im so tired

it will always choose you. you cannot die. you'll always come back because it loves you so much. you are its right and left hand, its eternal weapon. it will drown you in its light. light as horror. darkness as horror. what if it thinks you are its best friend.

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

stray bullet from the barrel of love

(btw the first drawing is a redraw of a piece from november, comparison under the cut:)

My ears perked up. The highway patrol constable was speaking an entirely different series of words than he usually does. My attorney strongly recommends that I not tell you the normal sequence of words, being as they are likely "building evidence of an anti-social pattern of behaviour," but he's not here. You know what? You seem cool, I'll tell you the new words that this mountie told me.

"Hot air balloons are the new thing, man. If you don't get rid of your car and switch to this, you'll be left behind forever."

Not wanting to argue with the mounted policeman too much, I still gently push back. Hot air balloons aren't for me, man. I like to do my own driving. Go where I want.

"Listen, pal. If it doesn't go where you want the first time, you can just take off again and see if it works then. It's so much less work than driving. I barely have a job, now, with all the hot air balloonists overhead." He points to a series of dirigible-adjacent aircraft, repeatedly bumping into each other. At least half of them are the ugliest fucking thing I'd ever seen. None of them seemed to be going anywhere, honestly.

"And the emissions? We can only get more helium from the moon. We shouldn't be just burning it in order to maybe travel to the Kay Bee Toys."

That did it. I had stated enough words of a certain pattern to be billed as an adversary in this officer's mind. An intricate crystalline structure of indisputable scofflaw behaviour had been constructed in the very air between us. I was now an "IA hater" – one who opposes the inevitable dominance of inflatable aircraft. There was nothing to do but to engage in a high speed chase about it.