My therapist brought up something in my session last week, and this week I realized that she was absolutely right. She asked me something last week when I told her that my anxiety was still pretty high and my intrusive thoughts were still super frequent. She asked me, "What is your anxiety distracting you from that you don't really want to think about?" I had no answer for her because I was sure that my anxiety was the real problem and not something I didn't want to deal with.
Then later, after discussion on another topic about being a high sensitive person and feeling too many things, she said something else that stuck in my mind. She said, "You know, anxiety is fear...fear of feelings." I thought I was past that since I had been using mindfulness to work through my feelings and improve my distress tolerance.
I've been reading online about this idea presented to me by my therapist at the end of last week and the beginning of this week. Many, many people, particularly in Pure O forums and groups said in posts that their Pure OCD spiked when they worried about something or when they were under emotional stress (like dealing with feelings that were overwhelming). I even saw it referred to as some sort of coping mechanism to distract them from whatever it was that was too stressful to deal with. That sounded like an extremely twisted coping mechanism to me.
I started to wonder how something could be so stressful that the intrusive thoughts, the anxiety, the shame, and the guilt were preferable to the something that was so stressful that our brains would just spin out of control just to keep us from thinking about it. Most mental health conditions will be exacerbated by any stress, but this was a slightly different idea. This was the idea that the anxiety took the place of whatever was actually happening to cause the emotional stress (the strong, overwhelming feelings) so that our brains could just slowly back away from that thing (like a person slowly backing away from a rabid animal in the hopes that it doesn't attack.)
Then I got first hand experience with the very thing that I previously hadn't understood. My family experienced a loss, and the grief that I felt was so overwhelming and so consuming that I felt like I was drowning in it. One minute I was so devastated that I just wanted to curl into a ball and sob, and the next minute I was so angry that I hated everyone and everything and I wanted to destroy anything I could get my hands on. Too many emotions, all of them happening too quickly, can be a frightening experience.
So, what happened? My intrusive thoughts (all 3 current categories) flooded my mind, and I could only focus on them. Then I realized that my Pure O was only trying to distract me from the grief (the rabid animal I was apparently too terrified to face). When I realized what was happening so I could mindfully observe the thoughts without focusing on them, more intrusive thoughts in categories I had never experienced rushed into my mind. I was even terrified of going to bed at night and dying in my sleep. I would get so wrapped up in focusing on the intrusive thoughts and mentally checking for them that I wouldn't feel my grief anymore. My anxiety had taken over so that I didn't have to feel the things that were so terrifying to me, and the anxiety almost felt like a relief sometimes, compared to the intense sense of loss that I've been terrified will never go away.
I'll end with this: Feelings are scary, but I've learned the hard way that I can't hide from them or bury them forever. I have to remind myself every day at the moment that my therapist told me that all feelings eventually pass, even when it feels like I'll be stuck in a certain place forever. I also have to force myself to put more effort into my mindfulness practice at the moment to recognize, accept, and just feel my feelings. Then I just have to keep swimming until I reach a place where the current my grief and other feelings (including my anxiety) isn't trying to drag me under anymore. With grief it's hard to say when I'll reach that place, but I'll get there.
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