u/dorianfinch

hey there! been on zoloft a year now and my compulsions are almost nonexistent. disclaimer also that to be fair, my ocd was not as severe as many people's (moreso O than C, if you know what i mean)

i have noticed, though, that there are a few shall we say "vestigial" impulses where all the anxiety/neurosis are gone and it's just a whimsical temptation/routine rather than something i HAVE to do. usually these are the magical just-right type things--- not stepping on cracks, doing things in 3s, etc.

in these cases, i can happily walk down a sidewalk and step on cracks and not care, but if i DO try to hopscotch over the cracks and avoid them, i feel slightly more satisfied, kinda a r/thatpeelingfeeling sensation, or like when you peel an orange or hard boiled egg in one intact piece.

i find it almost fun, like a secret game i have with myself, a little dance i do on the sidewalk. can't help but wonder though if i'm not taking this as seriously as i should and am enabling unhealthy things? haha

i don't really feel like it's a big deal and it doesn't bother me, and my psychiatrist/therapist aren't fazed by it, so i don't really have any need to do anything about it per se, but was curious if others have also seen this change in themselves!

Yesterday I baked brownies and, reaching into the oven to take them out wearing short sleeves and oven mitts, burned the back of my left forearm on the hot element at the top of the oven.

24 hours later that burn has faded into a painful brownish streak. As I stretched out my arms to look at the damage and see how it was healing, I couldn't help chuckling because I have a perfectly mirrored brown streak scar at the same point on the back of my right forearm from making the exact same mistake when baking a cake a month or two ago.

I really need to wear long sleeves when taking things out of the oven

In general I'm pretty far along on my recovery journey, thankfully (10 years of therapy total, 3 of them EMDR/IFS and am currently in phase 4 of EMDR)

my current struggle is: i have some positive change coming up in my life, but am having such a hard time feeling good about it, despite my best efforts!

story goes: been paycheck to paycheck for the last 3-ish years at a job where my coworkers love me but the management underpays me. finally got an opportunity for a job with a 20% salary increase and free health insurance, accepted it, and....

AAAAAAA I'M TERRIFIED

i remember feeling the exact same way years ago, when in the course of like 4 months i went from housing instability / getting evicted to finally buying my own house, so it's interesting to me that this kind of anxiety has historically been provoked by GOOD changes in my life moreso than bad ones. i think part of it is that with familiarity, even if it's a bad situation, you know what to expect, whereas with a change, even if it's good, there's an element of uncertainty that strikes fear into my inner child.

However, I feel like there's very few places in my life socially that I can even talk about this besides therapy because

1. if i were to vent to friends who are congratulating me, i worry about seeming ungrateful and childish for complaining about my life improving, like "OH NO I'M MAKING MORE MONEY AND GETTING BETTER INSURANCE BUT I HAVE ANXIETY ABOUT CHANGE, MY STEAK IS TOO JUICY etc etc"
2. i can't really talk about it at work cause i feel like my coworkers are all bummed about me leaving so i don't think they would really appreciate hearing about how hard it is for ME lolol i already feel guilty even making eye contact with them since i'm leaving a few days before the busiest time of year for that workplace

the thing is, i know this is an improvement and once i get settled into the new gig i will probably feel better. after i bought my house, for example, there was an initial "OH GOD WHAT HAVE I JUST DONE, WHAT IF I MADE A HUGE MISTAKE AND RUINED MY LIFE" feeling for a couple weeks, but it eventually faded into a feeling of safety/security/mundanity, so i just need to wait methinks.

my therapist and i were talking about my response to quitting my job and she correctly identified that it's very similar to the trauma response i had cutting off my abusive family and going no contact---where i felt relief, but also guilty for leaving, and also scared like i was about to walk off a cliff and didn't know if anything would catch me.

how to reassure my inner child with my inner adult? i feel like i keep trying to convince myself "no, no this is a good thing" in my internal monologue hahaha

disclaimer: i am neurodivergent so this may be part of my problem

in my social/romantic/work life i have come up against friction because i find it very difficult to tell a lie, even a white one. it's not really out of some moral/ethical code, even if it's a harmless situation (e.g. lying to my boss about having an appt so i can take PTO for a job interview somewhere else) i get so anxious/paranoid i can't bring myself to lie.

i find this has been detrimental socially, too; if a bandmate asks my opinion on a part and i dislike it, i tell them openly, which i fear hurts feelings, so i do try to make it as subjective me-not-you as possible ("it's not really my kind of thing" etc). i am okay with keeping secrets/withholding info, so lying by omission, as it were, is a bit easier, but if asked, i feel like a deer in headlights and immediately blurt out the truth.

i feel it may even have put a nail in the coffin of my last relationship, because my ex had lied about his qualifications to get his job and was pissed with me that i couldn't do the same, i think maybe he thought i was judging him? even though i tried to explain i didn't have a problem with it morally, i'm just a deeply anxious/paranoid person who gets clammy hands and tongue-tied and sweaty when trying to be less than honest (think the protagonist in Knives Out....or the tell tale heart, haha)

i'm honestly mindboggled by how easily others seem to be able to tell white lies without fear, and worry that i'm sorta screwed / at a permanent disadvantage socially because there are times in life where it's probably safer not to tell the truth.

but is this a skill that's possible to acquire? and if so, is it even worth it? seems distasteful but also widely-accepted and i fear my forthrightness will be my downfall someday.

Was commenting about this on someone else's post, but had so many feelings about it I thought I'd just make a separate post and copy some of them here because i don't feel like i hear people talk about it that much, and faith has been the biggest "mind-blow" of my recovery process.

Early on in processing my OCD spirals with my therapist, she noticed I kept going in circles with logic. "I know it's irrational and me looking up symptoms doesn't really change whether i have so-and-so disease or not, but..." and "I know it's not logical and me telling someone I love them before they leave for a road trip won't guarantee they don't die in an accident, but, but, what if...."

Like I couldn't get over the uncertainty part of it, the doubt, the "what if," but "in the 0.0000000001% chance that this compulsion might help the situation, i have to do it" (or the opposite, "even if there's only a 0.00000001% chance that me having a negative thought curses/jinxes the person i had a negative thought about, i would feel guilty for the rest of my life, so i can't ever risk it" etc etc etc....

My therapist asked if I had ever been religious, and I said no, was raised pretty much atheist/agnostic and still am as of writing this post! at that point, she said something akin to, "this may sound weird and as if i'm trying to tell you you need to find god or something and i absolutely don't mean that, but you need to dig deep down inside yourself and find SOME kind of faith, blind faith, even with no proof"

this was a genuinely mindblowing moment that kinda up-ended how i viewed my world. it also radically changed how i approached my OCD. i began to realize that logic wasn't working here and just trying to be rational about it and think "this coping method logically just isn't helping, so stop doing it" wasn't going to work, because i had so little faith in myself and the world that i was perpetually using OCD compulsions as a way to grant myself security, a sort of charm/ritual "just in case"

it occurred to me that no one getting on a train or plane knows for a fact that the vehicle won't crash, no one commuting to work knows if a drunk driver will hit them that day, that their house won't burn down while they're gone due to a freak accident, but they get on their ride or their flight nonetheless, just trusting that everything will go as intended. to me, that's the kind of faith/trust i was lacking, and that my ocd was trying to substitute itself for, and that therapy and working on my trust issues have helped me regain somewhat.

I've been trying to quit cigarettes for the better part of the last year. A month or so ago I mentioned this fact offhandedly to one of the cashiers at the corner store by my house when I bought a vape as an alternative to wean off smokes.

Now, when I am tempted to buy cigarettes and walk over there and I see through the window that he is working, I'm too embarrassed to buy them, since I told him I was quitting, and walk home.

I'mma be annoyed when I find the answer because, as the title of the sub says, it's at the tip of my damn tongue.

afaik he's still alive, active in the 90s/2000s.

i remember watching a film of his once but because it's experimental i don't recall a cohesive storyline. i remember the main character being an overweight man wearing rags or trash, possibly homeless? for some reason i also remember a scene of him tumbling down a hill or something. the movie had a very dreamlike, chaotic feel.

i remember the director's name being something like Daryl or starting with a D at any rate, but can't find him for the life of me.

WHO IS THIS MAN

It doesn't happen to me all the time, and I'm still trying to figure out if there's some kind of pattern relating to my nervous system state, hormones, stress levels, or what, but sometimes I feel like I can't sleep in a relaxed position and need to be not just in fetal position but fully clenched like a cat loafing, arms crossed and tucked under my armpits, knees squeezed around a pillow and pulled up to my chest, etc.

Or sometimes I'll tuck my hands into the waistband of my underwear on each side of my body so my arms are basically pressed/flattened against my abdomen/hips/thighs.

If I'm not all scrunched together, I feel restless and antsy and tingly as if I need to move.

Has anyone else experienced this feeling? It's almost like what I would imagine restless leg syndrome to feel like except my whole body. It does seem to be connected to periods of stress/depression but not always....? It also sometimes seems to be response to back/shoulder pain, but that too is kinda tied to my ptsd haha

The usual disclaimer i put on all my posts to mental health forums haha: i do have a great trauma/emdr therapist and i will ask her opinion too..... WHEN she comes back from vacation 😛

Today, I found myself getting massively triggered by something that usually triggers me (big spending). I am low-income, grew up pinching pennies, and one of my large household appliances crapped out this month and the repairman told me it had to be replaced. alas, there was nothing to be done. i managed to get a good deal on a new one ($500 won't make or break me, that's one week's pay, which is not IDEAL, but it's not gonna bankrupt me either) but nonetheless, am a bit discombobulated!

i did some tapping and breathing exercises and i'm not really anxious/panicking, so that helped that way, but I still feel a pervasive lingering sense of doom in the pit of my stomach like I'm about to fall into a hole in the ground if i take a step without looking, or i'm about to go home and find out that my house burned down and i'll be homeless tomorrow.

it is important to note, this happens EVERY TIME i have to take out a large amount of money. (e.g. when i had to get a tooth extraction, when i had to take my cat to the emergency vet, when i bought a used car five years ago, when my laptop broke and i had to buy a new one two years ago, when i had to buy a new smartphone three years ago). fortunately, since i am in fact poor lol, it doesn't happen super often. usually only like once a year, twice if i'm really unlucky lol (this year it was braces in the spring and now this new appliance)

but in most of these cases, it's something i can predict/know is coming. I know when i have to do home repairs, or medical procedures, or whatnot, it's not a surprise, it's something i've had to plan and research for some time. I went through so many appliance websites looking for the one with the best discounts, etc.....

so given this fact, the next time this has to happen in the future, is there anything i can to pre-emptively batten the hatches /gird the loins for the inevitability of being triggered? for some reason i've only ever really explored post-ventions (doing breathing exercises to calm back down, etc) but not really PRE-vention.

Background: been in therapy on and off 10 years, working with a great trauma/emdr therapist the last 3 to deal with childhood trauma.

Part of my homework from my therapist this week was to write (not meant to be sent) letters to estranged family members expressing what I would want to say to them and I've been dodging this homework all week like the plague.

Two weeks ago was my estranged sibling's birthday, this week was my no-contact ex's birthday. Two weeks from now is my estranged mom's birthday. This certainly got me in my feels in general.

It's weird trying to process grief for people who are still alive. My brain wants to hold out some delusional hope that maybe, someday, these people could still be in my life, even though I know that it's not possible with the way things are. There's this fantasy that my mom would get therapy and realize how her own trauma affected her abusive behavior to her kids, but every interaction i've had with her as an adult suggests that she doesn't remember anything, doesn't believe she ever did anything wrong, and is mad at me for still holding on to this trauma.

My dad was also abusive, but died several years back and it was much easier to process that grief since he was, well, completely gone. I grieved what he could have been, but there was a finality/closure to it since he never could be or do these things or change before he died.

But with my mom/siblings/ex, it's different, since they're still out there, I just have no communication with them for my own sanity, but I fear there will always be this hope of "but, but, what if they change?"

anyone have suggestions for concrete actions they took to grieve estrangements?

...and yes i should probably write those letters for my therapist 🙃 i almost wonder if these feelings i'm posting about are BECAUSE i don't want to confront this grief by writing those letters...

immediate disclaimer: obvs when therapy time rolls around i will also bring this question to my therapist, the most important person who can answer it! but i was curious to hear others' journeys.

i know with EMDR the saying is "first or worst" and I went with worst. Well, successfully processed my most salient childhood traumatic memory, but now I'm trying to figure out where to go from here. Couldn't seem to find a strong enough memory/connection and my therapist acknowledged, it may be that my brain/nervous system is enjoying too much the feeling of relief after the first reprocessing, so we took a break from the EMDR stuff and are just doing talk therapy / ifs until i decide what my next target is.

I have a huge variety of both big T and little T traumas and am trying to figure out what's the next one to focus on. The way I've been trying to do this, is highlighting things about me/my life that are unhealthy or that i don't want to keep doing (e.g. hypervigilance, avoidance, etc etc) and experiences that still trigger me in day-to-day life (at work, in social settings, in relationships, etc) and trying to figure out where they are coming from in my childhood so I can point to that memory as my next target.

However, the Worst memory was fairly obvious lol (think one big salient scary thing happening) whereas the rest are more mundane/spread out (think 18 years of living in a toxic/abusive family, more CPTSD than PTSD, if you get me) and it's really hard to alight upon what specific nervous system memory i'm trying to exorcise outta me.

there are also some examples of obvious traumas that aren't currently affecting me, so don't know if now is the time to work on it or if there's more pressing stuff.

for example---i've got trauma from being SA'd years ago, but i've been single/celibate for almost a year now so that's really not on the forefront of my mind, but i know that i do usually get triggered when i do become intimate with another person, so it's something i wanna address at some point in my life, but dunno if now is a relevant time for that haha. similarly, i don't own a car and have no intention to for a while, but have trauma from my dad shoving me while teaching me how to drive and crashing us into another car that i would like to try to process someday, but again, dunno if now it's even relevant since it doesn't particularly affect my life since i am not driving

To conclude with the same disclaimer, I will def be talking to my therapist about this, but how did y'all pick your trajectory in EMDR of which memories/traumas to address after getting the obvious one(s) out of the way?

Genuinely just curious! I've been workshopping various things about my lifestyle (diet, sleeping, etc) in the last couple years, and doing EMDR / IFS / trauma therapy, and I've noticed that hypervigilance keeps me from falling asleep most nights, but I tend to sleep shockingly well when there are people not in the room with me, but nearby and I can hear them.

I discovered this when i used to live in a HCOL area with many roommates and whenever my housemates would have a house party or whatever, I would immediately get sleepy and feel safe going back to my room and falling asleep while everyone else was drinking and laughing in the common areas. Even at work meetings, particularly if virtual so i'm not in the same room as my coworkers, the sound of ambient chatter makes me groggy.

However, I can't sleep with other people in the room, haha, unless it's a long-term partner or friend i know super well (like my old college roommate).

What is this? I wonder where I got it from? Is it just unique to me or do others experience it, and if you do, did you ever figure out what caused it or why it's that way?

(if i had to make a wild conjecture it would be that (1) the presence of others = i'm safe, others are looking out for me so i can be unconscious and no one will hurt me, (2) i am alone in my room/bed = i'm extra safe, no one is here to hurt me, and (3) people are laughing = i'm extra extra safe, no one is angry/yelling/mad. maybe? i know my bedtime was super weird as a child; if my dad was mad at me he'd lock us in his office and yell at me into the wee hours of the morning and not let me go to sleep)

Once I discovered this about myself, I started sleeping to the sound of comedy podcasts with groups of people casually yapping and it does help me sleep like a charm!

Recently started reprocessing my trauma through emdr bilateral stimulation and have since caught myself having what I would jokingly call sane person thoughts, and ironically feel insane because it's so unfamiliar, I'm like who is this voice in my head going "good job, you were fully present for that conversation and you cleaned your bedroom. The rest of your house is still a dump but don't worry you can do that another day"???

I've always had an inner monologue but it used to be way more self loathing and critical, like what happened to the version of my mental voice that was always like "wow you lazy disgusting piece of shit, no one will ever love you?" hahaha

Had my first successful phase 4 session after trying and not-being-ready-yet a few times over the last few years.

For anyone curious - It's interesting, the "EMDR" part (technically it's all EMDR but you know what i mean, the bilateral vibration and going back to the traumatic memory and reprocessing it) was actually the easiest part. It's almost exactly as nitty-gritty nutsy-boltsy as they say, not so much thinking, just your brain/nerves making connections. almost like a physical workout. The preparation was the big struggle, and the burnout/fatigue afterwards is rough, but the actual processing itself was easy and almost euphoric after.

I didn't understand how it would feel until I did it. I thought it was going to feel fake, like me forcing myself to change how I feel about my past, but actually, it happened by itself, naturally.

The first time I visited the traumatic memory in the session, I was in it, a child, crying, overwhelmed, feeling all the feelings. The more I kept revisiting under the guidance of my therapist (i'd describe what i was seeing, hearing, feeling, and at certain points she'd say 'go with that' etc. etc.) the more it was like I was my adult self sitting next to my child self, saying "you know you can leave if you want, right?"

it almost felt like a lucid dream or out of body experience where you realize "hold on, this is a dream, i can actually control this and do what i want"

and then instead of focusing on the traumatic thing happening, my brain was like "wait a minute, i just realized i can see the door from here." and then after that every time i revisited the memory, I KEPT LOOKING AT THE DOOR and then i got up and left. like i physically, emotionally, couldn't feel bothered by it, couldn't feel spiraling out of control, because damn, i could see the door and i realized, i can do whatever i want. i could leave.

my brain had suddenly stopped caring/being triggered by it!? it wasn't like i was trying not to care or thinking that I ShOUldN'T care, i just DIDN'T.

as i left therapy i felt good but EXHAUSTED like i'd run a marathon and my whole body was tired and sore but i was breathing more deeply and fully than i have in ages. i also had more range of movement in my neck/shoulders than before, but painful movement!

i felt like i'd never be able to explain to people what i experienced, haha. I felt like even if it was a placebo, i don't care, i'mma just keep doing this until I can reconnect all of my brain that I can.

the next 24 hours were filled with racing thoughts but not distress, moreso my brain revisiting OTHER similar memories and going "wait a minute, i'm in control here, i could have left here too!" etc, applying my experience of that one trauma to a bunch of other smaller ones. i took the day off work and laid around doing next to nothing but it was refreshing!

i look forward to more of these 👀

I have a friend i met thru an ex some 7 or 8 years ago. She and her family used to have me and my ex over for holiday celebrations, barbecues etc and then after the breakup three years ago understandably my ex was invited and I wasn't because he was closer to them.

but then two years ago he moved across the country and they had a falling out. I don't know why but I guess there was a small part of me that hoped I would get invited again bc I like those friends but it's been 2 years and a whole other partner and break up since that last ex and I still have not been invited to their house since.

We still see each other in public at shows or we'll even hang out or go to movies together etc but I have not been invited to their house ever again.

I don't know if it's intentional or what? I'm friends with her on social media and I see her post photos of barbecues and parties and things at her house hanging out with friends and I guess I'm confused why I never get invited but I also don't want to be rude or entitled.

I just wonder if I did something wrong you know?

At the same time I feel like by bringing it up I might open a can of worms or make things awkward so maybe I should just accept that I'm banned from their house for unknown reasons haha

I try not to post here toooo frequently but eff it, a rare double post.

It's been a rough week for my mental health, I haven't been my best self, but also have been socializing and spending time with friends which both helped AND also drained my internal battery even more.

UNFORTUNATELY, everyone on my team is out of office this week so I can't take a mental health day / time off.

As such, I'm up here fighting for my life (not literally don't worry) trying not to let my burnout bleed into how i treat patients etc.

In a perfect world, I would take the time off that I need to go home and rest. But alas, this is not a perfect world and I also gotta pay my bills 😒

how to survive this workweek without crashing out? anyone have tips/routines that worked?

things i do:

• try to nap on my lunch break to reset my brain
• listen to podcasts to try and distract myself and chill my brain out during downtime
• use a heated/weighted shoulder wrap to try and unclench my body
• go straight to bed after getting home from work lol

Responded to a post on a somewhat similar topic, but didn't want to hijack their post with my own questions so I figured I'd make my own, haha-

context for "dysfunctional as a human"-- I've been in trauma therapy for the last few years, but keep getting stymied at EMDR. Basically, my therapist and I have tried to start EMDR a few times in the last year or two and every time, it turns out that I get retraumatized and am not ready / my resilience isn't quite where it needs to be yet. Which is fine, I've accepted that this is a "try, try again" situation, but it has made me very conscious of the fact that my nervous system isn't quite up to scratch right now. and the intense-ness of trauma therapy has actually made me even more sensitive/weird/triggered for a bit.

Still, I'm human and want connection and friendship and love like anyone else, and want to hang out with people I care about. So my first conclusion was "oh well, we're all flawed, good friends will understand and love me anyway."

BUT THEN, I had a few experiences in the last year where I feel that my PTSD is detrimental to social situations not just in an awkward way, but in a harmful way. Not like I'm abusive or anything, but I've hurt people's feelings.

Examples--

1. one time, my PTSD was unintentionally triggered by a friend trying to give me a hug and I threw up my hands and shouted "don't touch me!" at them in a public place, which made them feel really bad. I apologized, but, damage was done; drive home was awkward as hell and even though the person said it was fine and they understood, it was still just a generally bad experience and also made my friend look bad in front of a bunch of people who didn't know the context of the situation.
2. this week my nervous system has been activated as hell (something happened over the weekend that triggered some parental trauma) and I was in full on "PLEASE LIKE ME" fawn mode which backfired because someone was trying to tell me about their health struggles and I kept interjecting my own similar experiences as an attempt to relate to them (OH ME TOO! ACTUALLY THAT HAPPENED TO ME LAST YEAR AND I blah blah blah blah irrelevant tangent) like a total ass.* I apologized, but again, damage was done and the friend felt invalidated because I made the conversation about me

*edit: in an attempt to be kinder to myself, perhaps not a total ass but absolutely childish haha. I find the "I WANNA BE PART OF SOMETHING, I WANNA BELONG" pick-me person i don't like in myself is a very young unhealed child part of my psyche.

Now, while ruminating about this, it occurred to me, MAYBE all this could have been avoided if I had checked in with myself about where my mental health/nervous system was at and decided "Nah, you're too activated/triggered to be able to have a healthy conversation, maybe sit this one out at home." However, embarrassingly, the reality was, in both of the above examples when I checked in with myself, I was like "Yes i'm mentally unstable and a mess AND i really miss people and am lonely so i'm going to go see my friends anyway" which at the time seemed like self-love and radical acceptance of myself (in a "well, i'm not healed and not perfect but i still deserve love" way), but now in retrospect seems selfish, like "I know i'm not in a place where I can treat people with the gentleness they deserve but fuck it, *I* want to see people so I'm going to do it anyway"

i definitely am not trying to self-flagellate though so i'm having a hard time finding the truth in this situation. Not in crisis, but definitely overthinking it, haha. What's the happy medium? Maybe go out and at the first sign of "oh shit i'm being a bitch" go home?