Has anyone else become over-aware of their thoughts?

[LiveAboveIt]

I have symptoms of Pure-O OCD and at one point suffered from Sensorimotor OCD that revolved around my breathing.. This appears to have shifted to my thoughts, or rather my anxious thoughts. It feels different than just having anxious thoughts, it's as though it has become an issue with over-awareness meta thought. I stress about the fact that I can't stop thinking anxious thoughts in general and I can't stop thinking about having the anxious thoughts, which has turned into a vicious cycle for me.

I've been trying to convince myself that they are just thoughts and that everybody has them, but it keeps slipping from my grasp and I return to panic, with a seemingly inability to be rational.

I don't quite understand what else I should be doing to rid myself of this anxiety.

The few times that I have managed to get rid of this anxiety/panic, has been when I convinced myself not to bad afraid of the thoughts and this can last for a couple weeks before it ultimately returns.

I think the fear is that now that this door is unlocked and I am overly conscious of my thoughts, to the point that I feel powerless to stop monitoring them, is never going to cease and that I will be stuck like this forever.

I guess I'm just looking for some comfort and knowledge about what exactly this is that I am suffering from as it tends to bring me much peace of mind, akin to when I found out that my inability to stop manually breathing was Sensorimotor OCD. When I discovered that this was common, or atleast known and understand, it helped me become unafraid and ultimately beat the anxiety over my breathing.

You would think that I could use the same tactic to best the fear of my thoughts, or rather the lack of controlling them and/or dealing with the potentially irrational fear that I will be stuck with this awareness of my thoughts forever.

I'm sorry if this is difficult to understand.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Anxiety is a slippery beast, LIA. I've had themes in my compulsions that just didn't respond to what was working and I had to try something knew. For instance, I was getting progress from the typical ERP method of removing compulsion to touch objects in a gradual manner e.g. 5 less this time, 2 less the time after, etc until I got closer to zero. But with certain things, I just couldn't seem to move on from it after the checks. What I did instead is do a long touch whilst saying to myself "I'm choosing to do this, not my anxiety and I will decide when to let go". Whilst I was still performing a compulsion, I was trying to take it over. This worked, then I could start the ERP method alongside it.

I believe in having a toolbox, it's never a matter of one methodology to me.

Something I am wondering about with this, and I know you talked about it before, is whether it could be quite closely tied to your Sensorimotor OCD? We tend to think swallowing, breathing, blinking, etc but it's more diverse than this. One of the articles I read to understand it ages ago was this one:

http://beyondocd.org/expert-perspectives/articles/when-automatic-bodily-processes-become-conscious-how-to-disengage-from-sens

They have this as one category:

awareness of specific body parts [e.g. perception of the side of one’s nose while trying to read or, as in the cases of a young boy and older man, a hyper-awareness of particular body parts such as their feet or fingers respectively]

So, I was thinking why can't this be a SOCD theme aimed at thinking about thinking? It's an automonous function, we don't really do the small stuff of A-B. We trigger some memory recall need and it fires off to find it and bounces things back.

And this seems to fit to what you are experiencing:

Sensorimotor obsessions as defined here rarely involve elaborated fears of harm to oneself or others. Fears center mainly on the concern that automatic bodily processes or physical sensations will fail to return to their previous unconscious state, thus forever “driving the sufferer crazy.” Such fears are frequently accompanied by the broader concern that the obsession itself will be unending,

The only worry is whether you are going crazy but unlike HA people who constantly mention this in threads, you don't. You concentrate on the issue.

Hyper awareness is something many of us struggle with.

So, if you can't face it by trying to convince yourself, is it time to try the opposite strategy of trying not to care? Learning to observe rather than interact?

We know CBT can work, the proof is there. But newer therapies are coming forward too. Mindfulness based CBT has some proof in recurrent depression that warranted it being made a recommended therapy. This works more the opposite way by encouraging exercises (like exposure) but with a big focus on meditation that encourages you to change your relationship with your body.

Something worth thinking about is how focussing on anxiety makes it worse. In CBT you aim to change your thinking & reactions to a positive/neutral type. In Mindfulness, you aim more for neutral. So, there is the argument about how concentrating on this may be keeping it relevant hence switching to more observational methods may undermine it?

It's not easy. Trying to think positive still has those negative thoughts creeping in fighting you all the way until you turn a corner. Davit used to talk about this and called them "riders", negative thoughts hijacking your attempts. His therapist taught him about that. He has threads talking about it.