It's-A Me, Uh. Hmm.

May I present the best apple:

you can order priority mail shipping boxes and envelopes in any size from store.usps.com for free. if you do not have a printer, you can buy them with the postage already paid on them. the postal service will deliver these boxes to your house. you can pack your item into the box at home, then go back to usps.com and schedule a time for the mailman to pick the package up from your house. this is also free. you do not have to visit the post office at any point in this process. if you use flat rate mailers you also do not need to weigh anything.

i have to explain this to people about 20 times a year, no joke. it is some sort of anti post office conspiracy that everyone thinks you have to buy shipping boxes and then drive to the post office and stand in line to mail things. you do not. shipping mailers and boxes are 100% free. priority mail service or above (and prices are now adjusted to the point that its usually pointless not to use priority mail) entitles you to a free pickup, and if you have even one priority mail package to ship, you can ask for all your other packages to be picked up on the same trip too.

Rumination is probably the most common type of OCD compulsion, but I rarely see anyone talking about it. I've talked to multiple people diagnosed with OCD who didn't even recognize it as a compulsion.

Basically, if you have OCD you have terrible intrusive thoughts. They can be about anything, but common themes are fear of being a bad person, fear of hurting someone, fear of contamination. etc.

Rumination is when you get stuck in a spiral. Rumination is when you spend hours catastrophizing, overthinking, analyzing, telling yourself it's going to be okay.

I'll say it again:

Rumination is a compulsion.

Rumination is a compulsion, and that means you have to stop doing it.

I did ERP (exposure response prevention) for my OCD with a therapist! For 9 months! And it did help, but the idea didn't really click until I found this website a couple years later.

And Oh My God. It made things make so much more sense, and I was able to pull myself out of an episode even though I wasn't in therapy or on meds at the time.

Genuinely if you have OCD, or even if you suspect you have OCD, I'm begging you to read some of these articles.

Like this was genuinely life changing for me.

Here are some of the ones that were most helpful to me:

Defining Rumination

How to Stop Ruminating

ERP Exercises for Compulsive Rumination

apparently the murder happened in 2023 after doing some research but the murderer has been found not guilty.