Intrusive thoughts sapping my mood
I've had OCD for a very long time, and I've been managing to reasonably deal with it through CBT over the past few years. However, over the past couple of weeks I've had an explosion of shifting, intrusive, obsessive worries which aren't responding well to my attempts at dealing with them with CBT and ERP. In fact, I feel that they so far are only worsening my state. The result has been that I feel very exhausted, hopeless and lack motivation. I can be happy temporarily, but then I revert to flat and uninterested. This is especially a problem as I really need to be focusing on major uni work, which all this has taken a big toll on.
When I've tried using ERP, it's only resulted in me falling deep into the worst case scenario I've imagined and instead of diminishing the strength of these thoughts in my mind I now just feel very pessimistic and expect those worst case scenarios to materialize. Perhaps I'm not doing it right or am missing something? I do know that I have to find a way to deal with this quick before my uni work is seriously affected.
Re: Intrusive thoughts sapping my mood
Peter, you sound under pressure. Increased anxiety levels in general will increase intrusive thoughts and make them harder to deal with.
So perhaps you need to change tactics and look into reducing those levels? This might mean healthy changes and planning your work. Or simple things like relaxation work or exercise.
Sometimes we can't do much due to environmental pressures but be wary you are not piling deadline pressures on yourself. Look to smaller steps to reach goals and prevent overwhelming yourself.