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Anxiety is reducing but thoughts are not


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Just over a month ago I suffered a set back after being ok for nearly a year. I was crippled with anxiety, throwing up, couldn't eat and I found it hard to leave my home. My anxiety has gotten much better since then probably due to restarting medication and just trying to get on with my life.

I'm back working, communicating and basically living as normal but my intrusive thoughts are still there. They simply will just not go away. I'm not getting panic attacks from them, they just make me feel guilty and ashamed. Things and people that my thoughts centre around almost pop up like huge warning signals when I encounter them out on the street. I try to continue as normal but I do sometimes check and ruminate afterwards. "Am I attracted to that/could I really do that/what will people say".

Deep down I know that they're nonsense. I lived for nearly 1 year free of these thoughts with only the odd flare up. I feel that my anxiety is under control but the thoughts are still constantly there and I feel crappy. What am I doing wrong? I don't know how I beat this in the first place.

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Guest Jane_29

I don't think you're doing much wrong; I've found myself in this situation before too. 99.9% convinced I'm not doing any compulsions, yet they thoughts are STILL there. Maybe some psychiatrists would sneer at that and say that can't be right, but...er, no, trust me, it IS what goes on in my head, actually! Whether it fits the textbook model of OCD or not. So don't beat yourself up about that part. But when it gets to that stage, you just have to persist, and let the thoughts fade over time, and accept that there might still be a residue of them left for quite a while.

Personally, I have a suspicion that it's because most OCD medications (for now) affect serotonin, which has a generally calming effect, but they don't necessarily target the system in the brain that keeps throwing out this crazy loop of unwanted thoughts. I've done a few DIY experiments on this, on myself, and that really is what it feels like. Better serotonin levels make the OCD thoughts much more mellow and less disturbing, but only when you put something that affects glutamate (a different neurochemical) do the actual thoughts stop popping up (but I'm currently still experimenting on this point after getting annoying side effects and having to change the experiment`, so take this with a pinch of salt! ).

It's worth double-checking there's literally zero you're doing to feed these obsessions now. Any residual checking or ruminating needs to go, if you can work towards managing that. Any response that you have towards the thoughts, like getting emotional or talking back to them or even sarcastically mocking them, it might be an idea to try and eliminate those too. Once in a while, agreeing enthusiastically with the thoughts or deliberately doing something that spikes you, as an exposure, might help. Like if you see something in the street that you find troubling, deliberately walking confidently towards it, thinking cheerfully 'Yes OCD, you're totally right, I bet I really AM attracted to that and people will definitely think I'm terrible because of it!'. The OCD finds it harder to make you doubt stuff if you just agree with it.

At the stage you're at, meditation might be an idea, if you haven't tried already? It trains the brain to concentrate only on relevant things happening in the present moment. Use a type of meditation designed for mindfulness and concentration, not any other type (there are lots of Youtube tutorials on it).

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I see where you're coming from Jane. I feel that the worst of the anxiety has passed for me yet the thoughts persist. People have told me that the level of the thoughts drop gradually, but I remember them being constant for over a year.

I had a good 8 months in terms of feeling more free from intrusive thoughts. That means that I there must be a way that I can get back to that. Although in that time I moved to a new country to start a new job. I worry that all that simply distracted me for a short time. Now that I'm settled, I'll just go back to being stuck in a rut like I was before I moved.

I guess there's nothing more to do than to just continue on and hope for the best. My setback started when my girlfriend left town for a while. She's back in two weeks. Hopefully I'll begin to feel better then and I'll be kept busy with work too.

I need to deal with internal compulsions better though. I don't avoid things anymore. But sometimes rumination and checking can be bad. Particularly when I encounter the warning signals out and about on the streets. I may have asked before, but advice on how to deal with these would be welcome.

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Hey Kirby. You're not alone. I'm at a similar stage. The thoughts are atill there fairly often. I've stopped most compulsions but sometimes drift back into the old ways of thinking over them and catch myself and stop myself. I'm back at work myself ona phased return.My anxiety level is still variable. I just hope that if I continue to stop doing the compulsions that in time the thoughts will be less frequent. It's worked before to the point where they disappeared or at least didn't bother me at all.

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Guest wackybrain

Its horrible. Even when you hust allow the thoughts to be there it seems there constantly there. Mine have been daily for 4 months now! I sort of think that because the thoughts have been there for such a long time already our minds now have a habbit of them and what sets them off. Certain things set mine of but im just hoping in time they will firget and dissapear! Id do anything to forget the thoughts for a day!

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I know these thoughts are absolute nonsense, yet they persist. If I see a kid or a vulnerable person on the streets my mind immediately says - there, warning, you might be a risk, you might do this/become this. I've stopped trying to push the thoughts away.

Sometimes I do check to see how I feel about the thoughts. What's the best way to deal with this?

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Guest Jane_29

kirby, it sounds from your post like you haven't got a lot on at the moment to distract yourself, and not that many people to talk to. But the thoughts seem currently mild enough that a distracting activity might be useful to you. Is there anything absorbing you could get involved in quite quickly? Sports or something outdoorsy/ exercise-related would have a real health benefit and help calm your brain down (like, it REALLY does. The act of exercise literally clears away the old residue of stress chemicals floating round the brain). If not, a puzzle, a craft, a new book, a video game, creative writing or anything musical might be a good idea right now. Even if it's not one of your usual hobbies,

And unfortunately there is probably no other way to stop checking how you feel about the thoughts than to just, um...stop checking? It's unfortunate, but that is literally it. It's all about sheer strength of willpower at this stage in your recovery. I know its exhausting, because you probably already feel like you slayed a dragon, exerting the effort to get back on your feet and back at work despite OCD symptoms...and now you're kind of being asked to slay another dragon, by going onto the next stage and totally eliminating ALL checking behaviours. But...well, if it helps, the entire team of fellow dragonslayers on these forums is backing you up? :D Seriously, the checking NEEDS to go, though. The cycle of ruminations and OCD thoughts will just carry on indefinitely, otherwise.

(And yeah, I was ready to consider myself an ex-sufferer, before an unexpected terrible reaction to some unrelated medication scrambled my brain again around Christmastime. I would have considered myself 'recovered'. I'm much, much better again now, two and a half months on, but I'm still trying to get to the point where I can trust my own mind again and consider myself 'recovered'.)

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Guest Jane_29

The OCD thoughts need to literally just drift in and out of your mind with zero reaction. That's the ideal. No arguing with them, no getting upset, no checking, no ruminating, no 'talking back' to them, no joking, no compulsions.

The analogy that some meditation and mindfulness teachers use is watching cars pass on a street. Your thoughts are the cars. We have to practice just standing and watching the cars and not reacting to them at all. Even if it's a car we really don't like or we think it shouldn't be driving by. It's a mistake to go running into the road flailing at it to go away, or to try and grab the wheel and go park it where we think it's supposed to be. Even if it looks dangerous or like it's driving too near you. You just watch it passively, and eventually it will drive away out of your head (I probably explained that badly but I couldn't find the exact source for it :p But Googling 'mindfulness exercises' will probably turn you up a bunch more).

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Not trying to belittle your struggle or anything kirby42 but sometimes it helps me (as hard as it sometimes is) to be grateful about how far I've come. I'm at a similar stage to you. But when I start to accept how much better having weird thoughts is to having the crippling anxiety that many on these forums still have, in a weird way some of the obsessing I still do about how well I'm doing seems to lessen. Anyway, that's just me, hope things start looking up for you

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But yeah, as I understand it (and similar to Jane's analogy), our intrusive thoughts might never go away. And we'll never be able to have any control over what the thought-generating part of our brain produces. It's only the power the thoughts have over us, and the anxiety they produce, that might change. In my experience it eventually makes things a little easier when you accept this uncomfortable truth. Anyway all the best

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Guest SurfRider

Personally, I have a suspicion that it's because most OCD medications (for now) affect serotonin, which has a generally calming effect, but they don't necessarily target the system in the brain that keeps throwing out this crazy loop of unwanted thoughts. I've done a few DIY experiments on this, on myself, and that really is what it feels like. Better serotonin levels make the OCD thoughts much more mellow and less disturbing, but only when you put something that affects glutamate (a different neurochemical) do the actual thoughts stop popping up (but I'm currently still experimenting on this point after getting annoying side effects and having to change the experiment`, so take this with a pinch of salt! ).

I'm a little curious about this...how do chemicals know which thoughts are wanted and which ones aren't? I'm not aware of any pharmacological intervention than can selectively block certain thoughts while letting other thoughts pass through. That's part of the idea behind the position that the intrusive thoughts may never go away.

As an intellectual exercise, I think this a fascinating part of the mind-body problem. Since we don't know anything about how chemicals and electrical impulses turn into thoughts in the brain, it doesn't seem to me that it makes any sense to talk about medications that can selectively block thoughts.

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Perhaps an ex-sufferer can lend some insight here. It's likely that we are still performing compulsions of some form or another.

Hi Kirby.

I see myself as an ex sufferer.

The thing is, intrusive thoughts are normal brain function. The word 'intrusive' often brings to mind nasty unwanted and interuptive thoughts. But the phrase intrusive thoughts is basically a word to describe thoughts which arrive uninvited. No thought process happens before them, they just pop in!

So there are what we see as positive and also negative intrusive thoughts. An example of a positive intrusion would be 'oh its such and such's birthday today.' Or 'oh **** its bin day.' We also have random ones like 'imagine if I threw my keys down that drain.' There is no previous thought which would have triggered it if that makes sense?

I sometimes sit and my mind wanders off. As an example: God this house is a tip, I must get around to putting that wallpaper up, that persons house on tv was amazing, imagine living on a canal boat? I wonder if you can go fishing in a canal? Hmm probably not the water is probably minging. Lol random example but that end thought was conjured by a thought pattern/process.

Intrusive thoughts just pop in. So having x thought about harm, contamination, sexual violence etc doesn't mean you are a bad person. If it sticks in your mind and u notice them more u have OCD. Because OCD is the false meaning and false truth we apply to the intrusive thoughts. So u have yourself tangled in a negative intrusive thought, it creates anxiety, the anxiety makes it feel all the more real and threatening. You feel the need to carry out a compulsion, then bam u have yourself an anxiety cycle.

See beating OCD as not applying that false anxiety to the thoughts. The thoughts DO decrease but at the end of the day your can't stop your brain from functioning in a normal way.

I bet u dont sit at home in the evening mulling over why you suddenly remembered your friends birthday or some task you needed to do. Why did I suddenly have that thought? What does that say about me as a person? Anxiety attack!! But its the same thing.

The thoughts aren't the problem. I hope this post makes sense I'm in a rush lol x

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Thanks for that post no-more-stigma. It sounds like you've really tamed the beast. I had a slightly better day today. I worked hard and controlled my compulsions for the most part I think. Bad thoughts remained but oh well.

I felt a bit crappy this evening near the end of work, compulsions started again and I started feeling very anxious. Rumination is hard. I worry over the slightest things right now.

You're right about intrusive thoughts being a normal brain function. When I felt normal, I would still experience them but they just came and went. I'm going to keep working towards that.

At the moment they're constantly present which is difficult.

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I had a bad morning but I feel a bit calmer now. Commuting seems bad at the moment for some reason. Like you said, thoughts aren't the problem, our reactions are. I took a screen shot of your post and read it this morning when I felt bad and anxious so thanks for that.

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I had a slightly better week. Work is a good distraction and I'm performing well at it I think. My gf came back last night and is staying with me for a while until she finds a new place. I still have bad thought all the time, what if my sexuality changes, what if I hurt someone, what if I do something wrong to my gf.

It's terrible the way the thoughts are always here. I guess I just need to try and get on with things and hope for the best.

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They just don't go away. Even when I keep my anxiety under control. It's annoying and I feel weird. Sometimes I worry that the thoughts are true and that I want them to happen. I'm afraid that I won't be able to start a family or have a normal life.

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