u/Tough_Rush3668

I have been in a relationship for almost 4 years with somebody who is working through severe CPTSD from childhood neglect and experiences intense emotional swings (very high highs, very low lows). He is very different from my last partner (we were also together for 4 years), who had an extremely stable home life, but had a very minimal emotional range. He ended up cheating on me, and this made my assumptions about predictive behaviors in other people--especially the ones I have dated--go haywire. That, and my parents are currently in the midst of a divorce after 24 years of marriage. So, yeah. None of this is helpful for my tendency for obsessive thought spirals. But I have been determined to lean into and share things that have helped me handle my fears, which most often circulate around the idea that I am currently being abused or manipulated according to "future" me.

- I allow myself to wonder: So what if this fear is true? Often, I find the most terrifying imagined consequence to be something I would actually be very adept at handling. I would much rather "let" the terrible thing happen than concede to avoidant or fearful behaviors in an attempt to avoid them. To avoid challenge would be to avoid my own growth.

- If I am in a social media ROCD spiral, forcing myself to stop has not necessarily helped curb the habit. Even when I am successful at stopping, I find myself in the same doom scroll hours later with no perceived "progress" made. This is especially an issue with absorbing advice. So, lately, I have been intentionally absorbing conflicting advice about similar situations and doing my best to think about what experiences would have led someone to make their particular conclusions. This has helped alleviate my desire to put advice or behaviors into categories of "correct" and "incorrect," because most of the time, I can completely understand why each person would want to share a particular conclusion. What is right for one person may or may not be right for me, and it is up to me to make that determination, not anybody else.

- It is very easy to see the world in terms of right and wrong, but very difficult to make accurate determinations while you are in the throes of an anxiety-inducing situation. "Right" and "wrong" have almost never been accurately determined in the moment in any social challenge. These determinations require time and intentional analysis to determine, and ROCD is very intent on eliminating both of these things. ROCD demands immediacy and assuredness, which is almost never offered in the moment.

- A lesson inside of a lesson: One of my worst, most disagreeable teachers in school taught me one of the most valuable lessons of my life: when answering multiple choice questions on a history exam, the correct answer is most likely not going to have the word "never" or "always" in it. If you find yourself thinking in such terms or are tempted by others who use them, this is your permission to dismiss those thoughts or conclusions. I am so happy that a teacher I (still) find appalling gave me this advice; in the same vein, I cannot think that "bad teachers never teach anything good or well."

- READ. READ. READ. Read fiction novels, short stories, and essays. Read ones you think you will love AND ones you think you will hate. Read popular and unpopular content. Write about what you thought of them after, THEN--if you really want to--read other's thoughts or reviews. Do your best to come to your own conclusions before reading what other people think. Feel free to edit your review, but do not alter what you have already written. Write: "After reading thoughts from others, I realized I had not considered _______ or _______." This may seem unrelated to ROCD but has been very helpful in my acceptance of nuance and resisting the urge for an immediate answer or conclusion.

- Work on trusting others. I am going to hazard a guess that a lot of people with ROCD have a "If you want it done right, do it yourself" mindset. Allow yourself to let others feel discomfort or challenge and trust that they can handle these feelings independently. If they earnestly ask for your help, provide it without a desire for repayment.

- Know that despite all of your effort, sometimes, you will have to deal with the exact result or event you feared. As human beings, we are never bound to being 100% right OR 100% wrong. ROCD thoughts are not shut down by telling yourself to not trust any emotion or feeling. See bullet point 1.

- Sometimes, I encourage myself to think on negative, unfortunate, or bad things that have happened to me or the people in my life. I think, "Would my thought spiraling have been able to change what had happened?" I have never been able to truthfully come to the conclusion that it would have helped. In fact, my worst thought spiraling had occurred in the weeks being apart from my ex-partner. In that time, I feared he was cheating on me with one particular friend of his. I had no evidence that this was true. As it had turned out, he was cheating on me with that exact friend. At the time, I took this to believe that my gut feeling and obsessiveness had led me to come to the right conclusions and that my behavior had been vindicated. But, frankly, those weeks of fear had not gained me anything. The result would have been the same regardless of whether or not I had been oblivious. It is another example of "So what if you're right?" Being right does not change the result. Even if I had decided to act on my fear and confront him about my suspicions (which I had, sort of), my feelings would have had zero impact on the situation at hand. In fact, that vindicated spiraling made it much more difficult to process what had happened to me in the years to come.

- Read Hope for Cynics by Jamil Zaki. Again, not ROCD focused, but the science behind optimism is powerful and vindicating for the human spirit. Self-doubt and doubt in the integrity of others are part of a vicious cycle of isolation and avoidance. To model trust and accept that sometimes the trust will be misplaced is much more fruitful than anticipating betrayal. Cynics have scored less well on aptitude and predictive testing. To assume the best in people is, surprisingly, not as naive as we think.

- Remember that as we are in a new era of relationships, many challenges will feel like and be approached as untreaded territory. There is something very paradoxical about the freedom we are allowed in relationships, especially with women. In many of our communities, marriage is no longer an economic decision or one forced onto us. This is absolutely beneficial and socially positive, but as human beings, not every improvement can result in 100% good feeling all around. We are riddled with evolutionary protective mechanisms that require us to engage in threat assessment, and in that, there are certain discomforts revealed in freedom of choice. While we were once limited to our own communities in choosing (or being given) partners, we now truly have access to a better part of the globe. There have never been more fish in the sea. This choice paralysis is terrible for ROCD specifically! Accepting this has helped me immensely.

Good luck to all of you!

i'm honestly feeling more hopeful about my depression management than i have in a long time. it's also, of course, making me ashamed that i haven't figured something like this out sooner, but whatever. i can't go back in time.

i was feeling like shit, mindlessly scrolling a few mornings ago. i think my algorithm has become less brainrotty, which is good. anyway, there was an account that i of course can't find now but it was some lady who went to clown school and described an improvisation (?) warmup to access her inner "clown" (lol) and it was to physically point at random objects in her house or room and name something it was not. so, point at broom, say "paperclip." point at ceiling fan, say "michelangelo." no rules, just name the thing it's not. i have no fucking idea why this lights my brain up. i can physically feel weight lifting off of me when i do this. is it some neural pathway thing? is it some sort of thought interruption? i don't know. it's not a cure all, but christ does it make things just a tiny bit easier. and i need all of the tiny things i can get.

i think if someone had told me to do this i would tell them to fuck off and that it sounded dumb. i ended up trying it literally out of spite after i swiped a few times and was still thinking about it, just to get it out of my head. but then i felt the tiniest bit better, so i kept doing it. and then i got the fuck out of bed!

the times when i feel the most crazy is when i do the small, stupid thing, and i feel it work for just a second. then i crash back down again because why do i have to have a breakdown and do something no one else has to do to feel remotely normal? but this low effort, dumb thing has taken me out of depressive spirals and gotten me out of bed three days in a row this week. im worried about it not working or starting to feel dumb to the point of it being not worth it at some point, but maybe if i keep this up i won't need to do it.

so if you're spiraling right now, try it. or just try to think something nonsensical you haven't thought before. the ridiculousness of looking at a chair and calling it a wide-toothed comb puts spiraling into a very strange perspective. you end up seeing how cut and dry everything feels and how quickly the regularity of pessimism takes over. like, my depression is an endless cycle of the same bad thoughts over and over. depression looks at everyday things and calls it something sad, which is its own way of pointing at something and calling it what it's not. just like the exercise, it's profoundly stupid. it's the same process but flipped around, so maybe that's why it doesn't feel as difficult as every other godforsaken general recommendation to exercise and eat better.

i want to try more stuff like this, and trying new things has not been in my repertoire for a long time.

best of luck to everyone here. do what you can to step outside of yourself as much as possible. depression is stupid. it's dumb. but it's not us. sometimes you have to do dumb stupid shit in response. fight fire w fire.

23, trying to find my footing. my father is (unfortunately? fortunately?) going into mental health treatment for the month and i have volunteered to take care of his house and, more significantly, be mom to his very untrained dog. she is a sweetheart and has what she needs--except for consistency, which she has not been getting from my dad. and i need the fucking motivation to be consistent.

i need to move all of my stuff in to the house (which i would be doing anyway), to work on my 6 active art commissions, do a deep clean, and attempt to train this dog. i'm also electing to be sober for the month, not out of necessity, but just want to establish my baseline. i've made a grocery list and meal plans. i don't start in-person work again until august, so i figure this is the perfect time to really learn what i am capable of.

my biggest struggle is going to be going to bed and getting up at generally the same time every day. i fucking loooove staying up way too late because i feel like i haven't gotten "enough" out of the day. gotta stop that.

if anyone has any advice or words of encouragement, i'm happy to receive them.