I’d done deep breathing before as well as the 5 4 3 2 1 sensory thing for anxiety. But it somehow never occurred to me that this could involve paying attention to more ambient bodily sensations or my emotional state. In other words, paying attention to my environment and paying attention to myself were separate activities, which is the opposite of grounding.
So right now I’m just making a habit out of noticing when I’m stuck in my head and paying attention to my surroundings as well as how I’m existing in those surroundings. This was something I did as a kid but willed myself to stop doing because “if I’m not paying attention, the solution isn’t to look around the room at stuff. It’s to concentrate harder.” Turns out looking around the room was a grounding technique I’d picked up on my own and was shamed out of because you could see my eyes wandering and people thought I wasn’t listening.
And the results so far are that even mild clutter makes me feel out of control and dirty and that I spend most of my time in a slightly heightened state of anxiety, which I’ve trained myself to ignore and numb, mostly through media consumption. In other words…. my contamination OCD made my environment unmanageable so now I’m addicted to social media as an avoidance tactic. I have some other rituals related to this as well, mostly about keeping very small areas where I’m required to regularly peel myself away from my phone excessively tidy.
I identify heavily with a lot of that, specifically the avoidance. I've been working on the mindfulness techniques you're describing of noticing yourself in relation to your surroundings, but I've found it really difficult. My mind is so trained to recoil back into itself and dwell on those inner thoughts that when I'm trying to "be present" the racing thoughts just seem to intensify. Or if I am able to focus on my body and physical sensations, my brain just rapidly jumps from one to the next. But I'm still working on it and hoping it improves. It sucks that mindfulness at this point is stressful for me though, as of course that's the polar opposite of the intention behind it.
The larger project for me at the moment is to learn to process my emotions with a wider range of coping strategies than avoidance and overintellectualization. Right now I’m mostly numbing them and talking myself out of them, including ones that are valid and necessary to work through.
Medication and thought replacement helped the racing thoughts for me. A lot of recurring negative self talk can be rephrased in a way that short circuits the tendency to start spinning. Once you’ve identified your triggers for those thought spirals, playing around with different framings of a thought helps. A mild example for me is that “This person who I’m close to is mad at me” can become “I feel insecure that this person would not tell me if they were upset with me”. It’s not a reassurance, which would reinforce the obsessive tendency of the thought, and it’s not focusing on an unknowable fact (someone’s immediate feelings). And also sometimes, it’s just trial and error to see which thoughts do and don’t make you spin.
This is excellent advice. Would you say these are strategies you've developed with the guidance of a therapist or just work you've learned to do on your own? In my limited understanding, this sounds like CBT methodology (or even DBT?). Also, would you mind saying what medication has helped you with racing thoughts? Obviously no worries if not.
These are mostly things I’ve learned from therapy. I’d rather not talk meds because, as I understand it, I was prescribed it due to other issues I have being comorbid with OCD. I’ve gotten mixed reactions from various mental health professionals when I tell them what I’m on and why. So I don’t think it’s something I want to implicitly recommend, but I’m also not gonna chance it because it works and you don’t fuck with functional meds
Oh ok, I hear you. First of all, I'm glad to hear you've found something that works for you to an extent, both as far as therapy and medication. I'm still trying to find the right combination without much success. I'm actually on an opioid medication in part to help with the severe depression but I was not surprised when it started causing more problems than helping, so I'm trying to taper off of it now. While it did wonders during the honeymoon phase, I would strongly recommend against it for most others. Just sayin', I get it.
What methods do you use?
I’d done deep breathing before as well as the 5 4 3 2 1 sensory thing for anxiety. But it somehow never occurred to me that this could involve paying attention to more ambient bodily sensations or my emotional state. In other words, paying attention to my environment and paying attention to myself were separate activities, which is the opposite of grounding.
So right now I’m just making a habit out of noticing when I’m stuck in my head and paying attention to my surroundings as well as how I’m existing in those surroundings. This was something I did as a kid but willed myself to stop doing because “if I’m not paying attention, the solution isn’t to look around the room at stuff. It’s to concentrate harder.” Turns out looking around the room was a grounding technique I’d picked up on my own and was shamed out of because you could see my eyes wandering and people thought I wasn’t listening.
And the results so far are that even mild clutter makes me feel out of control and dirty and that I spend most of my time in a slightly heightened state of anxiety, which I’ve trained myself to ignore and numb, mostly through media consumption. In other words…. my contamination OCD made my environment unmanageable so now I’m addicted to social media as an avoidance tactic. I have some other rituals related to this as well, mostly about keeping very small areas where I’m required to regularly peel myself away from my phone excessively tidy.
Thank you for sharing and thanks for the advice.
I identify heavily with a lot of that, specifically the avoidance. I've been working on the mindfulness techniques you're describing of noticing yourself in relation to your surroundings, but I've found it really difficult. My mind is so trained to recoil back into itself and dwell on those inner thoughts that when I'm trying to "be present" the racing thoughts just seem to intensify. Or if I am able to focus on my body and physical sensations, my brain just rapidly jumps from one to the next. But I'm still working on it and hoping it improves. It sucks that mindfulness at this point is stressful for me though, as of course that's the polar opposite of the intention behind it.
Anyway, best wishes to you comrade.
The larger project for me at the moment is to learn to process my emotions with a wider range of coping strategies than avoidance and overintellectualization. Right now I’m mostly numbing them and talking myself out of them, including ones that are valid and necessary to work through.
Medication and thought replacement helped the racing thoughts for me. A lot of recurring negative self talk can be rephrased in a way that short circuits the tendency to start spinning. Once you’ve identified your triggers for those thought spirals, playing around with different framings of a thought helps. A mild example for me is that “This person who I’m close to is mad at me” can become “I feel insecure that this person would not tell me if they were upset with me”. It’s not a reassurance, which would reinforce the obsessive tendency of the thought, and it’s not focusing on an unknowable fact (someone’s immediate feelings). And also sometimes, it’s just trial and error to see which thoughts do and don’t make you spin.
This is excellent advice. Would you say these are strategies you've developed with the guidance of a therapist or just work you've learned to do on your own? In my limited understanding, this sounds like CBT methodology (or even DBT?). Also, would you mind saying what medication has helped you with racing thoughts? Obviously no worries if not.
These are mostly things I’ve learned from therapy. I’d rather not talk meds because, as I understand it, I was prescribed it due to other issues I have being comorbid with OCD. I’ve gotten mixed reactions from various mental health professionals when I tell them what I’m on and why. So I don’t think it’s something I want to implicitly recommend, but I’m also not gonna chance it because it works and you don’t fuck with functional meds
Oh ok, I hear you. First of all, I'm glad to hear you've found something that works for you to an extent, both as far as therapy and medication. I'm still trying to find the right combination without much success. I'm actually on an opioid medication in part to help with the severe depression but I was not surprised when it started causing more problems than helping, so I'm trying to taper off of it now. While it did wonders during the honeymoon phase, I would strongly recommend against it for most others. Just sayin', I get it.