as hard as sitting with your thoughts is, i promise it pays off. they are starting to not scare me as much, and i’m so grateful 🙏🏼 you can do it! i believe in you.

i third this lol. it's so hard at first because you're so used to doing a compulsion or ruminating but it pays off 100%.

@coucou fourth! it’s insanely helpful and genuinely works

this is normal to get anxious over not reacting to a thought , it's called the back door spike! i recommend looking it up

@coucou Do you know how to get past it? I’m worried I’ll never recover because of it

@Justmesadly you will recover!! the fact that they make you less anxious means that you're heading in the right direction. the best advice would to not overthink why you're not as anxious anymore. we know that this means that our ocd is getting better when the thoughts become less and less and we're not as anxious but our intrusive thoughts don't want to leave because we've given so much power to them so they try and keep us back with thoughts like "because i'm not anxious does this mean that i'm really a bad person?". if these thoughts come up as an intrusive thought then treat it like any intrusive thought and don't give it any extra attention, but if you're willingly overthinking/ruminating on the fact that you're less anxious over your thoughts then it's best to stop that because it'll only send you down a rabbit hole. if you find yourself ruminating on whether or not you're "becoming a bad person" because you're not as anxious over your intrusive thoughts anymore, then try mindfulness, "maybe, maybe not." and sit with that uncertainty.

@coucou hope this helped!!<3

@coucou Yes this is very helpful! Thank you so much

you let the thought flow. don't try to overthink/figure out why you're thinking the thought, because this will lead to the thoughts coming back stronger/more frequently. the intrusive thoughts will bring uncertainty and uncomfort when you don't respond (rumination, compulsion, etc) to the thought but you need to sit with this uncertainty because then eventually the intrusive thoughts will lose their power over you and they'll become less and less. and then when they pop up again after you've learned to sit with this uncertainty; the thought will be able to just flow by without causing you distress

@coucou https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.madeofmillions.com/articles/mistaken-beliefs-uncertainty-acceptance-ocd/amp

@coucou this is a good article about accepting the uncertainty

@coucou Thank you!