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Motivation/tools to stop compulsing


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I have incapacitating health OCD. Some of the best advice I ever received on here was to stop: stop trying to figure out whether my symptoms are psychosomatic or not, stop trying to figure out where they're coming from or what's causing them, stop trying to find ways to deal with them, and to simply go about my life with my symptoms and thoughts.

When I can remember this advice and apply it, I do well. Applying it is the tricky part; it's so difficult for me to simply STOP. I always feel that I NEED to perform these compulsions (which I can't always ID as compulsions) just one more time. As we know, this invariably turns into countless more times. It doesn't feel safe to stop compulsing. It feels ******* intolerable. The uncertainty isn't bearable. Or on the flip side, if I am successful in stopping the compulsions, something will end up triggering me a few days later and I slide right back into compulsion hell.

It's so difficult, when in the midst of a panic cycle, to ID the compulsions and shut them down. I am successful here and there but fail more often than not.

How were/are you able to stop compulsing and what kinds of changes have you seen in your obsessions? How do you make this a habit rather than an anomaly?

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I just want to say that the other thing that makes not compulsing so infinitely difficult is that every time a new health concern arises, I feel like it can't possibly be the OCD that's making me feel this way. In retrospect, I can see that many (if not all) of my health anxieties were OCD-driven, but in the heat of the moment every single health concern feels legitimate, feels real, feels like the exception to my OCD, and therefore I should check, seek reassurance, investigate it, take precautions, panic, etc. I don't know how to overcome this.

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Hi

I was about to write the same thing about how difficult it is to stop. It is exactly as you write... Just one more and I am safe and Can stop.... 10 seconds later new obsession where the urge is too strong. You Can never stop with a good feeling or a last compulsion.

I am doing worst in the morning from when I wake up. I wake too early which make me tired the rest of the day or I need to go early to bed. The thoughts and bad scenarios come and I want to undo them. I try to remember not to do compulsions, just feel the urge and anxiety. I try to refocus like counting backward from 1000 or Think of something Else. I have not manage to find a way to stop and sleep again. So advise is aprreciated.

During the day I say I need to stop and I breathe, watch the anxiety level go down, do a deliberate exposure instead of waiting for the thought to unfold, refocus, do somethingelse, and some times I try to avoid the thought and Shake my head because it stingslike a bee. The last one does not work but I hate the thoughts.

I try and tell myself that the forum, my therapist and family says its ocd, say I Can safely stop compulsions, that thoughts never Can come true or feeling sick wont make you sick like you suffer from, I have stopped many so its just ocd making me feel danger. And if my husband is okay with me stopping and not worried I risk my kids to become harmed then it must be safe to stop. But still I fall in 40 pct of the time, why? I know its ocd.

I have also fear of becoming ill. But I become better with this one. We are like going from 1 to 100 when we feel a pain or sickness. I immediately Think of cancer and not the more likely ones as flue, tense mucles, an infektion or the cold. Its really annoying. Then I say to myself its ocd, calm down, dont focus on the area it will only make you feel it more. Dont Google, ruminate or go to the doctor. Refocus.its okay to feel its something serious because it cant develop into that no matter how hard I Think. This is proven scientifically. Compulsions only make you focus.

Actually it is worse doing Them because the anxiety and thought stick and unfold rather than not then it goes quickly.

Its just we feel we are taken a risk. We are in a Wood with no Bear but we feel its there.

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