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Any tips for those "freak-out" moments?


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I'm having a large number of freaking out moments due to medium/high triggers. I know all the techniques for what you're supposed to do backwards but alas I forget them all in the heat of the moment. I really need someone to slap me in the face during these moments :/

Anyone found anything effective in being able to attract your attention when they are in that freak-out moment or ranting, raving, panicking, flipping out due to a trigger?

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Guest fiatver

Oh, I remember those freak out moments. Mine used to be like "You are just lying to yourself, you know it's true!!!" or "Oh, no, there is no solution now! I need to live knowing this but I can't live knowing this..."

Mike Tyson said: “Everyone has a plan – until they get punched in the face." This applies perfectly here.

There is no substitution for actual ERP. Thinking about ERP is always easier than doing ERP. After doing some basic ERP, we tend to think that if we feel great even thinking about the trigger, doing the actual ERP with the trigger present should be the same. Well, it's not.

The best solution is to accept indiscriminately, so you create a habit. I know that some people will not agree with me, but I think that it's easier to do ERP if we do it all the time, in all circumstances. I think that leaving gaps and exits to protect yourself is more a hindrance to recovery than a help. It's easier to be consistent and practice ERP all the time, so you don't need to decide in a case by case basis, thus lowering the cognitive load. Also, I don't think it's easy to make good decisions when you are stressed, so you can always convince yourself that "this time is better not to do ERP because today I need to be relaxed/I have had a hard day/I am going to work/Whatever stuff you lie yourself with". Keep it simple.

The most effective thing to do when you are freaking out is nothing. You are freaking out, there is no much you can do about it. What I used to do is just carry on doing what I was doing while I feel that my life is ruined forever (it sounds crazy but at some point you get used to all this).Any attempt to avoid what you are feeling will just generate more avoidance, more fear, captivate your attention further. Nasty stuff. Avoidance is way worse than just freaking out. Avoidance is nasty stuff, don't do it! :)

Edited by fiatver
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Oh, I remember those freak out moments. Mine used to be like "You are just lying to yourself, you know it's true!!!" or "Oh, no, there is no solution now! I need to live knowing this but I can't live knowing this..."

Mike Tyson said: “Everyone has a plan – until they get punched in the face." This applies perfectly here.

There is no substitution for actual ERP. Thinking about ERP is always easier than doing ERP. After doing some basic ERP, we tend to think that if we feel great even thinking about the trigger, doing the actual ERP with the trigger present should be the same. Well, it's not.

The best solution is to accept indiscriminately, so you create a habit. I know that some people will not agree with me, but I think that it's easier to do ERP if we do it all the time, in all circumstances. I think that leaving gaps and exits to protect yourself is more a hindrance to recovery than a help. It's easier to be consistent and practice ERP all the time, so you don't need to decide in a case by case basis, thus lowering the cognitive load. Also, I don't think it's easy to make good decisions when you are stressed, so you can always convince yourself that "this time is better not to do ERP because today I need to be relaxed/I have had a hard day/I am going to work/Whatever stuff you lie yourself with". Keep it simple.

The most effective thing to do when you are freaking out is nothing. You are freaking out, there is no much you can do about it. What I used to do is just carry on doing what I was doing while I feel that my life is ruined forever (it sounds crazy but at some point you get used to all this).Any attempt to avoid what you are feeling will just generate more avoidance, more fear, captivate your attention further. Nasty stuff. Avoidance is way worse than just freaking out. Avoidance is nasty stuff, don't do it! :)

Avoidance is my biggest problem really. I've avoided things for years. It's impossible for me to think about reintroducing myself to the stuff I've avoided. It'll generate far too much anxiety So much that I really do freak out and would be useless at doing anything during that spell. I accept that your view on ERP is probably the most effective, but for me I honestly couldn't think about that route as I'd crash and burn within minutes. During several recent freakouts I've been so distressed I honestly didn't know if I would harm myself or not, so needless to say I need to find much better coping mechanisms before I tackle anything I've avoided for almost 6 years! :/

Thanks for your feedback though :)

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Guest imalright

What about.....some distraction...? :-)

During a freak out moment with PTSD, I played sudoku (I'm mathematically challenged so required deep concentration :-D)

or played some old school tetris like game.....someone said the eye movements would help :-)

a few minutes of distraction gave me a much needed break :-)xx

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Oh, I remember those freak out moments. Mine used to be like "You are just lying to yourself, you know it's true!!!" or "Oh, no, there is no solution now! I need to live knowing this but I can't live knowing this..."

Mike Tyson said: “Everyone has a plan – until they get punched in the face." This applies perfectly here.

There is no substitution for actual ERP. Thinking about ERP is always easier than doing ERP. After doing some basic ERP, we tend to think that if we feel great even thinking about the trigger, doing the actual ERP with the trigger present should be the same. Well, it's not.

The best solution is to accept indiscriminately, so you create a habit. I know that some people will not agree with me, but I think that it's easier to do ERP if we do it all the time, in all circumstances. I think that leaving gaps and exits to protect yourself is more a hindrance to recovery than a help. It's easier to be consistent and practice ERP all the time, so you don't need to decide in a case by case basis, thus lowering the cognitive load. Also, I don't think it's easy to make good decisions when you are stressed, so you can always convince yourself that "this time is better not to do ERP because today I need to be relaxed/I have had a hard day/I am going to work/Whatever stuff you lie yourself with". Keep it simple.

The most effective thing to do when you are freaking out is nothing. You are freaking out, there is no much you can do about it. What I used to do is just carry on doing what I was doing while I feel that my life is ruined forever (it sounds crazy but at some point you get used to all this).Any attempt to avoid what you are feeling will just generate more avoidance, more fear, captivate your attention further. Nasty stuff. Avoidance is way worse than just freaking out. Avoidance is nasty stuff, don't do it! :)

That's a great quote! And it explains why a plan like accepting indiscriminately or always being successful at resisting compulsions is going to fail for 99% of people with OCD. It always does sound good when you are in between triggers and spikes. In fact in between triggers and spikes I almost always feel like I'm free of OCD and I feel strong and that when the next trigger comes I can't imagine that it'll mess me up. I feel like of course no problem, I'll be able to not care like I don't care right now, it's so simple and so easy!

Though then when they do strike the resolve I had dissolves!

Then it is almost always like, "yeh I have that intention to not give into these compulsions anymore, though not THIS one, THIS thing is too important to not protect and feel like I'm sacrificing. Next time I'll resist it, this is the last one I promise!" hah, it's always the last time!

Though as far as getting punched and boxing analogies, I heard a good one. Boxers when they get in the ring and prepare to fight their opponent they have to remain loose! Jump around, loosen their shoulders, and be able to dance around and swing their arms freely and block the punches etc. If they're tight and rigid cause they're scared, with their arms tight to their chest and tight shoulders etc. then they're going to punch weakly and waste all this energy, mostly staying on the defense. And when it is obvious they are tight and scared like that, that's when they REALLY get it from their opponent, cause they see they're afraid and an easy target!

The point is, when you remain loose, that's when you're really in control! When you're tight, you have the ILLUSION of control! Not real control! I think that applies to OCD and how we deal with the triggers, being so afraid and hypervigiliant on the defense and tensing up in protection giving us the illusion of control. As opposed to being loose and relaxed and rolling with the punches, remaining quick and moving on quickly from one hit to counter hit, to dodging the hit, etc. Fear makes us freeze up, so we have to remember that a lot.

What about.....some distraction...? :-)

During a freak out moment with PTSD, I played sudoku (I'm mathematically challenged so required deep concentration :-D)

or played some old school tetris like game.....someone said the eye movements would help :-)

a few minutes of distraction gave me a much needed break :-)xx

There's studies that show this is actually effective for PTSD so I guess you knew intuitively. I don't know if I could post links here, though google "Oxford Tetris PTSD" and you'll get pages of links about the study.

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Guest imalright

Thanks, ADD :-D

I can't remember who told me that....but....the eye movements certainly did resemble EMDR eye movements....and did provide relief....so perhaps there really is something in it!

I will google.....fascinating :-0

:-)x

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The eye movements perhaps help, though the study said the theory is that it interferes with memory consolidation when done within a short time frame after the original trauma or during memory reconsolidating.

I used to play tetrix on my phone or ipad a lot when I got spiked as a distraction. Until it started turning into a compulsion itself, so I stopped lol.

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Guest fiatver

That's a great quote! And it explains why a plan like accepting indiscriminately or always being successful at resisting compulsions is going to fail for 99% of people with OCD. It always does sound good when you are in between triggers and spikes. In fact in between triggers and spikes I almost always feel like I'm free of OCD and I feel strong and that when the next trigger comes I can't imagine that it'll mess me up. I feel like of course no problem, I'll be able to not care like I don't care right now, it's so simple and so easy!

Though then when they do strike the resolve I had dissolves!

What I mean by accepting indiscriminately is that basically you need to stop reacting to your thoughts. If you need to decide what to accept and what not when you are under extreme pressure you are normally going to fail. It's a lot easier just to accept everything, it removes the decision component. Some thoughts are useful, some of them not, you accept both types and you let pass the second. In my experience, the most simple my ERP strategies got, the more effective they became. The more I had to think about them, the more I found that I would let some compulsions pass and start obsessing again. The alternative to accepting everything is analyzing what you need to accept and what not. What thoughts are safe? What thoughts are not? What feelings are good? What feelings are dangerous? Those questions are a product of OCD in themselves and therefore they can never help you to recover. Separating thoughts and feelings between safe and dangerous is great if you want to make your OCD worse, but not helpful otherwise. This is just my opinion anyway.

Acceptance is only useful when acceptance seems like the worst possible thing you could do which is going to get you and everyone killed and it will be your fault.

Sometimes I got thoughts like "if you keep resisting compulsions you will go crazy and die" and I just thought "I will die then". It doesn't seem very reasonable, but I was tired of running and being scared. Some people seem very tolerant of living in fear, but I decided to recover from OCD no matter how hard it be.

Then it is almost always like, "yeh I have that intention to not give into these compulsions anymore, though not THIS one, THIS thing is too important to not protect and feel like I'm sacrificing. Next time I'll resist it, this is the last one I promise!" hah, it's always the last time!

Yeah, this is what I meant.

Radically accepting what you feel and the thoughts that you get can be very confusing. I cannot explain it with words. Sometimes I felt like there is nothing left in life or death, apart from fearful anguish. Accepting that maybe it's true that you did something terrible or that you are just lying to yourself is harder than performing some neutralizing actions (distraction, changing thoughts, avoiding moments of silence...). Maybe they make you feel safe but it's still interacting and reacting to thoughts and it's still appraising them. Your brain learns that those thoughts are dangerous so it will make you more aware of them next time, hence the increase in anxiety. The brain also learns that you want to avoid those thoughts at all costs so it will make sure it can remind you of them, lest you forget how dangerous they are.

Also, it has been proved that not only compulsions generate obsessions (and not the other way around) but compulsions remind you of obsessions. A good example is that if every time you think one of your "dangerous" thoughts you run and watch tv, watching tv will remind you of the thoughts. I have experienced this first hand.

Edited by fiatver
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Also, it has been proved that not only compulsions generate obsessions (and not the other way around) but compulsions remind you of obsessions. A good example is that if every time you think one of your "dangerous" thoughts you run and watch tv, watching tv will remind you of the thoughts. I have experienced this first hand.

Though see, this mental process of associations and reminders like that is exactly what my OCD fears and compulsions revolve around though! I am afraid of the reminders of my spikes linking to more and more things than they already are! Already I have thousands of things like that that are reminders of them for me and become 'triggers' for them to remind me. So everywhere there are these triggers and then my compulsions are to avoid the triggers or at least avoid use of the triggers with important things or whatever to prevent further spread of them!

That is what makes it so difficult to me. Cause not only is it a real memory/psychological process, it is very self fulfilling in addition. I know my compulsions make the current triggers worse and stand out more, though I also know that they can and would spread to create even more triggers! That's what I mean by not wanting to sacrifice different things, I mean I don't want to sacrifice letting those important things I like or whatever to become triggers themselves and contaminated with the spike reminders! I already have lost TOO many things I liked or needed to become triggers for them already. So my fears are not unfounded or unlikely! That's why it's so difficult! It has gotten so bad that I even look for and check for the triggers before things cause I have a fear of finding there was one connected to something after the fact that I can't take it back and it's already done and associated and a new trigger! I know my compulsions make things worse, though my fear is also real, so I don't know how to get out of it safely without creating more unwanted triggers! Even ERP itself creates more triggers for me!

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Guest fiatver

Though see, this mental process of associations and reminders like that is exactly what my OCD fears and compulsions revolve around though! I am afraid of the reminders of my spikes linking to more and more things than they already are! Already I have thousands of things like that that are reminders of them for me and become 'triggers' for them to remind me. So everywhere there are these triggers and then my compulsions are to avoid the triggers or at least avoid use of the triggers with important things or whatever to prevent further spread of them!

I know what you mean. At some point, the first word that my mobile phone autocompletion thing would come up was "trauma". I was obsessed that I was going to end up traumatized because of so much stress and I was never going to recover. it doesn't make it easier for you, though.

Avoiding triggers hasn't worked, why don't you try to seek them?

That is what makes it so difficult to me. Cause not only is it a real memory/psychological process, it is very self fulfilling in addition. I know my compulsions make the current triggers worse and stand out more, though I also know that they can and would spread to create even more triggers! That's what I mean by not wanting to sacrifice different things, I mean I don't want to sacrifice letting those important things I like or whatever to become triggers themselves and contaminated with the spike reminders! I already have lost TOO many things I liked or needed to become triggers for them already. So my fears are not unfounded or unlikely! That's why it's so difficult! It has gotten so bad that I even look for and check for the triggers before things cause I have a fear of finding there was one connected to something after the fact that I can't take it back and it's already done and associated and a new trigger! I know my compulsions make things worse, though my fear is also real, so I don't know how to get out of it safely without creating more unwanted triggers! Even ERP itself creates more triggers for me!

In ACT they speak a lot about memory and how thoughts can bring back emotions. There is absolutely nothing we can do about it. Experiences work in an inclusive and not in an exclusive way. We add new experiences to life, but we don't erase them. Even people who recover remember the thoughts from time to time. It's not a problem, because brains think. I would worry if you didn't think, it would mean that you are dead or something :)

That's what I mean by not wanting to sacrifice different things, I mean I don't want to sacrifice letting those important things I like or whatever to become triggers themselves and contaminated with the spike reminders! I already have lost TOO many things I liked or needed to become triggers for them already

You are taking thoughts too seriously. You have had the thought that "you will lose everything if you allow those dangerous thoughts to stay around" and you have create a very complex structure of compulsions to protect yourself from it. People tend to have the idea that by protecting yourself from suffering you will have a fulfilling life. This is a grave, grave error. Your compulsions are like walls. Every time you experienced something that you didn't like, you created a wall to protect yourself from it. At some point, you are inside a box. Those things that were supposed to make you feel safe are killing you, not your thoughts, or your feelings. But you want to keep them around. It's a bit like when hostages fall in love with the terrorists who are keeping them hostage as a defense mechanism. You know you need to give them up but you haven't given up on your project of "protecting myself from all those dangerous experiences that I totally should not have".

I know my compulsions make the current triggers worse and stand out more, though I also know that they can and would spread to create even more triggers!

People will perform compulsions even if they don't bring any relief whatsoever, just to avoid a worse outcome. This is mentioned in "Overcoming obsessive thoughts".

In a few words: Give it all up. It's not worth it. You won't get anywhere, and in two years time you will be in a worse situation. It hasn't worked, and it's never going to work. You can't get out of a hole by digging, you can't get out of OCD by performing compulsions. Do the risky stuff. The stuff that your brain doesn't like. Go and do what is healthy, give uncertainty a big hug, and do ERP. Leave your brain screaming under the bed, it will catch up with you later. :)

Check this out: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpVLVNDBy007AB0VUJSvOKnqru_ZUkBVX

Edited by fiatver
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Thanks fiatver! It is always nice talking to an ex sufferer! I know you are right as far as long term. I was only saying what motivates me that makes it so difficult to resist the compulsions and avoidances is the short term motivations of relief. Though obvious it is like that for everyone. It never feels like a good time to allow the pain! Especially when we still have to live our lives and be functional and achieve all these things on our own and can't afford to fall apart completely for awhile feeling so confused. I absolutely know what you mean about the confusion!

I think for myself, my greatest thing of erp has been forgetting the triggers and focusing only on the spikes themselves to desensitize to them. If I am not as sensitive or reactive to the things that would spike me, then nothing would be much of a trigger for them cause I wouldn't feel so reactive to them. I have gotten much better than I used to be, though it is still difficult to take those further leaps of faith and take the pain you have to go through at first! I'll try more! With my ADD also, long term thinking and motivation has always been very difficult for me though!

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ADD, I love your boxing analogies. Remaining "loose" is definitely the attitude to go for. The times I deal best with the triggers is when I'm tired or ill because I literally don't have the mental energy to start resisting. Some people say ocd is worse when they're tired but I find the opposite because of that. I surrender and just say do what you can brain, I can't fight you anymore. When I'm well rested is when I can get caught in the trap of ruminating.

I also like an analogy I heard of ocd being a bear in a cave. The wrong attitude is to tiptoe past it being afraid of waking the bear. The best attitude is going straight in there and realising it could be a harmless teddy.

Chris

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Guest fiatver

Thanks fiatver! It is always nice talking to an ex sufferer! I know you are right as far as long term. I was only saying what motivates me that makes it so difficult to resist the compulsions and avoidances is the short term motivations of relief. Though obvious it is like that for everyone. It never feels like a good time to allow the pain! Especially when we still have to live our lives and be functional and achieve all these things on our own and can't afford to fall apart completely for awhile feeling so confused. I absolutely know what you mean about the confusion!

I think for myself, my greatest thing of erp has been forgetting the triggers and focusing only on the spikes themselves to desensitize to them. If I am not as sensitive or reactive to the things that would spike me, then nothing would be much of a trigger for them cause I wouldn't feel so reactive to them. I have gotten much better than I used to be, though it is still difficult to take those further leaps of faith and take the pain you have to go through at first! I'll try more! With my ADD also, long term thinking and motivation has always been very difficult for me though!

Three things that helped me a lot in my recovery are:

- Realising that I can't predict the future. It's just not possible. Sometimes you can come up with "oh, no, if I do X then Y will happen! Well, reality doesn't work like that, reality is a lot more complex than that. If anyone here could predict the future, I would recommend him/her to quit this forum immediately, write a good CV (remember to specify that you can predict the future) and get the job of Managing Director at Barclays Capital. You will be rich in no time! Unless your predicting powers are good enough for that, quit predicting stuff!

- Realising that there is always always always an amazing reason, a very convincing reason, for doing something stupid. There is always an incredibly convincing reason why to perform a compulsion. People who do what their most convincing thoughts say never recover. It's 100% impossible to recover unless you realise that your thoughts are not the problem, but what you are doing with them. If all it takes to your brain is to shout "THIS TIME IT IS REAL" for you to do something, it will do it all the time, and you are playing the OCD game like a champion. It's a game in which you fight against yourself and you can't win. I had to quit that to recover.

- Realising that the only way to stop intrusive thoughts is to be in coma. From the moment you are conscious of your existence, you lose control of what thoughts come into your head. You can do whatever stuff you want to do about it, but it's going to remain as it is. It's just human nature.

Edited by fiatver
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Just to add my twopennyworth.

As Caramoole knows, i find The Four Steps helpful.

As part of step two - reattribution - we are guided into expecting intrusive attacks in some guise or another, so need to prepare for them so we are not thrown by them.

I would suggest you adopt this looking -out and being ready mode - then when an expected intrusion comes - you can take a detached view of it - see it for the attempt by the OCD to claw you back in - and your resistance will be ready to deploy.

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Realising that I can't predict the future. It's just not possible. Sometimes you can come up with "oh, no, if I do X then Y will happen! Well, reality doesn't work like that, reality is a lot more complex than that. If anyone here could predict the future, I would recommend him/her to quit this forum immediately, write a good CV (remember to specify that you can predict the future) and get the job of Managing Director at Barclays Capital. You will be rich in no time! Unless your predicting powers are good enough for that, quit predicting stuff!

Actually humans are very good at predicting the future! Sure we can't predict with pinpoint specific accuracy of things, there are so many random unpredictable variables. Though we can accurately predict generalities and all the reaccuring patterns! The brain is wired to notice patterns and cause and effects and predict based on those to learn and know what to expect in the future. History repeats itself over and over again! Soon you learn what things repeat and where. We predict the weather, we predict the sun will come up tomorrow, we predict that every single day during certain hours of the day there'll be tons of traffic, we predict places will be super crowded on the weekends, we predict if something has repeatedly given us a headache it'll do it again, we predict if we eat too much we'll gain weight, we predict we'll get tired every single night around the same time, we predict people we know will continue to repeat their own patterns and habits etc. I could go on forever, you know what I mean. And along with that, I can accurately predict that my brain is going to repeat the same patterns it has over and over again in the past of never really being able to forget upsetting exposures or unlink the memories of things it has linked.

Though we need knowledge and things that have happened and repeated to predict them. So I can't predict recovery for myself specifically of these things or changes. Not until I experience them repeatedly. I think that is called getting new reference points. We repeat past behaviors and beliefs mostly cause they are what we have reference points to be able to predict the outcomes, so they're our safety zones. We know if we repeat compulsions for instance that we'll at least get the same or similar short term relief or escape we have in the past from them. That is predictable so it's safe to us. We don't know what we'll get with new behaviors and responses until we try them out enough times to get results. That is part of what makes them so scary, cause they're unpredictable to us. It's part of what makes change so difficult, to do new things we don't have any predictability in to trust them yet. Only by being brave do we gain any new references.

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Realising that there is always always always an amazing reason, a very convincing reason, for doing something stupid. There is always an incredibly convincing reason why to perform a compulsion. People who do what their most convincing thoughts say never recover. It's 100% impossible to recover unless you realise that your thoughts are not the problem, but what you are doing with them. If all it takes to your brain is to shout "THIS TIME IT IS REAL" for you to do something, it will do it all the time, and you are playing the OCD game like a champion. It's a game in which you fight against yourself and you can't win. I had to quit that to recover.

In those moments with those types of spikes and threats, it's not simply that the brain shouts that it is real as some thought. It's that you get the feelings and emotions of it feeling real with the fear and adrenaline and then the risk aversion of "better safe than sorry!" and "It's not worth the risk!" feeling. Even when you're thinking about recovery and the irrationality etc. it still feels that the risk you feel is not even worth the possibility of recovery in that moment. You can't think about any of it rationally when you feel that way. The run first, ask questions later way. You think, yeh sure I'll think about the rationality of this, AFTER I escape the danger zone. I'll climb up that tree as fast as I can to get to safety and then look back and access if that noise was really a threat or not! That's how it feels.

The people that have been able to consistently remain rational and resist that urge when under fire I think are very brave! The rest of us are still gaining that courage!

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I think for myself also, it's one thing for unwanted thoughts to be random. Though it's another thing for them to be consistently and specifically tied to and linked to certain things. Where you know already and experience every time the same unwanted thoughts with the same things. It makes it very difficult to not want to avoid those things! Not avoiding those things equals those unwanted thoughts along with them! Avoiding them equals not having those unwanted thoughts that are tied to them! So if they NEVER go away or unlink, then why would you ever want to do those things when it'll always be miserable? That seems so very pointless, especially with things you don't need to do, they're only for entertainment or whatever, though now they're not entertaining and only cause unwanted thoughts and feelings connected to them that make you miserable and depressed etc. That's why I think I'll never fully be over it all, cause you can't erase those memories!

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Guest fiatver

In those moments with those types of spikes and threats, it's not simply that the brain shouts that it is real as some thought. It's that you get the feelings and emotions of it feeling real with the fear and adrenaline and then the risk aversion of "better safe than sorry!" and "It's not worth the risk!" feeling. Even when you're thinking about recovery and the irrationality etc. it still feels that the risk you feel is not even worth the possibility of recovery in that moment. You can't think about any of it rationally when you feel that way. The run first, ask questions later way. You think, yeh sure I'll think about the rationality of this, AFTER I escape the danger zone. I'll climb up that tree as fast as I can to get to safety and then look back and access if that noise was really a threat or not! That's how it feels.

The people that have been able to consistently remain rational and resist that urge when under fire I think are very brave! The rest of us are still gaining that courage!

I know the feeling, but that's just chemicals in your blood. It's you who attach meaning to those feelings. Maybe your "It's not worth the risk" feeling is my "oh, no, I just contaminated everything with the bleach in an attempt to clean something" feeling. In the moment in which you are resisting the urge to cope/check/control all your brain wants is to survive and it's going to inhibit its own capacity to think and assess risk because otherwise people would stop to think in front of buses and dangerous animals. You can't convince yourself to do something, but you can do it.

The people that have been able to consistently remain rational and resist that urge when under fire I think are very brave! The rest of us are still gaining that courage!

That's what in ACT is called "the confidence trap". People wait to feel confident to do things, so they don't do them. The confidence feeling never comes, because they have never tried, they never learn how to do it, and they create all sort of stories in their heads of why they can't do it now and why they should do it when they feel confident.

Check this out for more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34xevxBI_FE

I never felt confident to do it. It's a lot simple than that, you just do it. It felt like free falling from the top of the universe to the bottom. But it got done.

I think for myself also, it's one thing for unwanted thoughts to be random. Though it's another thing for them to be consistently and specifically tied to and linked to certain things. Where you know already and experience every time the same unwanted thoughts with the same things. It makes it very difficult to not want to avoid those things! Not avoiding those things equals those unwanted thoughts along with them!

ERP is not about wanting things, it's about action.

Avoiding them equals not having those unwanted thoughts that are tied to them!

You are going to experience unwanted thoughts till the moment of your last breath. What you do about it is another thing, but whether you do ERP or not, unwanted thoughts are going to be around for good.

So if they NEVER go away or unlink, then why would you ever want to do those things when it'll always be miserable? That seems so very pointless, especially with things you don't need to do, they're only for entertainment or whatever, though now they're not entertaining and only cause unwanted thoughts and feelings connected to them that make you miserable and depressed etc. That's why I think I'll never fully be over it all, cause you can't erase those memories!

You are making an incredible amount of assumptions. Why do you need to be miserable because you have thoughts that you don't like? Why do you need to stop doing the things you like? Your feelings are being caused by your reaction to your thoughts and not by the thoughts themselves, remember that the general population experiences intrusive thoughts from time to time. Those assumptions are not helping your recovery, and I would suggest you give them up and accept uncertainty :)

I also haven't found out how to erase memories, I just got used to them. They don't produce any reaction because I don't do anything about them, so my brain knows that producing anxiety about something I am cool about is useless.

If the human mind worked in the way you think it does, ERP should never work. Why do people consistently recover from OCD by doing it then?

Remember this: If thinking could get you out of the problem you are in, you would be out already. Simplify your recovery and focus on action, not on your interior experiences. The more you analyse your interior experiences and try to discern what's safe or not, the more your brain is going to freak out in the presence of the minimal abnormality. That means that what a normal person would ignore can bring you to freak out, just because of your "cold war" mentality about your internal experiences. Acceptance is the alternative, it is never pretty, but it works :)

Edited by fiatver
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