Am I suppressing thoughts if I stop ruminating?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ต.ค. 2023
- A common challenge that comes up when people drop the ruminating and mental compulsions is that it feels wrong. It feels so strange to go and live our lives out in the real world when we've spent most of it up in our heads.
Coaching is full currently but I'm doing an Instagram subscription channel as a more affordable alternative, with regular posts and livestreams for answering questions and sharing skills on making changes: / markwfreeman
For working on recovery skills, grab my book, YOU ARE NOT A ROCK, wherever books are sold, like here on Amazon: bit.ly/youarenotarock
(It's called THE MIND WORKOUT in the UK and Australia/New Zealand, DAS MIND-WORKOUT in Deutsch, ENTRENA TU MENTE en español)
Travel mental health blog: www.themindfulfieldguide.com
Can't thank God enough for your channel brother. It's like you're slowly helping me to escape from one this worst prison inside my head! 👏
You can walk out of that prison!
Duuuuuuuude. This was the single most important video I've seen on youtube ever. Seriously. 100% you have saved lives.
Thanks for the kind words and the donation! I'm glad the video was helpful 😁🙌
Mark, you have helped me in so many ways....Thank you for your genuine care in helping others..
Thanks, James! It's an honour to be part of your journey 😁🙇♂️
This video is so dense in information and eye opening. I've watched it three times and I still feel like I'm only scratching the surface and truly understanding what you're trying to convey. Love it.
😁🙌 when I buy a pastry, especially anything with chocolate, I try to find the densest and heaviest pastry.
I was in the early stages of yet another cycle of compulsions and ruminations, after the first calm period in a while. Your advice helped me refocus on the Now and the real world around me. Thank you Mark. OCPD here :)
Enjoy bringing your brain to the real world!
Been recently practicing living my life whilst having any thought or feeling and my head feels like it’s going to explode😂
That's what it feels like! Expect withdrawal when we change old habits.
Nailed it again Mark! Like you’re in my brain.
So crazy how dead on this is. I’m living my life and my brain says there’s no way it can be this easy. There has to be something to overcome. Has to be an obstacle. Has to be a problem to solve. Has to be a compulsion that needs to be done. Just living life seems to simple like Where’s the catch.
Truly believing there is “no catch” is the hardest leap of faith to make. But the most impactful I would imagine!
This comments resonates with me so profoundly it's wild. And the pandemic was so validating to my ruminating saying "See? TOLD you there's something you need to be on the lookout for!" The pandemic definitely fed my ruminating but I'm getting better and your comment helps a bunch.
This message is so strong and powerful for ocd sufferers.
😁🙇♂️ thank you!
But extremely difficult! I like to frame it as “If I’m feeling uncomfortable when I’m living my life resisting compulsions that means I’m doing the right thing and making progress. I’m getting stronger. Eventually that discomfort will become less and less as the mind adapts.
For me personally, learning the idea that rumination was a choice instead of something that happened automatically made me feel the most empowered and gave back my sense of agency. I’m addition, instead of feeling a void of insecurity when I stopped doing it, I felt a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. That’s when I knew I was finally free.
So happy for you!
Enjoy practicing that skill!
Is it effective to actively try to stop it when you realize you are ruminating?
@everybodyhasabrain I'm ruminating all day about ruminating do I stop or let it play
Thank you for putting this feeling into words. I wish more therapists understood ocd and anxiety like this, I’ve been judged for having this.
Mine overlaps my CPTSD which makes it hard.
It's VERY common to experience!
Ruminating = distraction, Living your life = practice!
Funny I realised that I used "manifestation" to continue my ruminating and compulsive thoughts patterns... and I thought this was me helping myself. I can't say thank you enough for your videos, it has helped me understand myself and my behaviours and slowly I am improving my life because of this.
It's great you're seeing the tricks the brain pulls to keep on debating up there. Enjoy turning the focus to living!
Keep doing
Will do!
where has this channel been for most of my life
Where have you been all of the channel's life?!
😮@@everybodyhasabrain
Mark, after years of struggling with OCD and with one ruined relationship on the verge of another due to this, you've finally given me hope this can be done. Thank you.
😁🙌
Thank you so much for all these videos, they are really helpful🙏
Not gonna lie you cooked with this one🔥🔥🔥
I love your channel so much. Thank you so much man
THANK YOU! 😁🙌
Thank you Mark!
You're welcome!
Thank you brother ❤ you always deliver the quality content.
😁🙌
Great stuff ❤️
:)
Great information ❤️❤️
😁🙌
Another really helpful video thank you 👍
Thanks, Carol!
So needed this. Thank you so much! I’ve been thinking about this a lot!
I wish you less thinking 🙇♂️
Thank you. This is very comforting ❤
😁🙌
You’re on a roll. It’s giving!
Enjoy giving today!
Fantastic advice. Thank you, and thank you for your book.
Thanks for reading it!
Thank you for your wisdom on OCD. I really enjoy your videos!
Thanks! I'm glad you're enjoying them :)
Markkkkkk you are changing my life
I bet you're the one doing all of the work, though! 😁🙌
I realized now that the ONLY problem I think we all here have is that we hate on everything. I was hating on thoughts , hating emotions, hating people, hating weather ,hating clothes, hating pain, hating and hating and hating and hating and what all this hate is giving me is a closed road. All of this got me where I was , in a dark "WRONG" painful place waiting for some magic feeling to happen. If I continue to hate on everything even after 5 10 20 89 years I will be in the same place,probably even worse, certainly worse because ai can see where this road goes. I stopped hating because of this, I know where I'm going if I hate so THE ONLY OPTION is to have compassion, to learn that every thought, every sensation,every emotion can be there and it has a reason why it is there. Even if I believe that is wrong to have some thought and I'm doing lets say a compolsion, that is OK everything is OK , this is the only choice healthy choice I can do and than learn and be curious. Sorry for my bad english and mistakes, but its ok to make mistakes and I wrote this message for you all because I want to give this advice from my experience. The hating road is closed trust me ,or maybe better trust your experience with it . Start having compassion,even if you want to get rid of something, make that ok, it is ok, and learn from there.
It's so useful to notice how that hating on experiences creates so much suffering for ourselves.
Thanks!
Thank you for the donation, Thomas! I appreciate the support :)
You and Joanna Hardis have done more for me than years of therapy and any dedicated OCD account on social media. Thank you for all of your content and your experience.
Thank you! I'm glad it's been helpful on your adventures!
I developed a similar fear when it came to somatic therapy.
I became obsessed with my emotions and sensations, worrying that if I wasn’t hyper vigilant I was dissociating.
It can be so insidious. This is a great video, man, it’s helped me to notice this bigger pattern.
It's great you're seeing those patterns!
I think I have the same "problem" but I don't really understand what's the solution?
@ruslan7233 the video explains what I would do
@@everybodyhasabrainthank you , I watched it two Times, guess I will watch again.. in my Case its since I began the healing journey and through mindfulness recognized that I'm in my head pretty all the time and now since I'm more in the present moment I don't know what to think anymore and I find my self obsessing about thinking... if that's make any sence :(
@@ruslan7233 Why do you have to think something?
I got a little emotional hearing this bec it’s been such a massive internal struggle for me lately. I can’t thank you enough for your help🙏
Enjoy giving that attention to living and growing!
I have been watching you videos and have been given great relief that I don’t need to answer the questions popping in my head, the doubts and uncertainty. However, with my attempts to just stop investing my energy into that. They’re leaping back at me. Questions “is this my fault?”, alot of what if’s about my thoughts,I can even get into existential rumination and I feel like I need to answer these questions, A need. Is there anyway to convince myself that I don’t need to answer them or would that just lead to more compulsive thinking. Is it really just to stop investing my energy in that?
We don't have to invest any energy in that stuff but it may be pointing at something you are investing time and energy in: One of the reasons it can feel challenging to not engage with uncertainties is because we might also be holding onto some unhelpful beliefs that create the pressure to chase certainty and control. For example, underneath a fear, somebody may notice it's actually about controlling judgments from others. Many contamination compulsions are actually about the fear of being judged by other people (for giving them germs or diseases). So if somebody cuts out the contamination compulsions BUT they continue to hold onto the beliefs around how important it is to control what other people think about them, the brain will keep on throwing up uncertainties to control. It's just doing its job. If it's dangerous to be judged by others and we believe we should control that, then not controlling it will naturally feel very dangerous.
I struggle with this and Mal adaptive day dreaming
It helped me to group it all together as Time Spent in Head. We can reduce TSiH and spend more time and energy in the real world.
Thanks Mark, always so insightful and helpful. I just had a question, at the end there you said 'let ourselves be curious' but isn't being curious about the thought the problem? Shouldn't we not br curious about it so we don't ruminate? Would be great to understand what you mean by that :)
I see curiosity as something very different. Maybe we could use a different word. I'm proposing an action that's about looking past the topic of the thought. I'm not ruminating or engaging with the topic. For example, I might laugh at the brain because I see that there's a lot of uncertainty in my life, so it's just throwing up a random intrusive thought because it's looking for something to control given all of the uncertainty around us. It can do that if it wants to, but it'll have to come along with me while I'm living my life.
Yourself, Nathan Peterson, Drew Linsalata and Reid Wilson the 4 champs of destroying OCD. Truly.
Thank you! 😁🙇♂️
Question mark. How do I differentiate addiction rather from obsessiveness. I think I have that right… for example. I want to quit smoking. Or watching po*n. But when I get anxious my immediate go to for comfort is either one of those. Which in turn makes me more shameful and furthers rumination on how I fail and snowballs into a day of intrusive thoughts (today will be a bad day now, I can’t get over this).
I didn't find it useful to differentiate between things like that. I actually went to some 12 step addiction program meetings early on in my mental health adventures. I found it useful to see it all as the same and keep the focus on what I want to be spending my time and energy on in life. It's the direction we want to go that we can build skills around.
Hi. I have a question if you don’t mind. You are 100 percent right. My checking if there was issues was essentially me asking myself implicitly “what thoughts would come up if I’m not over this issue or whatever iv realised I haven’t ?” Or what thoughts would come up if I haven’t accepted things or if I’m not ok. So I want to go forward now, iv accepted the good of my path, and I want to start a new job. What I don’t want to happen is when I’m working get thoughts that make me sad or angry, ie you started too late, or why didn’t i figure this out sooner, now it’s much harder because I could have been further along. So then I try to ruminate it away, because I think if those thoughts can disturb me or come up, it means I’m not fully ok with everything or I haven’t really accepted it. So I’m checking to see if difficult thoughts or feelings coming up in the future means I haven’t resolved or accepted those issues. Because I don’t want anything to ruin my happiness or going forward now. How does automatic checking now go away, and any advice you have to overcome this fear of something bad happening in the future that’s within my control?
By cutting out the compulsions like that comment you made telling me to answer your question. You'll only posted your question a day ago, on a weekend. You're are not my client. I only try to respond to coaching requests within 24 hours, and you can see that I have many questions to respond to. So you could've just noticed that pressure from the brain to get an answer and waited. It is the same pressure we react to when we check and try to control other uncertainties. But if you always react to it, and try to control other people to relieve it, then it's very natural it continues. We have many opportunities every day to welcome uncertainty or to react and try to control it. How you handle those uncertainties is teaching your brain how to act.
This is a amazing video.thank you😊 how to overcome the anxiety that comes along with irrational fears? my problem is the hiperfocus i put on a thought and the projection of that thought in a real world. it's actually a fraction of a thought ,it almost don't have content ,its empty meaning but i associate the fear of the projection ..the what if even though i dont have any urge i fear the urge do you know what i mean? I dont have any thought but i fear the thought. if there is a trauma wih a theme that feels wrong to you ,that feeling its enough to cause distress. Só my question is..how can i navigate that feeling til its gone?Many thanks
I would see it as the basic compulsion pattern to be trying to find a special thing to do with a feeling. That's the problem that gets us into the struggle. It is not the solution. There's nothing we need to do with anxiety. It can be there.
Hey mark I have a question.Like you said I am trying to practise mental fitness goals.But as soon as thought pops up, a further confusion comes along with it that Do I have to say this line to my brain that "Saba you have to focus on mental fitness rather than removing this thought" or simply doing what I am doing. Cz in this case my brain will not know that a thought popped up and it will be easy for me to continue doing my tasks. But then after this, another question pops up in my mind like..
"do I have to decide at this point which thing to prefer"? For example living my life or contiously choosing things ...
Hey mark! i applied all of the stratigies i learned through you And i may be i am doing a compulsion by asking you this question(i know) but since i have choosed to live life and not judging and trying to eliminate the thoughts and bad experiences from my life i got a relief for one day or two but after that the noises in my head became louder and louder till i cant ignored them and then i was unable to go and live my life,i felt deprived of energy i dont know whats happening.I was not overthinking ,just doing what i want to do,doing uncomfortable tasks but still the brain is getting louder and louder.why is it so......
Plz tell me...
Yes, that's exactly what happens. It could be useful to not see this as "applying all of the strategies". What you're describing is something I talk about often. There's even a diagram in my book to track that experience, and I have several videos on it. It's just the beginning of starting to cut out compulsions. So it is wonderful you're starting to explore changes. But this is the start. Here's a video on the experience of the brain trying to get you to do compulsions when you start cutting them out: th-cam.com/video/yRSa0R_1aiA/w-d-xo.html
I have found myself in this very situation when recovering from a breakup. Just living life seems so strange.
Do you recommend cutting rumination step by step or completely? Because one huge cut feels soo tough to make(
Hey mark. I had really bad ocd and my ocd themes have changed over and over again. From the past few weeks, i got obsessed with the way i look. I started to hate how uneven my face was, no matter how ever i looked, from whatever angle, I couldn’t make myself better. I started having those panic attacks back. All i could think was that i’m gonna end up alone because of my ugly face. I don’t know whether this is ocd or not because it is about something real that is my face. My friends and family try to convince me lthat i’m not gonna end up alone but no amount of reassurance is helping me. What should i do?? This doesn’t seem like ocd so how do i treat my anxiety now? I know to to tackle ocd but not this thing
It can help to see this is the classic OCD contamination pattern. There are many different things we can judge as a "contamination". Checking and judging body parts is a very common example. But just like with checking and judging a feeling of contamination, the checking and judging we do around our bodies also becomes delusional. The more we check and fix, the more anxiety we create and the more problems we find to fix.
It really helps to cut out the compulsions. It doesn't matter what the topic is. You can see it's OCD from the compulsions to judge, check, fix, and control. Those will always create more problems.
Hi mark. I was wondering, is it important to understand why or how OCD/GAD/Depression developed in our lives? I lived most of my life free of any mental health issues, then developed many of these stress/mood disorders.
Is the root cause really important? Or just our behavior moving forward?
Because after reflecting and obsessively digging for over a year - I still don’t know what changed and what drove me to this as it was completely subconscious.
It helped me to recognize that those diagnoses were practices I engaged in. The framework that gets us struggling with them is our normal way of interacting with stuff in our heads and the world around us. You can see that in the year of obsessing about a cause. That's a great example of the compulsions that get us into these struggles. Making changes with how we take steps forward isn't just about moving forward--it requires us to change the ways of interacting with experiences that got us into this. Our behavior moving forward is how we change the root.
Thank you for clarifying! @@everybodyhasabrain
@@zentai4324 You're welcome!
Do you have suggestions on downgrading triggers that bring up the instrusive thought? (My children).
See response on the other video you commented on
Hey mark, how do I go about this feeling that I want the thoughts? Like the first time I had the thought I was extremely anxious but now it feels as if I’m actually wanting this to happen. Is this all just rumination? I even doubt that
It can really help to see that's just like any checking compulsion. Of you're checking feelings and attaching meaning to them like that, you're guaranteed to judge it as whatever feeling you'd see as a contamination. So it's useful to cut out compulsions to judge and attach meaning to brain weather.
How do i approach food compulsions? I always binge on junk food.... I overeat even junk food even when i have food at home.....i cook very tasty meals still i eat hotel food wgich costs me money and health.....how do i explore to cut out this compulsions?
Get to the root…
I had a lot of compulsions around food. I would binge and avoid compulsively. I did a video on the food avoidance compulsions. It was the same approach for tackling the compulsive binge eating, too. Check out the video here and let me know if you have any questions: th-cam.com/video/5g0RCB8sol4/w-d-xo.html
I have been suffering from existential OCD for probably 8 months now. It was triggered by a tiktok video on the simulation theory, I had a panic attack, started looking around me asking what’s real.. and it went from there to compulsively watching videos and reading forums on other existential theories trying to disprove it. Then I came across the theory of Solipsism 🤦🏼♀️ this has been by far the stickiest and hardest to get over. I just had a good period where I thought I was getting better but then I feel like Iv done a major relapse and I’m obsessing about it again, ruminating, very depressed at the thought. My issue with this theme is that unlike contamination or harm etc these theories and questions are the biggest questions of life and anyone of them could actually be true.. the thought of nothing and no one else being real feels like life or death to know. I want so bad to go back to being clueless. Please help me with some advice 😞
@@fuckballs8808 Thankyou yeah that seemed to help me too for awhile but I still have these setbacks. I also have this sense of dread because of this “hyperawareness” now of existence in general and how baffling it is and it makes me depressed that I can’t just go back to viewing thing’s obliviously.. it’s like even on my better days I’m obsessing about existence. Have you experienced this?
As the Beatles once said. "Let it be".
As always thanks so much Mark.
I'm in recovery 4 years now because of you and my support team.
Awesome video!
😁🙌 enjoy continuing the adventure!
So in order to recover fully from ocd you just have to destroy rumination, compulsions and avoidance?
I don't know what those mean to you, including what you mean by "recover fully", so I'm not sure. I find it way more useful to focus mental health around something we want to grow. In the same way we approach physical fitness. If you asked somebody if the way to "recover fully from Endurance Disorder is to destroy laziness, junk food bingeing, and avoiding the gym," would that deliver better endurance? Building better mental health and fitness will involve dropping some old habits, but what skills and capacities are you adding in and growing? Instead of focusing on cleaning away OCD, what do you want to add in? How will you add that in well, in a way that's useful to you and your community?
I've watched this a few times and what is said makes sense to me, but I don't see it described how to apply the ideas. Videos say how not to stop ruminating, but not how to stop ruminating, as far as I've been able to tell. I like the notion that rumination is part of trying to "get" rather than participate. That is a very useful idea, but is the advice to do what I've always done: once I am distracted, look at it, accept it, return focus to where it was.
My main problem with rumination is when doing sitting meditation, or when reading. When focusing on something, I distract myself, with internal dialog. What the words are is not he problem, it's that the dialog happens and mental activity follows that train of thought distracting me.
That internal dialog is the ruminating. We don't have to do that. We don't have to start doing it. The reason I suggest looking at the goal or what you're trying to get is because that's how you start ruminating and having the internal debates.
@@everybodyhasabrain Ok. For example, I'm reading and I notice that I didn't understand what I just read and I notice that a thought popped in my head about how I got a letter that I need to respond to. So, I note that fact, then return my focus to what I'm reading. I'm not judging the value of the train of thought. I'm not choosing to have the thought. I'm not feeling that I must have this thought or I must do something. The thought happened.
What I do then is refocus and try not to react to the fact that I became distracted. By "try not to react", there's the problem with checking if I'm reacting or not. But here, I mean not doing the activity of reacting to the fact that I checked.
So, have I already been doing what you suggest?
@videogamebotanist what you mentioned brings up a different question I'd be curious about: Why are you trying to get this "right" / do you often try to get certainty about understanding things?
@@everybodyhasabrain I have an obsessive need for certainty about uncertain things, in general. In the case of focusing, it's not a need it is a want or intention. So, it is a given that achieving the goal is desired. I don't need to convince myself the goal isn't needed.
@videogamebotanist You can see it that way if you find that useful. When I'm talking about compulsions, though, and the goals people are chasing that fuel more compulsions, like ruminating, I'm talking about that. It's changeable if we want to.
Wow
You don't fear losing your job with high quality material like this? 😉
It's always the goal!
My problem started with what I can only describe as a "despair attack." It was an anxiety attack that woke me up at 3:00am and was comprised of waves of impending doom and feeling like I was drowning in hopelessness. Was there any context to this hopeless feeling? No, none. It was not attached to anything in my life. I wasn't hopeless about money, job, relationship, health...nothing. I was feeling some guilt over ending a relationship, but that was the only thing on my mind.
So what was/is this whole despair thing about? Is this just a sudden depression attack? It must MEAN something? It was - and is - SO goddamn awful that I've been trying to solve it/get rid of it since. And clearly, it ain't working. Can dropping all of the rumination and trying to solve it actually work? Thank you.
This sounds to me like there were a lot of compulsions there before, or else you wouldn't be doing all of these compulsions around this experience. Instead of judging this as some kind of important thing requiring checking and chasing certainty, all of that time and energy could go to living life
@@everybodyhasabrain Thanks, Mark. I appreciate your time and content. I think your work will be even more important in 2024, with all of the calamities happening in the world and that may very well happen. I guess the only thing I am reluctant to do in what you suggest in the video is being curious about my awful thoughts. For me, getting curious about them becomes a form of rumination, which just makes it all worse. For me, I'm practicing being aware of them, and leaving it at that.
But my rumination is automatic.. i m aware i m ruminating and yet i can't stop it.. i m always planning and analysing the moments in past so it cannot happen in future.. the moment i realize and stop it comes back the next second
It may seem automatic now from lots of practice, but it's just like any we develop over time. It's changeable but it does involve making changes and learning new skills. Grabbing a good book on mental health skills or working with a skilled professional could be useful ways to start learning
@@everybodyhasabrain thank you Mark.. problem is we don't have mental health professionals here around distance I could travel.. "mental health problem = went crazy" is the common perspective here.. I have been watching TH-cam videos for 9 months guess that's what gotten me to this level.. I will try and come out if this and live my life.. but I want to spread help ppl like you if I make it.. I don't want nobody go through what I m going through..
same , so i let the mind do wht it wants, and thats it :) it goes away
Hello Mark ,why i cant see the comment i left here yesterday?
TH-cam sends me an email whenever there's a comment and this comment generated an email but there is no other email notification with a comment from you.
Mark, try to live our life and expect that the thoughts won’t come back is that another compulsion or not ?
Yeah, why would it matter if a thought is there or not? Great mental fitness is about having any thought or feeling. The goal you're suggesting would be life somebody saying they never want to do anything difficult in life. Then it would be very natural that everything feels difficult!
@@everybodyhasabrain it’s mean we have to keep doing our work while having any thought or feeling not about getting rid of thoughts and feeling.
How do i know the difference between ocd thoughts and feelings and real feelings? Like envy, jealousy and destructive thoughts about loved ones, which i do not act upon but they make me anxious. I have panic attacks too. I was never envious or jealous before but now I feel like i am secretly evil and narcissistic. Please help me. I want to be better.
It can really help to see it's not about that at all. It's about the compulsions, like posting this question repeatedly. We can practice compulsions around anything. And it helped me to recognize that if I have particular thoughts or feelings I'll make excuses for doing compulsions around, then the brain is just going to throw those thoughts and feelings up more. Instead of doing lots of checking and judging around brain stuff, it was way more helpful to identify actions I value and practice those consistently, while having any experience.
@@everybodyhasabrain Thank you so much. So you're suggesting me to stop checking and continue doing good actions i value and entirely ignore these thoughts and feelings right?
@auroraa140 I'd look at what you think that means, because you're checking here again, but mentioning the thoughts and feelings instead of the compulsion to check for certainty and get it "right" so something bad doesn't happen. What I'm suggesting is that I found it more useful to look at the actions I was doing, inside and outside of my head.
@@everybodyhasabrain Okay...so what should i do inside my head? Please? One last time if possible. I am really sorry to bother you so much. But its the only help i could get. Thank you
@auroraa140 I'd start by looking at things I'm doing outside my head, recognizing that the brain is just following what I teach it. The brain is logical. If I believe I need to do something repeatedly outside of my head to chase reassurance and control uncertainty, it's only logical the brain will do that internally. And when it comes to uncertainties internally, I'd approach them like any random sounds I experience. But that goes for all of the uncertainties popping up in there. I'm not going to put brain indigestion in charge of my life.
I find it tough to understand if im supressing thoughts or just not paying attention to it and living life instead. Is it about accepting whatever is in your mind instead of trying to ignore it?
Are those my only two options? Momentarily, I'm going to workout at the gym. My plan for my thoughts is the same as my plan for whatever music the gym is playing and whatever color the floor tiles are and whatever clothes the other people are wearing at the gym: I'm going to do my workout. If I can't access the weights or machines I want to use, I'll adjust my workout. And I have some basic principles for my workout so I can adjust it easily. But the environmental experiences, like brain stuff, I have no particular plan or approach for.
@@everybodyhasabrain that makes a lot of sense, my worst compulsion is ruminating so it's taking some effort to drop that stick my brain keeps throwing. Then i have the concern that by not addressing it and ruminating I'm suppressing the thought rather than just carrying on with life while my brain does whatever it wants.
@@user-ck1gy7vm7w there you can see the big fear! What consequences do you fear if you "suppress" a thought?
@@everybodyhasabrain that I'll perpetuate my OCD, even if I'm cutting out the compulsion of rumination.
@@user-ck1gy7vm7w classic health anxiety! Doing compulsions to check for reassurance and chase certainty about controlling that fear is already solidly practicing OCD.
If I don't ruminate I get anxiety so severe that I feel like throwing up, I get severe tension headaches and break out into hives. Then I retreat back into my "house" as you said in the video. Does anyone have any advice on how to deal with these symptoms?
It's going to involve not retreating. What you're encountering is very common. The headaches I experienced when cutting out compulsions were unlike anything I'd experienced before and I've never experienced them again. I described it as feeling like somebody was ripping bandaids off the inside of my skull. It's very typical that the brain throws up uncomfortable physical feelings when humans cut out compulsions. It's like withdrawal from any addiction. So it helped me to look at what supports I could put in place to help me through that period and not go back to the old addictions that just make things worse.
@@everybodyhasabrain Thank you, it really helps to know you experienced that as well! I haven't seen anyone else talking about it online. Could I ask what you mean by supports/have an example? :)
@saravictoria972 It depends on what the compulsions are. For example, when I was cutting out some compulsions I would do at home after work, I scheduled in stuff every night after work so I wasn't just sitting at home trying not to do the compulsions. And then the following week, I'd practice being at home but having things I could choose to do instead of the compulsions, like getting some interesting foods to cook for dinner.
@@everybodyhasabrain oh that makes sense! Mine are mostly mental so I think it'll take some figuring out. Thank you so much for your responses - your channel has helped me more than any other resource :)
Hi mark do you think social anxiety is a form of OCD?
They're all just labels. So I wouldn't look at either label but instead that people can practice lots of unhealthy skills around uncertainty in any situation. If somebody is practicing compulsions around social uncertainties, I don't see it as useful to give that a separate label.
Sometimes just to not ruminate i do random things to stay out of the head and i do distracting things and over do it, how to manage that?
How to manage what? You already see what you're doing isn't helpful and you want to do something different. So you can do something different.
@@everybodyhasabrain okay Mark 😭😭😭 i have the choice.
hi Mark I ruminate from the minute I wake up about ruminating. iv been told just to leave it there as its automatic what do you think. do I need to just try to stop ruminating
Mark everything you say make extremely sense. However i cannot do it 😄 especially something like gronial response. My brain says its ok if you have it only in your brain but look you have real response. Aand here we are !
But that is in your brain.
Thankyou so much It’s really helpful and comfort.🤍
😁🙌