I feel like when I have a break from my obsessions, which is great but too short lately, when something triggers me, I don't freak out, I breath and try to accept (and not ruminate or check out test or reassure), but then it's like I have OCD goggles on after that. Everything seems to remind me of my obsessions, I've seen it called selective abstraction. I'm thinking this is where I need to refocus and allow for the uncertainty. Just wondering if anyone else can relate.

Rumination, ugh, it's so easy to do and spirals so fast. I have done this my whole life, I thought I was just thinking things through, but really I was trying to feel safe again. I would think of all the worst case scenarios when something would come up, because I thought, that if i thought about them then they couldn't come true. I got used to doing this until I hit HOCD and i hit something I couldn't bear to think of the worst case scenario of. Which is probably why that obsession stuck of course.

Interesting! It sounds like attentional bias, definitely normal but linked to anxiety and depression. If something has a lot of meaning for you, especially potential threats, you're going to notice the relationships of everyday things to it, it's the amygdala in action! While I am recovering from an obsession and keeping my mind off it, I'm pretty vulnerable to triggers and sometimes those triggers definitely seem to pop out of nowhere. Anything from a facial expression of someone on TV to someone's passing comment which seems totally unrelated to the obsession can do it. Idk, I guess it's an indication that I haven't fully accepted and processed the obsession but once I am out of the hole I feel so much better that I can be reluctant to do any more ERP because I just want to get on with my life. I actually have this weird thing of my own where once I've been solidly out of an obsession for a while and get a reminder of it, I take a risk and scratch the itch for a little while, maybe a few minutes of rumination, and then go back to normality. I just have to be sure not to do that when I'm already anxious and overwhelmed because I can fall right back into it. But so long as I'm well orientated towards other things and don't let myself think for more than a few minutes, it feels really, really good, and actually doing this every now and then feels like it prevents the obsession from sneaking up and overwhelming me. It's like I'm acknowledging the worry, giving it a little bit of attention and then right getting back to reality. I can't tell whether this is what non-OCD people do about a worry they have or what.