#ocd

[marcusbrutus]

the worst part about ocd and ocd-like tendencies is that you think hyper-analyzing your thoughts and constantly psychoanalyzing yourself will fix you but that's actually part of the disorder. it's the disorder. disordering.

[scrupulosity-comics]

the mortifying but kind of therapeutic ordeal of being known

[aplpaca]

Pro tip! If u have OCD, that genre of advice stuff that's like "if youre questioning whether youre X, you probably are" is not for you and is in fact poison!!!

[5altwaterfall]

and punishments. more punishments. surely that will help

i just need to have more rules for myself. more rules and limits. surely that will help me

[woodlouseandbird]

my therapist suggested i imagine my intrusive thoughts in the voice of donald trump bc i do not possess an ounce of respect for him or trust in his competence. going thru it today so i made this. hope this helps

[swordbird7]

having OCD is so funny because I can promise you that any given point I am having a complex and heated inner dialogue with myself, and I am losing.

[rednexxsaysthing]

Happy disability pride month from a proud disabled person

[azuremist]

I DESPERATELY needed someone to tell me this as I grew up in leftist online spaces. So now I am going to tell YOU:

If you

Check what you sent over and over to make sure you didn’t say a slur instead of “hello how are you”

Fear that someone will find you thinking not-leftist-enough thoughts and will call you out and ruin you

Feel you have to make your intentions clear and over-explain your actions

Find yourself consistently resisting the urge to engage in reassurance-seeking WRT being a good enough ally to marginalized people

Stay up late endlessly debating political ethics in your head

Have a set of actions that you take after discovering you made a morally wrong decision so that you can atone, which you rely on for reassurance that you are not a bad person

Would rather not make a decision at all than make a decision that is the lesser of two evils, but is not morally pure

then I am gently, but firmly, requesting that you look into moral scrupulosity OCD.

[beemovieerotica]

dear people with OCD: the next time you have spiraling & intrusive thoughts, what-ifs, or catastrophizing scenarios, I am sending a cardigan-wearing 46-year old NYU professor directly into your brain and he says "Aaaaand scene!!!" and he claps his hands slowly. and he says "Wow. Wow. Powerful stuff. Evocative imagery. A little bit post-modern, a little bit hysterical realism in the vein of Don Delilo but let's pause right here." and you will recognize your thoughts as a perplexing avant-garde film shown to an audience of 15 liberal arts students who are now trying to get a good grade and sleep with their professor.

[givemesoupgivemelove]

Saying 'Yeah I got you!! I got you on camera!! When catching an intrusive thought, and picturing it doing this back

saying “LEAVE IT!!” to my intrusive thoughts like a dog that has something it shouldn’t have in it’s mouth

[marcusbrutus]

tumblr: constantly be aware of your own privilege. constantly be aware of your capacity of be evil. hey i know you really like that new piece of media but make sure you're aware of all of the problematic elements all the time. hey i noticed you reblogged a post from a designated Bad Person so please make sure you do a thorough background check on everyone you reblog from to make sure they're not bad, otherwise people might get the wrong idea about you. always be aware of everything bad that's happening in the world all the time because silence is violence. i see you not reblogging this post btw. activist burnout is a privilege so be aware of that. xyz people are required to reblog this post. if you're not constantly fighting against designated Bad People you are inherently complicit and therefore a Bad Person.

people with ocd:

[lizardho]

In response to "The Liz Show" / unmasking: Do you have any advice on learning to unmask? Because to me it kind of feels like trying to roleplay the version of me that someone I am talking to expects / wants from me has become somewhat instinctive, since for quite a while that was the only way I found to somewhat successfully survive social interactions at all. I am now aware that this miiiight not be a reliable long term strategy, but I am not quite sure how to... start stopping it? More often than not I am not great at accessing my own emotions, which makes identifying my unmet needs difficult and communicating those needs effectively pretty much impossible.

So, any tips and tricks you can share?

(PS: despite all the above, I am aware that you are A Therapist, but not MY Therapist, so no, I am not expecting you to suddenly have a solution to all my issues, sorry for dropping them on you :D )

Thank you for sharing that at the end of the Ask, and I’ll reiterate it here just to be safe. I’m a therapist but not YOUR therapist, dear reader, so please take all of this with a grain of salt and trust your own intuition about these tips.

One tip I like to share with my patients is where I’ll start: Things like ADHD and Austism are disabilities and as such are disabling. Of course, most people have been told to “power through it, grow up, don’t let it hold you back, don’t give me those excuses” so it often doesn’t feel like you have permission to feel the weight of the knowledge that you’re disabled. So start by being twice as kind to yourself as you feel you deserve. Rest twice as long. Celebrate your wins twice as much. Be twice as patient with yourself. Because we’re starting from a deficit, and that deficit is often maintained by shame and exhaustion, and so as a result if you’re doubling up on kindness you’re probably just barely breaking even.

Some other things I like to do are look for examples of things I do in others, including non-human others. If you see a dog run past a ball, then find it when they double back, they don’t go “oh, stupid, I’m such an idiot. I’m a joke. I don’t even deserve the ball, I walked right past it and missed my opportunity,” they pick that fucker up and party about it. If you notice something you could use help on after someone asks and you said “no,” don’t treat it as a failure or a missed opportunity, see it as a present opportunity to ask for help now. Neurodiverse people often need more time to recognize and understand feelings. If you let people know that’s a part of your experience, it helps make it easier to circle back on things and say “Hey, yesterday when you asked if you could help I couldn’t think of anything, but I have some things you could help with if the offer still stands.” Do this for anything it applies to - asking for clarity, asking for help with daily tasks, asking for patience, asking for more time to rest, etc.

Another thing that is helpful is to keep in mind that YOU are the sole arbiter of your experiences. If something bugs you, it just does. You don’t need to wait until you can explain it to someone else effectively enough for them to believe you for it to be real. The same goes for joy - you don’t need to be able to justify why you love things to love them as deeply as you do. If flicking your fingers helps you calm down, do it. Nobody can really explain why anything works for them, you don’t have to be any better than them.

The last tip that comes to mind as a broad, generally applicable tip to anyone, is get curious, but don’t ask “why?” Ask “What?” “How?” “When?” or “Where?” Why is an OFFENSIVE question in a literal sense - not that it is rude but that it forces the responder to be on the DEFENSIVE. You have to justify it, and we just covered how difficult that is in the best of circumstances. By asking other questions, it helps you to reflect on things without having to justify them, which gives you more of a chance to really think about them without the pressure of defending something. Don’t ask “why am I like this?” ask “what happened to bring up this feeling?” or “where do I feel this in my body?” or “how did I get this tired so quick?”

Some other things I can recommend more specifically for recognizing emotions are; pay attention to the physical sensation that accompanies the emotion, and eventually you can learn to recognize emotions by reading your body like a map. Also note basic impulses that accompany emotions - if you don’t know what you feel but you notice you wanna stare at your shoes and hide then it might be embarrassment or excitement. If you notice the impulse to put something between you and someone else you may be feeling a little uncomfortable with them. Noticing physical and behavioral reactions to feelings can help identify them more clearly. It can also help to detach somewhat from emotions - if you feel something really strongly and it’s confusing see if you might be feeling 2+ things at once (like angry because you touched wet bread and excited because your favorite movie is starting and tired because it’s been a tough week and and and…) Noticing emotions as parts of you and not the entirety of you can sometimes help people with this. There are lots of practices from ACT, IFS, and DBT that can help people develop these skills but some of my faves are the chessboard analogy from ACT, Parts Mapping from IFS, and the STOP skill from DBT. If you don’t know what these are, you should be able to look them up and find materials to help you practice them.

Ask for help often, masking often leads us to stretch ourselves thin and wear ourselves down to the bone trying to do more than we can. And help yourself as often as you can. If you can’t go to class in an outfit but CAN go in your jammies and with sunglasses on then do that, because you need it to be yourself.

And remember that you don’t HAVE to do anything, and that includes unmask. Masking has some benefits, and can be valuable if done appropriately. Just recognize that either way there is a cost involved. Masking at a work meeting may mean you’re dead tired tonight and can’t take engage in interests, but unmasking may make other people at the meeting think you’re strange. This is not a moral failure, it’s a cost-benefit analysis. Making eye contact with your bestie at lunch may mean you appear more conversational and she feels more heard, but may mean you retain less because you’re monitoring your facial expressions and reactions more consciously. Take care of yourself, trust your intuition, be gentle with yourself, and as always, be gayer, read more Terry Pratchett, and take more naps.

I can ALSO highly recommend the Unmasking Autism books by Dr. Price @drdemonprince for learning to unmask. He has made some great worksheets that have helped me and my patients a lot.

[syn4k]

[radioactive-yuri]

ocd is so fucked up, why do i feel targeted by posts about people that do things that i have literally never done myself. i'm out here feeling bad for things i never did. my tulpa sins. the bad behavior that i Imagined in my Mind and then started feeling guilty about.

[idontmatter2you]

This takes me back