Hi everyone,
Hopefully I can keep this concise and that it makes sense. I recently went through a patch of bad panic attacks and high anxiety. It improved quite a lot but I found that my OCD, which previoously had been more in background, really flared up.
I have been more focused on the OCD, which is basically 'redoing' things so they feel right, and so began researching approaches to dealing with OCD. I panicked when I read in one book about how they advocated for not 'rationilsing' or 'reassuring' as it could become compulsive. Other sources I read, seemd to contradict this. Such as the 'you are not your brain' etc. Sometimes if i resisted a compulsive act, and felt had an anxious thought such as 'what if I stay anxious or thinking about this for hours and hours' and I would say to myself, "It doesn't matter." Which kind of encapsulated what I had learnt that the anxiety would taper and it was just a deceptive thought. Or, at worst I can just wait and do the ritual.
So I got totally tied up in a knot reading that possibly saying the same thing would be a considered a compulsion or unproductive. I even started doubting using those sort of phrases for panic and anxiety in general even though I know cbt for anxiety and panic is commonly used and it is really the one of the main things that helped me. It was just the idea of it I guess. As you can imagine, it just made me tense up and second guess everything.
I understand there are differeing opinions on this, however I'm really confused on this idea of 'rationilsing' for OCD. Would it really be considered compulsive if you had reminded yourself with certain phrases, that you don't need to follow through on the compulsions etc. I guess I could see how just mindlessly repeating a mantra might not be helpful - though I can't really see it making things that much worse - when you should be just refocusing etc. I feel like if you've just chosen to not carry out a ritual that you feel compelled to do, your going to have thoughts about it as you learn to refocus. I'm just not sure how to approach the phase, and the material I have read has been either vague or very confusing to me.
I realise I'm overanalying at the moment since I've experiencing quite high anxiety, so either way I need to relax about it(trying!). I felt like telling myself "it's ok if you do or you don't" in regards a compulsion was working well for me before I started to read more about OCD.
Any thoughts would be really appreaciated,
Sam
