That's a neat idea, Colleen, making a list! I worked with a woman and her elderly mother would call us at work everyday to tell her daughter to bring home some milk. The conversation was always the same. Her mother had lived through the Great Depression and World War II and still was afraid there wouldn't be enough food in the pantry.

I think I would set aside a certain part of the day to think about obsessions and write about them then. I have read that if you grind your teeth at night, that's like your brain twiddling its thumbs :-) and if you eat an apple or bagel or something "tough" or hard before you go to bed, that will tire out those muscles and you won't grind your teeth. Maybe obsessive thoughts can be tired out too or one can get bored after thinking about them so long, kind of like one normally turns from one task to another instead of doing the same thing all the time. But I'd show them I valued them and I would make friends with them by paying attention but I'd limit the time I spent on them.