- Username
- Emmaaaahh
- Date posted
- 4y ago
Reading what specifically?
Yes! It’s difficult to even get through a few sentences or sometimes even a sentence without an intrusive thought disrupting my flow of reading. I’m just starting out with therapy so I don’t have any great solutions, but I found that if you try to accept the thought as just a thought, as well as the uncertainty of it, it helps a lot! Good luck! Out of curiosity, what are you reading? Is it for school?
I love to read!!! Sometimes I go to read a book but the topic is too similar to my life or relates to something uncomfortable and I usually put it down, and my OCD tells me not to read it or something bad will happen...but I have tried to make a habit of circling back to it and usually by the third time I pick it up i'm able to read it. I was always taught to not do things that make me uncomfortable, so the OCD tries to win and beat me. I'm trying more to sit with the discomfort and tell myself its it's just the ocd....usually it works but not always.... Then I get really proud of myself once I have read something uncomfortable and then its it's not as scary
I am so happy you are learning to sit with that discomfort, despite what you were taught. It can be difficult to unlearn things like that, but it definitely sounds like you're doing a great job :) I love reading too!!! I honestly have more of a problem not trusting my own memory, so i tend to overthink when i read and re-read paragraphs and sentences multiple times. It's interesting how OCD can manifest in so many different ways, even if it's around similar things!
Reading anything really! Like I find for me I don't trust my memory and have to go back and re-read things... I also find intrusive thoughts will interrupt and I will have to start a sentence all over again, or else I won't like remember it properly or something? it takes me like forever to read. currently I'm trying to read a chemistry chapter for school and it's not going so hot unfortunately... trying not to beat myself up about it! :)
Same here! Trying to understand covalent bonds.
You know, I have just bought one thousand and one nights. I remember one time that OCD was really bugging me, and I took it and read a few pages. It always helps to escape to some kind of fantasy world where your problems are nothing.
That's a great idea! Maybe I will switch between reading chemistry and reading that. I'm honestly just not really interested in chemistry which makes it harder I find, but maybe I can trick my brain into being engaged in a book that interests me first, and maybe the flow will carry over! I find the pressure of having to read the chapters or I won't understand the content kind of fuels the OCD behaviours if that makes sense
@EMMaaaa It does! And yeah chemistry isn't the best subject. But it depends, is studying chemistry an urgent matter for you? If so, you can check out crash course on youtube. If not, try and buy some nice books! Also I don't know how one thousand and one nights is in English because I'm Egyptian and I read it in Arabic. But you have harry potter, lord of the rings, a lot of novels really.
@HopefullyOptimistic Yes I love Harry Potter! Maybe I will try reading Lord of the Rings, the movies are amazing!! Also crash course is a life saver tbh lol
@EMMaaaa Yeah! I always try and listen to some music, it helps a lot. What's your favorite artist?
@HopefullyOptimistic Whoops! Who's?
@HopefullyOptimistic My favourite artist has got to be Green Day ? I love punk, but I've also been super into Gorillaz lately as well! Who is yours? :)
@Emmaaaahh I love Gorillaz! But my all time favorite has to be the Weeknd. Green day are awesome too! If you're talking about bands then Maroon 5.
@HopefullyOptimistic Omg Maroon 5 is the best I feel like I know all their songs ? the Weeknd is awesome too do you have any songs by them that you recommend? I haven't heard a whole lot by them to be honest but it sounds like you have a great taste in music!!
@Emmaaaahh Aww thank you! If I have to pick, I'll choose Call Out My Name, Starboy, and Earned It. His other songs are great too, especially collabs.
@HopefullyOptimistic Oh and one more song, called Sidewalks. He's with Kendrick Lamar on this one.
I have to read for school a lot right now since I'm having my finals exams and it's really bad when I have to stop every 5 minutes :(
Yeah I feel you :( it's really interfering with my studies right now and I'm scared cuz finals are coming up soon!
@EMMaaaa My finals are ongoing a d I'm here having a bad anxiety attack with my HOCD :(
I agree!!! And as soon as I think i have it all figured out...it shows up somewhere else!!!! Thanks for your post. It's always nice to talk to others that understand OCD;)
Does anybody have any ocd intrusive thoughts success stories? Like what helped you the most, and how you’re doing today. Please share
*Q + A* Hi Everyone! My name is Kerry and I have suffered from severe OCD since 2008. It came on after a bad car accident and I had shown no signs prior to that. I was 17 and now I’m 28. I saw many therapists untrained in OCD, and it wasn’t until I met an OCD Specialist and went through weeks of intensive therapy using ERP that I started to really question the connection between my obsessions and the effect I had on my reality by performing my compulsions which were totally random (anything you can think of!) I mainly suffer from magical thinking OCD which is basically like “superstition on steroids” - it follows along and targets with my everyday anxieties and my obsessions try and tell me if I perform certain, ever changing compulsions, that I can make or prevent things from happening. This has morphed into multiple themes of OCD, but also follows along with my real life which is hard. BUT I can honestly say I am in a state of ongoing recovery from OCD because I truly understand it’s sick game now and I am able to stop it in it’s tracks before performing compulsions. I’m not perfect and will always have OCD, but I wanted to open up a Q + A session today for you all to ask any questions you may have for me. To give you all some hope, I just published my OCD memoir “The Obsessive Outsider” and I’m so thankful to have added a resource to our world from a sufferer’s perspective. My goal is to eventually help you all get to a point where you can share your stories like I have because it’s so empowering. Hit me with your questions, friends!
How does OCD get in the way of living your life? What are some things you can do to drop the worries?
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