- Date posted
- 1y
Rumination
Has anyone here ever been able to get relief from an intrusive thought by ruminating and going over and over it in their memory to try and figure it all out? Is it even possible?
Has anyone here ever been able to get relief from an intrusive thought by ruminating and going over and over it in their memory to try and figure it all out? Is it even possible?
Not me. It’s been 7 years 😂 Rumination is just an illusion of problem solving
Nope. That just makes it worse and why rumination is considered a compulsion.
I was interested to see if it ever helps anyone. For me it doesn’t, in fact it makes it worse but I find myself doing it repeatedly. Logically I I know it’s wrong but instinctively I do it and feel in denial if I don’t.
Even if I look back and just scan the past myself, I always come up with something that feels very real like I remember it vividly. I just can’t get it out of the habit looking back and sometimes put things in my own mind. If I forget I put it there than I’m messed up even more.
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? 😅
Two things are happening: I get thoughts that just keep looping. They almost feel like song stuck in my head. Also, I’ll imagine something and I feel my stomach drop. Then as the seconds go by I keep getting fragments of the this thought but with different details. For example, it’s kinda like how a “vision” is portrayed. I’ll get a glimpse of the thought and then it’ll rapidly expand into something worse every few seconds. I don’t know if I’m causing this or if it’s just an automatic thing like any other intrusive thought. It feels unavoidable, idk if this is a compulsion or if it’s just another manifestation of an intrusive thought. Apart from that remembering an intrusive thought triggers the full thought again and then it just keeps looping or expanding. I don’t know how to stop any of this. Help?
OK, this might sound really dumb, but when you guys get intrusive thoughts, do they just come once and then go away? I’ve heard that repeatedly thinking about an intrusive thought is considered ‘checking,’ but it doesn’t feel like I have any control over how many times it comes up in my head. It’s not like I’m trying to check anything—it just keeps showing up, almost like it’s terrorizing me every time. I can’t seem to stop it from looping, stop remembering it, or prevent it from coming up. Every time it does, I feel horrified, and I already know it’s going to horrify me. I don’t think I’m actively trying to see if my feelings have changed, so is this still considered checking? How do other people get an intrusive thought and just move on? Doesn’t it pop up a million times for them too? I always thought that was normal, but now I’m hearing this could be a compulsion, and I feel really confused, scared, and lost. Is this why my OCD feels so extreme? Because I really don’t feel like I can control how many times the thought pops up.
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