Updates and Advice: Version 2.0

[StableRelationship]

Going to sleep at night is now typically a pain in my ass, and I feel like that's an understatement. I'm a total night owl now, don't me wrong, it's when I'm lying down with the lights off trying to go to sleep when things turn bad. Meaning my OCD and the intrusive, unwanted thoughts get cranked up to eleven. As does the anxiety they cause and the uncomfortable feeling of my mind being poisoned, my emotions also grow more unstable too. Particularly feelings of great hostility and anger with bits of sadness, which I have no reason. Getting physically comfortable is harder too, tossing and turning, what with OCD and the thoughts/compulsions harder to resist at times it feels bad just having my skin touching anything and I just want to get away. It takes longer for me to sleep because of it.

I don't know how helpful this will be since I don't have OCD, but here are two things you could do:

1. Establish a consistent routine before going to sleep. For me, this is basically reading with tea\hot chocolate followed by talking to Luna about her day. When I follow this routine, I nearly always sleep a lot better than when I don't.

2. Are you able to set a particular time to address your unwanted thoughts? Like, telling yourself "I'm going to put this out of my mind for now and worry about it between the hours of X and Y?" Alternatively, can you to give yourself a distraction task when you ruminate? For example, if I catch myself ruminating about something pointless, I'll try and shift my attention to describing something in the environment and possibly talking to Luna about it. You could also try solving math problems in your head, or really, any sort of mental activity which forces you to shift your attention.