Trace

She/her - OCD, Anxiety, ARFID, meds & ERP/ACT - midwestern pagan - nerdfighter - books/board games/videogames - 🏳️‍🌈💍

[Trace @trace_tomorrow]

Twitter is not a safe place for my mind right now. My friends here supporting each other through OCD, I still see you. I hope you’re able to take care of yourselves. If there’s other places you gather or if you want my email, let me know. My DMs are open to you. Be well.

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@do4luv_ @Sam198247235291 I used to get hung up on making sure I would always know & doing mental compulsions on what are the signs that I should watch for

I got a lot of milage out of “if this is serious/I need to act, I will know.” That might not always be true but avoiding the risk robs us of too much

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@do4luv_ @Sam198247235291 It helps me to remember that I can change my mind. Recognizing that something is ocd (even if I’ve started to walk down the ocd road) is success. We learn to differentiate by practicing. Assuming that decisions will be irrevocable/unrecoverable is one of my ocd’s biggest lies.

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@Nancy_Lass @Sam198247235291 For me, sometimes my intuition does tell me that something is wrong / a situation is serious. But whereas my OCD is built on doubt, on proving that something bad needs to be prevented, my intuition is not calling for me to act in order to stop feeling anxious. It’s not desperate.

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@Nancy_Lass @Sam198247235291 I’ve worked in this a lot actually! For me, lots of factors (possibly not just ocd) made my true intuition very very quiet. I distrusted it & trusted ocd’s fear more. But it’s easier to hear now. My intuition is fundamentally grounded. Which is NOT how the ocd voice feels at all

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@theBrianaMills I don’t know about this. I think most abled people are terrified of being disabled. So terrified that they have to victim blame as hard as possible to convince themselves it could never happen to them. They’re safe. All of society seems to be built on maintaining that denial.

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@freemefromocd Sometimes doing things that reinforce my values at times like this helps too. Not like suppressing the thoughts but letting them be there while I do the life stuff is another way to practice acceptance of thoughts/feelings. We don’t have to be perfectly recovered before we live💙

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@thethrees_exist I did consider that. But at the time I had so much chronic pain that I knew I couldn’t work in an unsupportive field like teaching. I was too disabled to be a teacher, but was privileged enough to work in tech. Now I work on education software. So it kinda worked out…for me.

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@drruthannharpur @adamfare1996 You’re not just speaking with clinicians on Twitter. There’s a big difference between a treatment plan of exposures & just let people deal without support. That’s what 90% of people are reading in your post. That impact is dangerous esp for stuff that LOOKS like “just anxiety”

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@Sam198247235291 Sending kind thoughts to all y’all that are seeing yourselves in my words. Your replies make me feel less alone. 💙

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@defnotadino Yes. I’m basically my mom’s sole caregiver. She’s in her mid sixties but between various diagnosed medical issues (notably MS) and undiagnosed mental health issues, she is a lot less independent than her age would suggest. And the emotional manipulation does not make it easier.

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@DiaryofaSickGrl Yoga

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@signulll Not for anything recent. In July, Reddit changed their robots.txt file to disallow all web scraping (even for search engines) because of licensing conflicts over companies training generative ai on Reddit posts. Reddit will gladly sell those companies the privilege ifc.

[Josef Doctorovitz @lifewocd]

Happy OCD Awareness month 2024. This month, we take the time to advocate for ourselves and others in the community, and come together as one.

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@lifewocd You are too, Josef. Sending you good vibes. 💙

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@Sam198247235291 I’m on caretaker duty today — mom had surgery. This is exposure therapy in the worst way I guess. So much uncertainty to live inside of.

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@anxietyaloner Getting really hungry does make people nauseated. You get hungry, then the hunger goes away, and you get a headache or queasy and food actually sounds bad. This happened to me a lot when I would miss hunger queues and/or was so disinterested in eating.

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@lifewocd We can’t control what other people will remember. But if we hide our worst moments from people who love us, we lose the chance at the vulnerability that makes deeper connection possible. Be brave, the important people want to know you deeply.

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My mom has to have surgery for a kidney stone. Very scared and trying hard to let it be here without letting the OCD take me way down the catastrophic rabbit hole. I can’t control what happens. I’m doing what I can do and what I need to do. I hate waiting in uncertainty.