Things Your OCD/Anxiety Make You Do & How to Deal With Them: A Thread.

Science breakdown: Your amygdala, aka the part of the brain in charge with emotional regulation, aka the newest evolutionary part of your brain, is responsible for your anxious thoughts. The amygdala scans our environment for threats or makes them up to keep us safe.

I talk about this in depth in my other anxiety threads, so I'll keep it short. The Amygdala monitors your environment, random things it thinks of, and gets bored so it triggers you on purpose for hormones, 24/7/365. Even when we sleep.

The amygdala has no idea if a danger is real or made up. It honestly thinks "Oh I thought it, it's going to come true." And it starts to send signals to the body saying we're in danger, body starts fight/flight/fawn, and we start our anxiety cycle.

I know what you're thinking, "The amygdala is an asshole", and no it's not. It's keeping you safe + this level of heightened awareness at one point in your life saved you or made you feel safe. The problem w/ anxiety disorders is we have amygdalas that are too sensitive.

In a person w/o an anxiety disorder, their amygdala gets triggered when they see a bear. Not when they think about someone they love, look at water, see an animal, think about a failure, or anything that triggers us. Their brain see's actual danger, ours see's I think this is bad

Actual "Things Your OCD/Anxiety Make You Do & How To Stop Them Thread:

1. You think a song lyric is a sign. Ever been in the car and heard a song about "They don't love you, never did", and immediately thought "fuck, they don't want me?" or "if I hear this song again it's a sign", and then your friend shoots you a link to the music video?

Here's the thing, honest truth from your friendly Mystic and Psych Student. That song lyric is NOT a sign. A book plot is not a sign. Your anxiety uses this idea to lock you in and reaffirm your fears, because it thinks you're safer this way.

Our brains don't give a rats ass if you're happy. They care about predictability, even if it's bad or toxic. Your brain like's what it knows + has experience from. It's scared of what it can't predict. It's terrified of what it can't control. That's why our Amygdala reacts.

Remember, when you're in treatment for Anxiety/OCD the goal is to learn thoughts don't have meaning. They're just thoughts. The song lyric, it's just a lyric. God didn't divinely place the song in front of you as a sign, when he burnt a bush and talked in front of a man.

Here's my tip for this: If you have the problem where you think everything is a sign that reaffirms your anxious thoughts, don't avoid them. Avoidance makes them worse. And don't challenge them. Instead laugh at them.

This sounds cruel, but it works. Reason, our brains don't actually know what emotions are. It guesses. We can feel an emotion and tell our brains oh this is x, when it's not and it believes us. All our brain does is association.

When we laugh we're signaling out a set of chemicals and hormones that calm down the amygdala and our nervous system. So when the song lyric triggers you, instead of spiraling, laugh say "oh my god this song is so silly, I can't believe people like this song".

Don't associate the song with your fear. The brain is an association machine. If we associate it with fear, everytime we hear the song we panic. Instead associate it with something like critiquing the song, the car ride, a friend who you think would sing it well, ect.

2. Your anxiety makes you think you're "manifesting" your fears. Afterall everyone says our thoughts have power and if we think bad thoughts, our bad thoughts come true, which causes Anxiety patients to spiral because holyshit.

I said this last night, learn from my mistakes. Cut out that manifestation shit. Cut out LOA. I don't want to argue if LOA is real or not. It's harmful as hell to someone struggling with anxiety and ocd. Your thoughts do not have that much meaning.

LOA swears it's the only way to get what you want. Don't listen to that. It isn't true. LOA is a modernized version of a biblical promise and last I checked, God never said I had to be positive forever. He said I just need faith in miracles I can't see.

I urge you, if you struggle with anxiety/OCD do not pickup LOA. No matter how many people tell you it cured their anxiety, it didn't. If I ever said that or convinced anyone it did, I take that back and send my truest apologizes. Don't feed your compulsions, just don't.

Reason why LOA is bullshit if you have a Anxiety Disorder, it gives too much power to your thoughts. When we struggle with anxiety, our thoughts already run our lives. The goal is to learn our thoughts are not us or tied to us. They're random.

You will never manifest your greatest fears. You may encounter them (+ I do believe this is so we can face our fears) but you my darling, never caused or asked for this. Do not observe your thoughts + try to shoo away scary ones. You're only feeding the compulsions that way.

What to do instead when you get triggered by LOA like thoughts: Say "I'm having an intrusive thought about x". Seperate yourself from the thought. All humans have intrusive thoughts, the goal is to understand they're thoughts not your reality or a godly sign.

Another thing to practice: Say "This isn't true" and "This is bullshit" or pretend you're holding out an air cannon, and air cannon those suckers away from you. Say you're afraid you manifested losing money. When that comes up, say "That's bullshit" and keep saying it.

This works because our Amygdala looks to us to learn how to react to intrusive thoughts. We train our amygdala's. When we're scared of something instead of reacting, all we need to do is react in a neutral way and say this isn't real. Your amygdala does catch up.

Thing number 3 your anxiety/ocd make you do: Look at horoscopes, astrologists, and tarot readers for validation. This is called feeding a compulsion. We look at these things as building our intuition, which is important in healing anxiety, but looking to others isn't intuition.

Everyone by now knows I read tarot. I'll sometimes do fun little reads for all of you. But you aren't building your intuition when I read for you. I'm building mine, but you aren't. When I read for myself, I build my intuition. When I look at others, I don't.

A common thing people do, esp in relationship anxiety/ocd, they look to a tarot reader to give them clarity on their situation. They're seeking out a compulsion to neutralize their anxiety. We want to avoid compulsions. Instead we want to learn to manage our anxiety.

For me, I get anxious and I pull out my tarot deck and read for myself. I've made tarot a meditation, my breathing slows down, my intrusive thoughts shutup, I'm calm, and I can think. I don't need the deck, but the repetitive action helps me calm down. When I'm calm I can think.

There's a major difference between using tarot for self as a meditation and way to connect with inner knowing and seeking out answers. I'll read for myself and forget what I said an hour later because I wasn't doing it for answers, the practice calms me down. Thats all I needed.

I stopped reading tarot for other people because I realized I was feeling into compulsions and it stopped being an enjoyable thing. When you go on twitter or hire someone and ask the same question over and over, you're looking to neutralize your anxiety.

The problem is, horoscopes, astrology, tarot, when used like this are actually tools of control. You're trying to neutralize your amygdala's response by claiming certainty and the logical part of your brain fights that because it knows you don't know.

That's why instead of accepting a answer that feels right and moving on, you keep looking for other people to validate that answer and keep the cycle up. Instead, teach yourself it's okay to not know. Very few of us ever truly know,

4. Your anxiety/ocd make you constantly check social media for validation. This could be checking to see if your crush liked someones post or if your tweet gets likes, or checking to see if they'll text you back as measure of their interest for you or checking email for jobs.

Been there, done that, very literally wrote a book about it (coming to a NY Times Barnes + Noble table near you). Remember guys, we don't want to feed into compulsions. We want to observe them and say "I don't need to do x".

For example, you see your crush liked another girls insta photo. Totally anxiety inducing for a lot of us. We've been conditioned to think "if they think someone else is hot, they don't like me" or vice versa, which is a relationship OCD compulsion and it's just not true.

Let's go with this example though. Anxiety says I need to text them and if they respond to me, they still like me. Or I need to post a hot photo and if they like it, they like me.

What we need to do instead if stop ourselves, breathe, and say "I know they like me, this has nothing to do with me." or "My relationship isn't in danger, they care about me just like I do", and don't go trying to prove that thought or prove against it.

A common compulsion in ROCD is saying things like "I know they like me/I know I like them" then going hunting to prove it. It's called reassurance seeking. You're trying to prove something is accurate. And it always causes you distress. Don't do it.

Another thing you can do when you feel these things, take out a photo of your crush/partner, look at it and think "They make me feel so incredible. I trust them so much. I know I'm safe with them".

It's tempting to look to past experience with anxiety/ocd, and say well other people hurt me, so x will too. That's just our amygdala trying to protect us. Remember all our brain does is association. So work with that. Associate good things with your crush/significant other.

And no, that isn't rose color glasses or ignoring red flags. You guys really gotta start taking advice from psych people instead of cosmo. It's about regulating your amygdala back to neutral state so your intuition can work.

5. Your anxiety/ocd makes you talk yourself out of new opportunities. Ever done something and thought, "it wasn't big enough, it doesn't matter". We do this because our amygdala says risk is dangerous. So if it talks us out of something, it's "saving" us.

What do we do instead of give into this fear? We do the scary thing, even if it's not big or drastic, because exposure is the only way we get our amydala to shutup and see that it's actually safe.

6. Anxiety/OCD makes you look through Tumblr, Reddit, Twitter, and Instagram at anxiety related threads to see how others cope, if I'm normal, and ask if x is appropriate behavior for my condition. DON'T DO THIS.

I'm all for normalizing the convo around mental health, hence @DordMagazine, my magazine where I do just that. But we need to be careful when looking to other patients, esp those who aren't trained in psych, for validation and help because it can be damaging.

Absolutely connect as a community, but a look at anxiety reddit and ocd reddit teaches us, there's a lot of people doing way more harm than good on those platforms. So when we're in an active anxiety attack, we should avoid them.

If you're active on those platforms, and there's nothing wrong with that. Just be mindful of your mood when you're on them and how you react to posts. Don't ask people if x is normal behavior and be careful when taking advice from people who don't study or aren't trained in psych

I bring this up because these platforms can be a lot like pro-anna hashtags and networks. They feed into compulsions. Example, r/ROCD is commonly filled with "should I leave my partner" or "is this love". Which feed fears and compulsions.

It's incredible to connect with people who share your struggles and I'm strongly for that. Just be very mindful that behaviors don't feed into your compulsions and you aren't validating through these platforms.

Another thing your anxiety/ocd make you do. Convince you that you need to do x compulsion to shut it up and feel safe. It could be, I need to check their instagram or I need to reach out. These aren't any different from locking the door 3 times to feel safe.

We do compulsions to be safe. But we know compulsions don't make us feel better (and LOA says we're manifesting our fears by giving them energy---again BULLSHIT). Compulsions is the way our body tries to calm itself down because logic brain says hold up...

It's kinda our way of saying, "if I do x, amygdala will stop picking on me", in reality we do the compulsion to try and control the situation or to look for our fears, to prove they're not really happening, because if they happened we'd be crushed.

Instead of doing the compulsion, like checking their social, ask yourself "what does this do", when your brain answers nothing or says it shows x, remind yourself, you don't have control. Doing this doesn't give you control.

All we need to do is tell our amygdala's "baby we don't need to do all that, we're safe. They love us, this job wants us, we're okay. We don't have control, that's okay". When your brain says you need to do x compulsion, tell it, "no I don't".

This is a practice I borrowed from ERP Therapy. It forces our anxiety level to rise to it's max and we see that we don't need the compulsion to be safe. We didn't do x, and nothing bad happened. Teaching our brains, the compulsion doesn't make us safe. It's just a thought.