- Date posted
- 5y ago
- Date posted
- 5y ago
One of my favorite techniques when I’m distressed is 5-4-3-2-1. I name 5 things I see, 4 things I hear, etc. Just use each of your senses. It is a great way to be mindful about the things around you in this moment.
- Date posted
- 5y ago
So you know that it's OCD and you know that nobody can guarantee you that you'll be fine. OCD always makes you believe that certain doom is on the horizon with no escape. The level of fear and distress you are experiencing right now is 1% real problem and 99% OCD. Yes underneath the OCD there is an unknowable possibility of bad things happening. Life is like that, for everyone, all the time. Risk is a part of life. It sounds like this is a persistent current obsession for you, and that while reassurance may have helped you to feel a little better at the time, it hasn't lasted. I know you crave reassurance now too, but it would have the same result. You have two separate problems here. One is the OCD and one is this uncertainty in life. If you work on the OCD by sitting meditatively with your anxiety without ruminating, researching, calculating and reassurance seeking, you can lessen the OCD and begin to access the same levels of calm and rational thought and feeling as your 18 year old friend has. See that she's not panicking? That's not because she is ignorant or stupid or has less to fear. It's because she doesn't have OCD. Try to trust me. It will become much clearer when you feel calmer, and then even clearer once this OCD is beaten. Here is my favourite way to sit with anxiety: mantra meditation. Invent a random 2 syllable word with no meaning and no close relationship to another word, like "fardel" or "enbeft" or something. Repeat it over and over in your mind, breathing deeply, focusing on nothing else but noticing how your body feels. As thoughts cross your mind, let them cross back out again without being hooked in. This isn't thinking-time. When you notice at any point that your mind has wandered away from the word, don't panic or judge yourself or think that you've failed. Just bring your attention back to repeating the word and noticing the sensations in your body. As you are no longer responding to your thoughts, you will have longer and longer periods of no-thoughts. Slowly allow your mind to become still, where it wants to be, like water flowing downhill. If you can do this any time you get a thought which makes you anxious- sitting with the anxiety in your body and doing this meditation until the anxiety has leaked away- you will make amazing progress with coming back to reality and being able to respond to thoughts in ways which aren't clouded by overwhelming emotion.
- Date posted
- 5y ago
omg you’re literally my holy grail?? it’s just so hard bc even when you try to cope, the thoughts still protrude and it gets so distracting
- Date posted
- 5y ago
I know you’re young, but you’re obviously intelligent, so I hope you understand why we’re not giving you reassurance that you’re going to be okay. There’s no way to know that and the need for certainty is what creates the obsessive compulsive disorder. Like the posters mentioned above, work on exercises to accept how you’re feeling and realize that the feelings can feel really wrong without actually meaning anything. Our brain can generate feelings and thoughts that the part of us that’s the impartial spectator can observe. Try the above exercises to try to get in touch with your impartial spectator.
Related posts
- Date posted
- 15w ago
I can't stop thinking about ending my life. I feel like I'm not even living, I'm just surviving. Everyone is capable of being a person and functioning and I'm just stuck here avoiding everything. My psychiatrist said my ocd is severe and it will all take time and I'll start erp and I'm already on medication but I just feel so depressed and like I won't be able to handle erp and it's already too late for me. I feel inhuman, it's debilitating. My major theme is just fear or contamination, I can't even make myself a meal I can't touch anything in the kitchen. I get stuck in the shower for 2 hours and when I don't shower because I'm depressed I feel like a walking germ. My hands are a mess, my school work is shit, I avoid and avoid and I'm just so tired of "living" like this. My psychiatrist said they don't have any therapists available right now like.... excuse me? What do you mean u don't have any 😭 I honestly don't even know why I'm typing this becuase nothing helps, nothing ever will. I'm so deep into this I can't get out, my room looks like shit, I can't live in this body anymore, I really can't. I let everyone down, I am and will be such a dissapointment. I don't have any dreams or goals or passions I just wasn't made to be here. I don't know how or who to ask for help like there's nothing anyone can do, I'm already on meds. I can't keep being like this, seeing everyone judge me for acting insane.
- Date posted
- 14w ago
My last and almost life long theme/sub-theme largely subsided recently and my ocd felt like it wasn’t even an issue. Then I went on winter break from uni and being alone made my mind come up with a whole new topic to obsess over. TLDR on my fears, my advisor wouldn’t email me back for a while about signing up for classes so my mind started to worry “what if he doesn’t in time and you can’t enroll this semester and you lose this whole life you just built and all these new friends” So when that issue was resolved my mind found other scarier ways I could be uprooted from my current life and friends that I’ve grown so attached to. Then my mind remembered back when I was struggling with false memories and scrupulosity and I essentially made a post on a forum 2 and a half years ago saying I did something or was convinced I did something that I never actually did. Now I’ve been spiraling about someone finding it reporting me and I either get seen as a horrible person or arrested or something over something I never actually did but “admitted” to out of fear of going to hell. My mind won’t let it go and keeps finding new reasons for it to be “valid” “logical” or even inevitable. I feel like it’s just hanging over my head and I can never rest easy. Especially when I try to focus on my daily tasks or plan for the future I get this horrible flair up of “why plan for the future when this could come back in that future and you get uprooted from all of it” my mind won’t rest without certainty being uprooted won’t happen but certainty doesn’t exist, at least not with ocd. This sucks and I miss being care free.
- Date posted
- 11w ago
I'm currently living through a massive health scare with really scary symptoms. I am scared I might have an aneurysm due to my symptoms but despite that the doctor's don't think it's urgent. I have some test scheduled but I will have to wait weeks for some of them. I don't know how to get through this knowing I could die any moment. I live in constant terror ever since those symptoms started. I can't function. Can anyone here please help me with this??? I don't know what to do?
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