Replacement Anxiety

     A week has passed since I decided to jump in and give exposure therapy a try. Everything was going well. Then, this week, I noticed that I had a whole new set of concerns to add to my list. I had become very concerned with developing another obsession.
     I've done quite a bit of research on Primarily Obsessional OCD as well as the more recognizable types of OCD. I know that it is common for OCD obsessions to change over time. I also know that it is pretty common for new obsessions to develop. I had never really worried about that, though. I'd had the same religious obsession for nearly a decade, and my second obsession reared its ugly head as a result of some medication I tried before to treat my anxiety. I had been lucky in regard to obsessions so far, in that I wasn't constantly developing new ones.
     Then I remembered something about my mind. I'm working through my religious obsession in therapy, so that means one less thing to kick my brain into anxious overdrive. That sounded like a good thing, but then I remembered that my brain doesn't really know how to chill out our go into neutral, at least. I had dealt with replacement anxiety before, when I first started therapy over the summer. I could feel the same thing happening again.
     This time, the replacement anxiety wasn't taking trips down memory lane or making me hyper-aware of my behavior so that I constantly analyzed how I behaved to see if it was normal. (Which were things I knew how to pull myself out of.) This time the replacement anxiety attached itself to the idea that I could develop a new obsession at any moment. Any new thought could trigger an anxious brain meltdown, and there I would be, with a new obsession to terrify me. I was suddenly even more aware of my thought patterns than I had been before. I was aware of every strange, nonsense thought generated by my brain, even though I was trying not to get caught up in any of them. (How could I manage something that hadn't happened yet, even if I thought I knew it was going to happen?!) I was having replacement anxiety about replacement anxiety.
     How did I handle this new fear? Not very well. (Until after I talked to my therapist, anyway.) I tried to avoid anything that might trigger a weird thought that could turn into an obsession. That really is impossible. So, after I realized how irrational I was being, I went back to  the beginning. I pulled out my old workbook, and I went back to making my charts. I feel like I narrowly avoided a setback, but at least I didn't beat myself up about it this time.
     I'll end with this: It's impossible to avoid everything that might send you into a setback. It's also impossible to change an anxious brain overnight. Replacement anxiety can happen, but it can be managed using the techniques that I've mentioned in previous posts or that you might have learned from your own therapeutic journey. Don't beat yourself up if it happens because that'll just make it harder to get back on your feet.