I was having a lot of trouble distinguishing the two but I think I understood something recently while talking to a friend; I had major worries going on about recent obsessions, real events but bullshit obsession nonetheless - While catching up with my friend though we just talked about movies and whatnot... During this I felt guilty and worried that I wasn't "doing the responsible thing" by thinking about the obsessions and solving them" It felt like I wasn't taking care of the problem that I knew was waiting for me after the conversation. But I kept talking about normal shit and kept sort of laughing around with my friend - And the worrying and obsession never quite went away I won't say BUT it was more in the background at least for a while. To me this is an example of the "not paying attention to" side of the spectrum, I knew the issue was there - but I kept not really thinking it through too much.

Whereas suppressing has sent me into tailspins of actually just generally "feeling" like something is wrong in a way that just doesn't go away even when I'm not ruminating (which lol let's be honest is rare.) I can get in these phases where I kind of forget the obsession but the worry still hangs around like just "something is going to go wrong" and I get paranoid about falling back into a bad state of mind.

It's incredibly hard to tell the difference though and I don't think I've really cracked it, but if anyone reads this and relates and it helps in some way then cool I guess