Obsessive thoughts

Does anyone experience this, and have advice for overcoming this problem.

I keep obsessing over experiences that ive had. Over and over and over and over....you get the idea. I will go as far as to stay STOP to myself but the thoughts just trickle back in.

I don't want to go into much detail about what is bouncing around my head, but most of it stems from a bad relationship i was in years ago, so im sure you get the idea.

I guess I do get the idea. I have been going through depression now; and I tend to have it pretty bad during the spring. It seems like so many bad things happened in my life in the springtime. So far, things are alright. But I keep thinking that the roof is going to come down any time soon now.

Last year at this time, I was in the hospital. I had prostate cancer surgery. I was in the hospital for three days and then went back in for another three days. I have "flashbacks" about it. The way it looks outside now looks just like it did last year. So it reminds me of that time. It was a down time for me but it was not that bad. There were some good times with it, too, believe it or not!

I understand this completely. I still think about stuff that happened when I was in middle school. I had a lot of emotions tied around what happened and I feel stuck there. I obsess over it so much so that I can't be friends on facebook with the people that are involved. You are not alone but honestly I have no advice I am still working on it with my therapist.

Oh yeah! It is called ruminating and boy do I do that. It is like no matter what I cant forget totally or let things go out of my head.

A therapist I had suggested that I visualise these things into a big blue ball and then mentally open the toy chest, put the blue ball in there and close the lid firmly.

I then tell myself that I will think about those things later and set a time to do that.

It isnt easy and I know it sounds that way -- but it does help and it takes practise. It has helped me to cut down on the amount of thoughts that intrude all the time and also given me a space to deal with them so they dont permeate everything

I spent much of my life doing this until my doctor put me on an anticompulsive medication

Thanks, justafriend. I might need that.