I do not have any mental energy to spare lol. I've also been using defusion, so instead of thinking "Tom thinks I'm an idiot" I would rephrase it to "I'm noticing that I'm having the thought that Tom thinks I'm an idiot". Try it for a while and see if it's easier to recognize that the thought is just a thought, and only has the value you give it. Sorry you struggle with this! I hope things get easier for you soon. Mine's been getting a lot better lately so there is hope! Best wishes ❤️
For the past few days I was able to catch myself and say "no rehearsing" or "no replaying" and I would experience relief pretty immediately. But my brain seems to have this strong desire to find the worst part of a conversation and like a dog with a bone gnaw it to bits. Even conversations that ended positively - I seem to find a way of feeling misunderstood or otherwise negative. Actually AI helped me get to a root thought the other day and I guess the root thought I'm feeling is in this moment is "seriously misunderstood." So maybe that is the thought that I need to sit with the discomfort (and ultimately the uncertainty) of. And also the thought of - what if I'm not misunderstood - what if they're right 😨 😬😫
@OCDHopeful 🤞 I'm sorry you're going through that. It's so hard to connect with people when your brain is telling you everything is going wrong. And since so much of life is interactions with other people, life gets exhausting. At least that's been my experience. It's hard to be around people, it's hard to experience life... so I stayed home. But now I've been getting out and living my life (or taking small steps in that direction at least) and it hurts so much and it's so tiring, but I refuse to just lay down and let OCD win. So I keep pushing forward and life feels like it sucks most days, but I'm hoping there is something good on the other side of this. I've started to see little bits of that good.
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