I have an urge to correct something I feel I made a mistake on. I keep ruminating about it. If I don’t engage in what OCD is telling me to do, how long will this last? I feel like it’s going to haunt me forever, and guess I’m supposed to sit with that discomfort; however, I’m looking for peer support. I guess my question is… if you don’t give into your OCD, how long does one specific thing last for you?
Unfortunately, I have a very bad habit of giving into my OCD whenever I have a new trigger. It always takes a while to habituate to it. It also depends on the thing. If it's something minor, then it passes in a few days, or sometimes less than a day if I'm very lucky. However, I'm currently still kinda stuck in one trigger that happened back in the beginning of February, so it's now the sixth week of that and it's still not entirely over, though the worst of it ended like 3 weeks ago. However, I was ruminating basically the entirety of the first 4 weeks, so that almost certainly made it way worse. I'm hoping a few more weeks will have it fade out more thoroughly, to where I don't get these annoying 4-minute spirals every hour. This trigger is something that is multi-faceted and basically involves multiple years of my life, so I suppose it's not surprising that it is persisting for so long. If I can get through this though, then I feel like I can get through basically anything. It's already nice being able to sometimes not have the intrusive thoughts present, even if it's only for 10 minutes, and even when they do show up now, often there's very minimal anxiety present. I just hope that I don't have any OCD episodes that are worse. Anything worse than what happened in February would probably break me.
Thank you for sharing. It sounds like you’ve really been through it, and I can tell you’re fighting through the hard times. I know for a fact you’ll come out on top with that determination. My rumination is bad and debilitating at times. I struggle to do much of anything and I have a family to take care of. I’m also supposed to go on a trip soon and it’s like how can I do that while being in so much discomfort?
@trapped I think this is an obsession by itself. The "Gotta make everything right/get rid of the OCD before X else Im not going to enjoy it fully". Wanting to get rid of it is one of the causes for it staying. You have to accept that it might still be there during the trip, and thats ok! Because no matter whether it is there or not, you’re still gonna try to enjoy your time and make the most out of the experience!! Gotta live more in the present and give less attention at what might happen or might not happen. That also includes, during the trip, not worrying about future regrets of not having fully enjoyed it! Just gotta surf the moment, you know?
@MonkeyManiac Ugh, thank you for this. I feel like this came at a bad time. If only I would’ve done better at the task I made a mistake on, then all of this would go away :(
@trapped Yeah, I often feel like that too. Especially considering that anytime you do a compulsion, it ALWAYS leads to it being worse. But you know what they say: The best time to start would’ve been yesterday but the second best time is now! Go easy on yourself, we’re all trying to do the best we can :-) Dont use that as an excuse to slack off though!!
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