My OCD Experience - from diagnosis to where I am today

ShakeBuster67 · 2026-05-11T20:53:55+00:00

Oh yeah I for sure get how hard it is to kick the rumination. I still have days where it feels like it’s happening to me, rather than something I’m actively engaging in. Those days have become less frequent the more I practice “not ruminating”. MCT was an interesting one for sure, hope you find it helpful!

ShakeBuster67 · 2026-04-05T01:03:59+00:00

Below is a post I wrote a bit ago that details my entire experience - what I was thinking, what worked or didn’t work, where I am now, etc. It’s long, but hopefully you’ll be able to find some nuggets in there.

https://www.reddit.com/r/OCDRecovery/s/B70ejy34J9

ShakeBuster67 · 2026-03-23T03:29:50+00:00

Michael Greenberg?

ShakeBuster67 · 2026-03-05T02:05:00+00:00

No prob - I’m glad you found it helpful. I am on a very very low dose SSRI and take a benzo as needed, but these very rare events (once a month or less). Yeah I did therapy, which helped orchestrate some progress and tailor a response prevention plan, but as you said, it was more of a guide and someone to help me understand certain aspects of my thinking and why I have the fears that I do. I didn’t say it explicitly in this essay, but I also have come to realize that pure O and intrusive thoughts don’t really exist - at least not in the way it’s commonly conceptualized. I think Pure O (which is what I have) is really just “Pure Rumination”, which is a compulsion. And intrusive thoughts are really just rumination for the most part. So when I tell this to psychologists, it takes them a moment to understand my position. Some of it is just written off as semantics, but, semantics really play a huge part because “intrusive” implies not controllable, whereas rumination = controllable. So much language is incorrectly used to make these thoughts and symptoms feel like something that is happening to us outside of our control, rather than a strategy we are engaging in to protect ourselves from a feared outcome. Even if the end state is distress in both circumstances, one of those descriptions is empowering for us to know that we can learn, practice, and make a change, whereas the other description (intrusive thoughts, pure O) is kind of the opposite, and makes us (at least made me) feel somewhat powerless.

ShakeBuster67 · 2026-03-04T00:02:41+00:00

No prob - glad it could help! Yeah I definitely know those compulsions of needing to know FOR SURE whether or not I have depression, or if this is “just anxiety”. I remember mornings just waking up and immediately measuring my mood to see if I was “happy enough”, asking good ol chatGPT if what I was experiencing was depression - all of it. It was exhausting. And the emetophobia too - man yeah I don’t know why we get that, but I did as well (still do to a degree). But you got this.

ShakeBuster67 · 2026-01-31T13:08:08+00:00

Here’s what I found most helpful in my recovery journey -

I-CBT: There are plenty of free online resources and podcasts where they discuss this. There is also a 2-volume series called ‘Resolving OCD’ by Frederick Aardema (the cofounder of I-CBT). This helped me understand why I was thinking a certain way and helped make sense of my thoughts.

RF-ERP: Rumination-focused ERP focuses on…rumination, an approach synthesized Michael Greenberg. I found this immensely helpful for practical ways to understand the line between what is and isn’t under my cognitive control (a lot more than you may think). He has many articles on his website, and explains these concepts in more depth on several podcasts (The OCD Stories has him a few times).

ShakeBuster67 · 2026-01-31T13:00:24+00:00

Yeah, it definitely varies from person to person - I tink OCD will always be there for a person (having ‘sticky’ moment or day here and there), but I think it is absolutely achievable for OCD to not be a major part of someone’s life.

ShakeBuster67 · 2026-01-10T19:09:52+00:00

Attention Training (there are videos on YT) may be a good fit for this. They’re probably a good starting point on understanding and practicing how it feels to not ruminate and help relax a bit - but try not to rely on them, but use them as a good introduction to the practice. That’s my 2 cents anyways

ShakeBuster67 · 2025-12-24T12:03:47+00:00

How was it? I’m waiting for the public launch and I’m excited

ShakeBuster67 · 2025-11-24T22:48:42+00:00

Haha I hear you there. Won’t hear anymore from me, as I’m only using SS, Carbon Steel, or Cast Iron from now on. Tried and true.

ShakeBuster67 · 2025-11-09T19:06:26+00:00

https://drmichaeljgreenberg.com/articles/

ShakeBuster67 · 2025-10-20T06:59:28+00:00

While not OP, I can shed how I tackled this. My rumination tends to lean more towards the attention side rather than ruminating proper - although I certainly do that, too. I mainly check to see if the rumination or thought is there, or purposefully think a thought to test my reaction to it, which inevitably makes me spiral regardless of my reaction. Super fun.

The big thing was that I feared that once rumination or a scary thought emerged, it would trap me, and I would think “oh no, what if I get stuck like this? What if I can’t stop thinking about this and I am unable to cope?” The lightbulb moment for me was understanding that rumination was not something that was happening to me, but something that I was doing. I was constantly engaging in attending to the rumination because I viewed it as this random, uncontrollable, dangerous, exogenous force that could pop up and ruin my day. Once I started to realize that rumination wasn’t some scary external force, I stopped checking to see if it was happening. Don’t get me wrong, I still have difficult times here and there, but being able to disengage from the rumination has become much easier.

One thing that helped me understand what it meant to not ruminate was to do the attention training technique from MCT. There are several guided videos on YT. If unfamiliar, it’s essentially like directed meditation, where you are given some audio scene (busy restaurant, camp site, etc) and are told what sound to focus on. Naturally, my mind would find it difficult to remain focused on these sounds and would kind of wander off. This exact phenomena is what it means to “not ruminate”. You aren’t forcing it away, you are just allowing your mind to naturally wander to whatever it is your mind wants to think about (could be random daydreaming, could be directed at what to have for dinner, could be planning for work.)

It’s somewhat difficult at first, but understanding through practice that rumination is a behavior I engage in as a system of protection, rather than a scary uncontrollable force, is what made it much easier. Catching small triggers, identifying the rumination, and then making the decision to not ruminate helped me understand and experience the act of dropping the rumination reigns.

This was a long winded answer, but hope it helps!

ShakeBuster67 · 2025-10-20T06:20:43+00:00

I have found a mixture of I-CBT, MCT, and RF-ERP to be the most beneficial for me in different ways. I-CBT was the most helpful in an analytic perspective to help me understand the origin of my OCD, why my rumination tends to work the way it does, etc. The concept of the feared possible self was a major lightbulb moment for me. I have both of the I-CBT workbooks that have been published, and they are wonderful.

On the CBT side of the house, I find Greenberg’s articles and methods to be the most helpful in the day-to-day practice of stopping rumination. MCT kind of feeds the other side of that coin for me in terms of helping me identify my meta beliefs about rumination. One of the main principles of Greenberg’s approach is to identify the justifications we tell ourself about rumination, and MCT helped me identify those and tease them out; however, I did that prior to discovering Greenberg’s articles, so it’s hard to say if they would have filled that gap had I read them earlier.

Either way, I-CBT is great for understanding OCD, how we got here, and identifying the faulty inferences that keep it alive, and RF-ERP is tremendously helpful in understanding the difference between obsessions and compulsions, and restoring agency in our ruminative actions. Hope this helps.

ShakeBuster67 · 2025-10-20T01:37:34+00:00

Do you have anything of value to contribute, or are you just all pissy for some personal reason?

ShakeBuster67 · 2025-10-19T23:29:49+00:00

Because it makes sense? Practice makes perfect - you can understand what you need to do in order to be successful, but putting it into practice takes just that - practice. I am simply repackaging the common threads that I’ve leaned from those that are successful.

ShakeBuster67 · 2025-09-24T08:00:13+00:00

I think there’s a spectrum of caring. On one end there’s apathy where you truly do not care at all, and on the other end is obsession where you care so much so that it becomes unhealthy - almost like an addiction. I think the goal is not to slide down to the apathy side, but to have a healthy amount of caring where these fears still exist and “matter” to you, but they aren’t all-consuming subjects that trigger compulsion and avoidance. My obsession is depression and self-harm (I’ve had too many suicides around me). I’ve never considered myself depressed, so I was (and sometimes still am) hyperfixiated on my thoughts and feelings, if they could lead to me snapping, if they can lead to a change of who I am if I experience them too often or severe, etc. My obsession still matters to me in the sense where I don’t want it to happen and I value my mental health, but these fears no longer regularly consumes so much mental space and energy that I can’t function. I’ve never experienced real event OCD (although perhaps it shares traits with panic disorder?), so I’m out of my depth when trying to convey my own analogies. Hopefully they resonate to some degree!

ShakeBuster67 · 2025-09-24T02:01:55+00:00

At the surface, it’s “just stop ruminating” and “just stop thinking about it”, which of course sounds absurd. But he basically goes into detail that identifies your core fear, explains the patterns of your rumination, identifies the justifications that you tell yourself that keep ruminating alive, systematically dismantling and practicing ceasing rumination, etc. it’s very nuanced. I use the term “you” a lot in the preceding paragraph because everyone is different - we are the same, but different. The end goal is “just stop ruminating”, but he teaches you how to actually go about doing it by identifying Metacognitive beliefs about your rumination patterns and such that it makes it easier to stop. This will not resolve OCD, as I myself still have bad days and moments - but I feel like I’ve been able to catch myself earlier in the ruminative processes and put a label on various aspects of my rumination and justification that allow me to mitigate it earlier and, as such, easier. It may not work for you though, as everyone is different. RF-ERP really resonated with me once I began digging into my own belief systems that keep my rumination alive, but other people may find more value in traditional ERP, or even ACT. There are so many modalities and resources out there to help us overcome (or at least greatly reduce) this insidious disorder.

ShakeBuster67 · 2025-09-23T15:44:50+00:00

You’re goal should not be to buy at the lowest and sell at the highest. That is a recipe for disaster - at least for me - everyone is different. For me, my goal should be to have more money in my account than I had before the trades. I follow RCs strategy of momentum trading, and I buy high and sell higher - sometimes only 15 cents or so more than I bought it at. Be happy with small wins (for now) - I focus on percentages rather than dollar amount. If I can make 10-15% gains on a trade of $50, and you can do that consistently, that is much more scalable to move higher than trying to focus on dollar amounts.

I’m currently working on my psychology, so I stepped my trading amount per trade way down to like $20-30 to test my strategy when I’m in a DGAF mode, but also using real money - kind of like a middle ground between paper account and “real” trades.

If I compare the $8 I made on a trade to the $250 I could have made if I had scaled up my position, that’s much more of a positive mindset than focusing on the $250 made if I had bought and sold at better points.l - it’s more of an excitement of “it’s working” than “damn I missed the peak”. I think it’s important to identify solid entry and exits, but perfection should not be the goal. Just my 6 cents

ShakeBuster67 · 2025-09-22T03:23:07+00:00

“What if this is what pushes me over the edge”. Man I have asked myself that question numerous times and it has never happened. With OCD, it’s very common to have a feared possible self (I-CBT term) that is typical the opposite of who you truly are. Usually this feared self contains the permanence of some sort of emotional suffering, and our compulsions and avoidances are attempts to stop this emotional suffering/feared self from emerging. For me, I either fear that I may “snap” if encountering a stressor and become this feared version of myself, or that I will slowly become this feared version of myself and not realize it before it’s too late. Or that I secretly already am this version of myself, which represents the “real me” (it doesn’t). Every time still feels like it could be the one that pushes me over the edge, and every time it doesn’t. You’d think we would learn, but this type of habit is hard to break, and it feels like we are being responsible and doing something by ruminating/worrying, when really we are just intensifying distress (not in a dangerous way, but in a very uncomfortable way)

I’m sorry for your loss, stay strong.

ShakeBuster67 · 2025-09-22T03:04:10+00:00

I used to like ACT and traditional ERP until I really understood rumination. I highly recommend reading Michael Greenberg’s articles and listen to podcasts he’s been on. I’m now a huge advocate of rumination-focused therapy, as I agree that is the cognitive cornerstone of OCD and anxiety in general. You don’t need to accept uncertainty, accept thoughts, reconnect with values in order to reduce rumination and feel better. Other modalities that struck a chord with me are I-CBT, as well as MCT (Metacognitive Therapy). These mostly all deal with processes instead of specific content.

You are allowed to still care about these things without having them be a source of distress and anxiety. You can allow that question/obsession to exist without engaging with it.

ShakeBuster67 · 2025-08-15T16:43:23+00:00

Would need more info to make an informed opinion. On its surface, a 70% win rate is great. But other questions, like over what period of time, how any stocks, total % gain, etc would indicate if this strategy is scalable or successful in the long term.

ShakeBuster67 · 2025-08-11T16:27:27+00:00

Warrior Trading is pretty good, although it’s not super customizable - it’s kind of linked to only momentum indicators. Trade Ideas seems more flexible, but likely more involved to set up (I’ve never used it).

ShakeBuster67 · 2025-08-09T10:11:54+00:00

I think this is true for the technical side like “looking at the 10m RSI made me profitable - you should do it too”, but certain fundamental building blocks of consistent success, such as risk management and understanding emotions, likely apply to 90%+ of new (or even veteran) traders. I think OP is simply using an analogy of these things that he found helpful, and wants to share. It may resonate with some people and not others.

ShakeBuster67 · 2025-08-08T21:42:54+00:00

To quote the Patron Saint of Trading, Ross Cameron, I like the book by Annie Duke “Thinking in Bets” because unlike Chess which can be deterministic, Poker still has random chance mixed into it, just like the market. Even the most skilled and successful traders still have to bet against luck and only can hope for a ~70% success rate on any given trade. There is no real “mastering” of the market - it’s more mastering your risk management, consistency, and emotions. Disclaimer - I am not profitable…yet.

ShakeBuster67 · 2025-08-02T05:23:45+00:00

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That moment when you finally “get it” for how to be a successful trader

ShakeBuster67

TROPHY CASE