Next Step

I desperately need to cut down on my ruminating. I've spent a lot of today worried that the weather will not cooperate on Wednesday, simply because I have a friend who wants to ski that day and I hate to see her disappointed. It somehow gets all wrapped up in my OCD: one, in that a big piece of my OCD is fear of bad things happening to others, including plain old disappointment, but also two, that when I really get ruminating, I start to think that if the weather's bad when she's skiing, she'll get hurt (or if it's raining, she will of course get a cold!). Not that I think this would be my fault in any way, but somehow, my OCD convinces me that by thinking about it over and over and over, I can somehow improve the results.

So, I'm working on letting the thought go, and also a cognitive shift to remember that worrying about something (like this, at least), will in no way impact the outcome. Because I would really like to get that time back in my life.

I think back about all of the similar rumination sessions I had, the ones in which nothing bad happened, or even if something bad did happen, it didn't lead to disaster. Learn, brain, learn!!

For now, I think I will try to implement the "you get a half hour each day to worry and you can only worry then" method. When the worry comes along, I will attempt to save it for later.