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Areas › Worry and anxiety › Obsessions and compulsions
Mental review and asking for reassurance are the same move in different clothes. Both give a short drop in distress and a stronger pull next time. You can tell someone you are having a hard hour without narrating what the hour is about, and if they ask, one sentence is enough.
Obsessive thoughts and compulsions respond well to a specific kind of therapy. What is here is for understanding them, not for treating them by yourself.
truly it is in the remembrance of God that hearts find peace (Quran 13:28). There is somewhere else to put the restlessness that is not another round of going over it.
الرعد
ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ وَتَطۡمَئِنُّ قُلُوبُهُم بِذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِۗ أَلَا بِذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِ تَطۡمَئِنُّ ٱلۡقُلُوبُ
those who have faith and whose hearts find peace in the remembrance of God- truly it is in the remembrance of God that hearts find peace
Qur’an 13:28read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In an experiment using health-related triggers, patients who were allowed to check and seek reassurance stayed anxious, while those asked to refrain saw their anxiety fall. That is fairly direct evidence that the relief-seeking act is what keeps the fear alive. It was a single experimental study built around health worry, so read it as a demonstration of the mechanism rather than the last word on it.
Abramowitz JS, Moore EL. (2007). An experimental analysis of hypochondriasis.. Behaviour research and therapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Relief arriving straight after checking teaches your brain that checking is what saved you.
If you are stuck on whether having a thought makes you a bad person, that question is a symptom and not a case waiting to be settled. Name it as scrupulosity and let it stand unanswered.
Notice how when one worry is finally settled, another takes its place. That pattern is the thing you are actually dealing with, more than whichever worry is currently in the chair.
Plenty of people quietly believe that thinking about something bad makes it more likely to happen. It has a name, it is a known part of this condition, and having the belief does not make you dangerous.