how to stop obsessing

over moods, food, my looks.... a lot of things. I don't really know how to do that.

It takes time, just relaxing with it. I know that's not much help, but for me distraction always works. I either take a shower (my way to solve everything) or do something other then sit and obsess about it.

Once I have my head set on something its so hard to break the cycle. I know all too well.

Just go do something, anything, to distract yourself.

Getting a therapist will help.

Having daily activities helps. Even going to the store and not buying anything.

If you believe in God try the serenity prayer and let him take it. If you don't use the message of the prayer.

Mostly with moods it takes a year or two to get comfortable and understand the cycle. I was like that when I was first diagnosed.

Based on your posts, I think it would be a good idea to try to distance yourself from the diagnosis. If you find yourself obsessing about the mood you're in, one way to take advantage of that/get some millage from it, would be to try and figure out -why? What happened? How can I prevent this in the future? What can I do to soothe myself? Instead of it being about meds (or lack thereof), the diagnosis, etc.

Would be a good time to learn self grounding.

It usually helps for me to type my obsessive thoughts and try to reason them out. Many times I will delete the file. This gives me some feeling of getting rid of the thoughts.

I posted something about this the other day about thinking I had to always try to fix things even when they are working perfectly. This is a MAJOR problem for me. I can make people around me miserable, or make myself miserable. Sometimes it just won't stop. It get's me really depressed when I realize I have hurt others with this behavior. I wish I had an answer for you and no one has ever been able to help. They are like the intrusive thoughts that I have. Sometimes there is no way to describe them. I understand you completely...

Like ultramar said - if I'm really overly focused on my moods, I'll start tracing things back.

This tends to have a few possible outcomes:
1. I may just find a way to relax myself
2. may learn something new about myself
3. may be introspective and keep tracing things back
4. might end up tracing things back so far that I start to get confused and then go "oh you are being silly, this doesn't make sense!" and usually by that point the emotion will have passed and I'm good to go anyway. Then I just have a laugh at how much over-analyzing I did with no real result!

I second above statements about the benefits of distraction and grounding: I learned grounding in "seeking safety", a system for substance abuse with PTSD, while in rehab. Gronding has proven extremly useful with a bunch of my 'issues'.