I've heard that journaling COULD be bad for OCD when you write and are unaware that you are ruminating, so how do I become more mindful of that? Thank you to whoever answers, it's my first time here and it feels good to be surrounded by people who have similar experiences, I feel less alone.
The only thing that helped was getting on medication. I’m only on a starting dose but now that I feel like there’s more of a distance between me and my thoughts I am able to recognize when I am ruminating versus writing down my thoughts to get them off my mind and out into reality where they hold zero power. I focus primarily on journaling about my day, what I’m looking forward to. What has been happening in my day or week, and then I pivot into discussing my past thoughts and how my relationship to the has changed. My ruminations used to be so intense I couldn’t even sit down to write a sentence. I was losing my ability to form full sentences and everything. But now that has changed and I’d say medication has been the biggest contributor, but also, constantly being worried about whether journaling is tied to rumination or not itself can be part of OCD. The overthinking instead of just doing that you enjoy. I physically cannot bring myself to ruminate anymore, so for me, whatever I put on paper feels more organic and true to me now. And I hope you can get to that point too.
@anabanana1 If you don’t mind me asking, what are you taking? I started 20mg Paxil one week and 2 days ago, and I am so looking forward to relief. :(
@anabanana1 Thank you, I am on medication and it has helped me so much, I just started journaling earlier and it feels great! So far it doesn't seem like I'm ruminating about something.
@faithdriven I take an antipsychotic called abilify. I talked about it a lot on my profile. Abilify is usually used as an add on for treatment resistant ocd, but I am on it only because SSRIs made me feel a million times worse. Prozac made me have false memories that were “hallucination themed” and Zoloft sent me to the ER. I am not sure how your psychiatrist is as a person, but if SSRIs are only making you feel worse, do not be afraid to communicate this to them. And if they’re good, they will genuinely listen to you. Antipsychotics to some degree are seen as a “last resort” in ocd treatment for a lot of doctors but if the loops truly will not stop, then the reality is, ocd can also be dopamine driven (hence why abilify worked for me) and not serotonin driven (hence why SSRIs didn’t work) my psychiatrist when I came back from the ER actually initially wanted to put me on Paxil but when I saw the prescription had not been sent, I knew he had a change of heart. And I’m so glad he did. I am not an expert this is all knowledge I have acquired through research in trying to advocate for myself. I hope you find what works for you. 2 days imo is still a bit early to know whether or not a medication will work so stay the course and if it doesn’t work, communicate with them.
@anabanana1 I'm glad Aripiprazole(Abilify) is working for you. I used to take SSRI's but stopped because that made my Bipolar symptoms worse. Now I'm on an antipsychotic called Brexpiprazole(Rexulti) and so far so good it's been more than 3 weeks and my mind feels calmer, I do still get intrusive thoughts from time to time but I am now more equipped to handling said thoughts.
Usually we have a particular theme or group of themes. If you’re writing about those in any way that’s trying to analyze, test, check, neutralize, figure out, etc you’re doing compulsions. Start by writing about things unrelated to your theme. If you’re going to write about ocd, focus on what it’s like having ocd, not the content itself. Write about how it can be lonely and scary and makes it hard to do regular life, but not what thought you had today that scared you. Hope that distinction helps.
@pureolife Thank you! That really helps😄
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