Really struggling today. After a period of very little intrusive thoughts today they are triggering so much. I’m yo-yo-ing. One minute I’m okay the next I’m feeling like I can’t do this fight anymore and totally hopeless. I have my assessment tommorow. I understand how sitting with the uncertainty and discomfort/thoughts etc is how we get better but my thoughts are not just uncomfortable. They are tormenting and terrifying. They are abhorrent. How do you sit with that. I’m scared that sitting with them and accepting them means accepting what they are and I will never and can never do that. It will never be okay with me. So how can I get better?

I struggle so bad with intrusive thoughts. They can be so bad that I'll cry because I KNOW that's not how I feel or want to do. (Too embarrassed to say what they're about) I'll constantly try to figure out why I have them, and constantly figure out what they mean, causing me to constantly circle around and around. I had to get on anxeity meds, which helped a little but the thoughts still happen. How do you help yourself with this? How do you know that you're just not some physcopath? 😅

Here is what I say to people: I wish I could make it stop. I really do. I also wish I could stop tinnitus. What is tinnitus, you may ask? Well, have you ever gone to a loud concert and after it had a ringing in your ears. Or, in movies when a loud explosion hears, first it is often muffled, and then there is a very loud ringing sound. Well, I have hear that sound for over 30 years. Turns out the medications I took as a kid for allergies and all the antibiotics I was on for Strep had a side effect for some people - tinnitus - that sound that I have heard every decade, year, month, day, hour, and second, for the past 30 years. I have learned to live with it. As I type this, it is REALLY loud, because I am paying attention to it. But, in a few minutes it will fade into the background, and, while I will hear it, I will not pay much attention to it, and therefore I will go on with my night. I will listen to music, practice my story for the MOTH radio hour, and work out. I will clean up the kitchen and load the dishwasher, and I will eventually get ready for bed. I will go to bed hearing that sound, and fall asleep for a few hours until tomorrow morning when I start the day all over again. I cannot make the sound stop. There is nothing to do for it - no surgery or medication. Just learning to live with it, and that is what I have done. It is the thing that I hate the most in my life, and, if granted three wishes, it would be the first thing to change. For now, as I have for 30 years, I will live with it, and I will ask you to live with your noises in your head - the thoughts, the images, and the urges, and we will practice together accepting that things are not always as we want them, but we can handle that. We got this.

I know I am going a bit cuckoo because my period is coming up, but lately it feels like every intrusive thought I have, I *like* it. Like I genuinely feel like I like it, and then I immediately panic because I start checking. Mentally, emotionally, whatever it is. And I know that is a compulsion. I *know* that. But it feels so real that I cannot stop myself. Every single time I check, it still feels like I like the thought, and it is driving me absolutely insane. It is especially the POCD thoughts. They feel so real. I feel like something is going on mentally, like some kind of confusion or glitch, because I swear I was not like this before. I would have intrusive thoughts, and they would feel real, but not *this* real. And I do not even know if this is normal. I know OCD is **supposed** to feel convincing. That is the whole thing. But I have never experienced it to this extreme. I have never gotten the same thought so many times and still felt like, “Oh my God, I did enjoy it,” even after checking a million times. It is like no matter how many times I check, it feels like I liked it. Especially during intimacy :( and it is making me lose it. Then I start thinking, “Well, I am in distress, so maybe that is proof it is not actually me.” But right after, I am like, “What if I am only panicking because I care about what society thinks and not because I actually have morals?” And then I spiral again, wondering if maybe I just care about how I am seen rather than who I am. I am panicking so much no today. I had to take my Xanax today for the first time in two months, and I needed three separate doses. I really need some support right now.