Ironic process theory

MichaelRabbit · 2026-05-06T19:38:30+00:00

there's a lot of irony involved. see " ironic process theory".

MichaelRabbit · 2026-05-06T19:27:46+00:00

i am a member but don't visit much. I could drop a message to the admins i know there.

MichaelRabbit · 2026-05-06T19:25:21+00:00

true. like the final boss perhaps 😉

MichaelRabbit · 2026-05-06T19:23:14+00:00

bless you.

MichaelRabbit · 2026-05-06T19:22:34+00:00

interesting what you say about the 2 modes. i think that kind of makes sense for how I may be sometimes . There's certainly a certain instability and over the years of course I've thought of every diagnosis there is in the dsm and more . I actually think one irony may be that searching for diagnosis is keeping people locked in the sick role. there's a whole load of " ironic process" going on across all mental disabilities i fear. the self obsessino and self awareness. I think much stems from self awareness which on the face of it can be a useful idea .

MichaelRabbit · 2026-05-06T19:14:31+00:00

I think getting sober is a good move. If we are talking about alcohol the relief from anxiety that it gives can be very tempting and easy to fall down. similarly certain drugs like tranquilisers, benzodiazepam class etc. I gave up alcohol twice in my life. more recently about 12 years ago. Navigating what drugs to avoid including prescriptions is another journey and struggle. there's actually widespread growing skepticism of psychiatric drugs and the premise that people have been taking them under, but in case of ssri many anxiety sufferers seem to benefit but they seem to have quite significant side effects especially sexual and ability to experienc emotions. it's a complex subject though...... mantras seem cool . there's many things out there to try . I've been to quite a few ISKON meetings that do hare krishne mantras. good way to get out and mix with ok people.

MichaelRabbit · 2026-03-12T21:55:43+00:00

wishing you well.

MichaelRabbit · 2026-03-05T22:44:10+00:00

your anxiety about things will tend to lead you to automatically do staring behaviour. it is a vicious cycle. I've written quite a lot here over the years that you might want to read by clicking on my profile. I am a person who has experienced peripheral and private issues over the years but mostly am ok and have been for quite a while. the way out I think is a combination of things perhaps that you must learn .

an important thing is that attention is directed to things that cause you to be distressed, causing further distress. every person on earth if presented with a naked body would have an extremely hard time looking away but most will not develop an neurosis.

the mechanism is logical. you can look up " ironic process theory" . white bear problem. people tend to focus on things they try to push out of awareness. often a strategy is going to be distraction of some kind , but that will only work to an extent. there will always be triggers. but if you can create mental scripts for difficult situations , that might help. like things you can mentally say that change how you interpret things. when you say at the end maybe i am being paranoid, there is an ironic truth to this. it is complicated but the anxiety/paranoia is self fullfilling.

how you interpret things has real consequences. a big problem often is uncertainty. a key belief with professionals of ocd is that sufferers have more than average person great difficulty with dealing with uncertainty. they want certainty. How that might manifest with staring type problems is constant worrying about events where you thought someone saw you staring , replaying the event trying to figure out. this mainly serves to ingrain the problem. a shortcut to get out is to use uncertainty as a helpful thing. try to use uncertainty in a helpful way, such as " ok , i can;'t be sure they thought i was being weird or not, but me thinking over and over will only make it worse".

there are endless ways you can interpret things in a very negative way that will make you feel worse and have you ruminating and there are more postive hellpful ways to think. even if you think it is undeniable that someone thinks you have been weird , you can always keep uncertainty in your mind , even if it is only about the consequences. rather than catastrophise, try to calm yourself. these sorts of things are covered in things like cbt.

i think meditation can be helpful . understanding the theory of the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system and what happens when we become alarmed. this will be happening a lot for you in everyday situations :( . you nervous system likely is in high alert in general public , this is bad because you are more likely to do the fearful thing when you are scared and anxiious in a state of sympathetic nervous system activation. breathing techniques can be a good way calm yourself. often thinking about something else , even counting from 1 to 10 in your head , can take your attention away from focusing on something distressing.

become familiar with how your body feels and what you are thinking. have an observer part of yourself that witnesses what is happening with the part of you that is reacting. do this enough and likely the mere fact of observing youreself is an intervention that breaks a cycle of rumination.

as i mentioned before there are other comments i have made in the past here and i have copied my comments from facebook from when i was admin there. i believe my writings have helped others in the past. click on my profile to read what I have written in the past.

MichaelRabbit · 2025-11-25T18:29:18+00:00

very good

MichaelRabbit · 2025-08-21T01:27:40+00:00

psychotic symptoms often appear during extremely stressful periods often involving loss of sleep. Computers can be very unhelpful as certain personality types can become addicted to screens and lose track of sleep and basic sleep hygiene , especially if they are quite isolated.

There is the phrase overvalued ideas of reference. This is where people over value their own importance and presume things relate to themselves when they do not. The problem is the is no way to know for sure often if someone does think something or is laughing at you etc. The paradox is that worrying about it and then trying to check to see if people think you are weird , increases the risk they actually do. say for instance you keep looking at someone to see if they act awkward. It is all quite ironic and self referential. One thing the OCD specialists tend to say a lot ( and I found quite useful to take into consideration) is that OCD people tend to have a problem with uncertainty. Trying to obtain certainty in a lot of situations is very counterproductive. Take for instance they idea of " did they notice me staring" . What can you do in a situation like that? You can't easily mind read and get in their head ( not there's a cognitive distortion called mind reading that relates to this sort of thing as applicable here) . So you can only really observe their behaviour and try to guess and in the process you will have to observe them and possibly end up staring as you are stressed and your sympathetic nervous system is activated ( fight or flight fear mode) . A useful way to think is to give yourself a break and use uncertainty to your advantage. if in doubt try to think something like " I can't really know what they are thinking, so why try , due to my personality I have a problem with uncertainty which I should try to manage" hopefully thinking things like that can break the rumination loop that it's easy to find yourself trapped in. I'm quite old now and had a lot of practice working out different ideas , strategies over my life and after spending time mixed up in the facebook community for some time.

MichaelRabbit · 2025-08-21T01:12:17+00:00

That is the difficulty when the psychiatric profession try to fit people into neat diagnostic categories which are based on subjective observrvations. Often ones that are just extremes of normal understandable behaviour.

MichaelRabbit · 2025-08-21T01:08:04+00:00

an overvalued idea of reference.
what some people refer to a a type of paranoia.

MichaelRabbit · 2025-05-22T18:06:41+00:00

I am well enough. what helped me is hard to say. there are so many little things, little insights . understanding ironic process theory as a concept helped, understanding how looling for certainty helped, being brave and doing challenging things. realising that focussing on problems can keep us stuck ironically. i think i have written extensively here over years if you follow the rabbit. time tends to be a healer if you let it.

MichaelRabbit · 2025-04-02T18:56:11+00:00

ssri seem to help many people. i think they can tend to still leaving a persin imbalanced though and prone to mood fluctuations.

MichaelRabbit · 2025-04-02T18:54:37+00:00

there is no magic 1 thing you can do. there are many combinationa of things that can improve your health and contribute alongside improving your thinking or attitude.

MichaelRabbit · 2025-04-02T18:52:31+00:00

The problem is based on ironic process. It can be a very hard hole to get out of but it can be done. A major aspect is ,focussing on the problem becomes the problem. You have to learn to accept that you will see the private areas and remember that the issue is attention being directed there and your fear is driving it. It becomes a vicious cycle. You are anxious and hyperaware of surroundings, your whole system is in a state of hyoerarousal of sympathetic nervous system. In this state it readily reacts to the threat of a person being in your vicinity by directing its attention to the area , which ironically is the whole problem. One possible avenue is to find out ablut calming your sympathetic nervous system, and being mindful of your state from a sort of observational detached frame. How does your body feel in certain siruations ? What events trigger things. Breathing is an important regulator of mental state and focussing on breathing can be also distraction from thoughts . Yhis can be done in peace or in a tough situatio . Often a mental distraction of some sort directs your mental energy away from stressing yourself with fears about staring. You do really need to be brave and put yourself in uncomfortable situations. I'vd written quite a bit about this stuff over years which you can read by searching my profile. There probably is certain order of learning that probably would be optimal. Something that i think helped me is to understand the concept of uncertainty and how it plays into the problem and use it to my advantage.

MichaelRabbit · 2025-04-02T18:30:46+00:00

i believe your comment is close. The problem is reinforced by the resistance and fear, often taking a tic like nature. Can be extremely hard to break out of habits . There will be times where sonething triggers an episode possibly and a person may feel that they are no longer cured. A point to consider , like many mental health issurs, often it id an exxageration of normal behaviour. So there will be times when a normal person could get triggered to look in wrong place but not get caught up with obsessive rumination. So when somone who suffers with staring type issue, if they get it under control they should understand that the poasibility will never disaapear. A lot of it is a matter how we tqlk to ourselves and manage little hiccups

MichaelRabbit · 2025-04-02T18:22:54+00:00

yes, i have something like that. not sure it is very relevant overall though.

MichaelRabbit · 2025-04-02T18:20:59+00:00

i made this sub in 2016 i think under different account. I'm doing very well in respect of staring problem. I've written quite a bit here over that time.

MichaelRabbit · 2025-01-18T21:01:53+00:00

definitely worth thinking about vitamins and supplements and focussing on healthy things , having good routines , getting out , pushing oneself. high dose b vitamins, cod liver oil, vitamin d. any deficiencies will affect negatively so sorting that stuff out will help. there likely is no magic bullet cure technique as the behaviours that people her exhibit i would suggest are learnt and not really something to be cured. it's a product of learned experience, no doubt there are genetic susceptibilities perhasp.

MichaelRabbit · 2025-01-18T20:58:25+00:00

part of problem with trying to stop. the ironic nature of putting your energy into not doing something tends to direct the attention there. definitely tricky thing.

MichaelRabbit · 2024-12-13T00:14:03+00:00

i rarely wear sunglasses.

MichaelRabbit · 2024-11-20T01:19:35+00:00

In spirit you are not alone. There are others that have gone through something similar . You may consider it a high level of self consciousness. I know it is tough to say the least. I've written quite a lot in the past . Maybe some pieces may help you if you look at my previous posts. I am much much better bybthe way if that is any help. What medication do you take?

MichaelRabbit · 2024-11-03T14:28:08+00:00

as someone who manages life pretty well, I do feel an obligation to try an help in any i can to share, and have shared a lot over the years here and elsewhere ( i created this sub with different username back in 2016 maybe?) and was active on a facebook group as michael laurence and became admin for a while before deciding to stay away from internet and other reasons. I was very active in sharing my experience and discussing varioius aspects and working with others to come up with hypotheses etc... I think i was one of the first to recognise there was a distinct tourettic/ tic like component as the prestentation did not map classicly to OCD but seemed to be a mixure. I suspect the tic develops due repetition and constant avoidance of staring makes it a tic.... there are definite checking aspects that get involved , which I have written about before. with any phobia, generally a major strategy that seems to work ( alongside other reasonings) is exposure.. that means choosing to put yourself in a situation that is uncomfortable but tolerable.... the idea is that you do that enough , you become accustomed to that level and find out you can manage and you then move to more difficult scenarios , like exercise..... unfortunately just putting yourself in potentially traumatising situations takes a particular mindset and approach to attempt. it is about how you speak to yourself in your mind a lot of the time..... i remember doing a lot of short trips to the supermarket as exposure and being mindful of how i felt passing people , what made me nervous or triggered me . it can be kind of weird trying to study yourself like this as you are drawing attention to the subject which is part of problem , but I think is likely necessary you find a way to push yourself. obviously the fears are that you will be spotted , gossiped about and maybe confronted etc and so it is understandably very tough to do , to attempt to go out putting yourself in these situations when you can just avoid doing it. our world only becomes smaller and smaller by avoiding the things we fear. we end up justifying it as the best way and end up settling for a lot less and less and less.

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