How can you tell if a thought is an intrusive thought versus an anxious thought? Cause I know the treatment for both is different like with anxiety you can sit with it and acknowledge and ration with it but you’re not supposed to with ocd
Usually we think something and the anxiety fuels it, to keep us in our thoughts for longer. Thats where the obsessive thinking kicks in. But lowering anxiety starts to lower the obsessive thinking. Does that help?
@TheBigC Ya kind of I think most of my intrusive thoughts lead to an immediate state of anxiety but maybe part of my ocd is also making myself doubt that it’s an intrusive thought versus something that’s real
I always say that OCD comes with a sense of immediacy, a need to know with certainty an answer to something, With more generalized anxiety, it is more of a worrying but doesn't feel like you have to determine the answer to it right now if that makes sense. Both can obviously be distressing though. Maybe these will resonate? https://www.treatmyocd.com/blog/what-does-ocd-feel-like & https://www.treatmyocd.com/blog/is-ocd-a-form-of-anxiety & https://www.treatmyocd.com/blog/how-ocd-turns-your-anxiety-against-you
@Stacy Quick Thank you!!
I can usually ‘put down’ anxiety with safety behaviors but I can’t really do that with ocd.
For me anxiety is an overall feeling. Whereas ocd is thoughts that keep “intruding” and poking at me or feeling the “compulsion” i must do this and repeat it otherwise something terrible will happen. Ocd is a specific recurrent thought like an alarm that can’t be shut off and it keeps beeping every minute (for example), whereas anxiety is a blanket of dread like a blanket of snow that falls constantly for a while and then ends.
When reading about how to manage OCD, some books say that, when you get an intrusive thought, just say “it’s not important.” However, if you use ERP, you dwell on the thought, feel the anxiety, thereby giving it some importance. Are these just two different ways to manage OCD?
So I read one of the NOCD Blog’s new posts about differentiating GAD vs OCD and it made me worried a bit. The first psych I saw said that I had GAD and unspecified OCD which may/may not change, and when I asked them a few weeks later, they said that if they HAD to say, they said I probably have it. When I started therapy here, I was further diagnosed with OCD and GAD. Because of the shiftiness, I’ve often wondered if I don’t actually have OCD and an misinterpreting normal behaviors/anxiety behaviors to be compulsions. I have discussed this with my therapist of course, but I also wanted to see if anyone on here has been diagnosed with OCD that later turned out to be wrong? Are there any resources that could help me further differentiate so that I’m not doing/treating the wrong thing? I’m also aware of the irony that asking this question in and of itself may be more aligned with OCD, but I feel like people with anxiety disorders may do the same so I’m not sure anymore lol.
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