I’m considering drinking a cup of white tea, I bought a small container of it (could never afford a normal amount!) to treat myself a while ago, but I never drank it. Thing is, I cut out caffeine entirely a couple months ago because I felt it was making my intrusive thoughts worse (although, sometimes it would help [but to be honest, I think it just encouraged me to ruminate more “efficiently”, which isn’t good]), and sometimes it makes me really happy and awake for one day but the next day I’m paying for it with intrusive thoughts galore. I’m not sure if this is an actual normal response or if it’s related to the fact that I was consuming a lot of caffeine during my worst spike ever, which was traumatizing, I’ve learned (if I am around similar things that I was around during that time, like certain music, smells, activities, places, I get every panicked, sometimes dissociate, and feel like the thoughts are going to come back). All that to say, I’m not sure if not drinking caffeine is an ocd-management or avoidance behavior. I really want to enjoy these things, I like the way I feel when I’ve drank caffeine (I have a very hard time feeling happy without it) but I also don’t want to induce a spike!

When I was in quarantine at the beginning of covid, caffeine also made my anxiety horrible and my intrusive thoughts loud and racing. I was thinking it was because normally after I drink coffee, I go to work and release all my energy there. But when I was working from home, I’d drink a ton of coffee then sit in bed on my laptop working. So there was nowhere for my energy to go and it was building up as anxiety instead. So I stopped drinking coffee for like 4 months and became terrified to drink it again thinking it would cause a horrible OCD episode. And then I read a post by a therapist that said something like “most therapists will tell you to lay off the caffeine if you have anxiety. But consider this- will your anxiety actually subside if you don’t drink the coffee? No. So don’t let anxiety take things from you that you love.” It was probably really shitty advice in hindsight lol. But I started drinking coffee again and realized that with or without caffeine, the intrusive thoughts are still there. Sometimes if I drink coffee without eating first thought I’ll get really shaky which doesn’t increase my anxiety a little bit. But I love coffee too much to stop again 😂

I forgot to mention this, but it may be important: I never had this anxiety response (at least not in this capacity), before the major spike. I’ve been drinking it since I was literally a toddler (3/4 years old[iced tea]) without issue up until recently