My Obsessions Have Ruined my Life

[Horrendous_Hexapod]

I’ve been an anxious person for pretty much my whole life. From childhood to now I’ve had a variety of bizarre, almost crippling fears and anxieties, mainly about the end of the world, religious guilt, etc. For the last few years, however, these anxieties have just gotten worse and worse, constantly stirring around in my mind in a seemingly endless cycle.

I was originally just obsessed with stuff like creationism, I would constantly obsess over the things creationists would say to disprove evolution and take it upon myself to thoroughly read through it and try to debunk everything. Pretty soon, however, that shifted over to conspiracy theories, namely things like dinosaurs never existed of flat earth and the like. Looking back on it now, these theories were always completely stupid, but because I’ve always loved dinosaurs I took it personally and tried to obsessively debunk every single conspiracy blog, video, podcast, etc, dedicated to this conspiracy, and that was my main obsession between 2017 and 2021.

At the start of 2020, however, I also began to delve into some unsavoury things regarding politics, generally websites and videos that spouted off terrible, hateful things directed towards women, people of colour, LGBT, and quite a few others. While most people would typically just ignore this stuff and move on with their lives, for some reason I just couldn’t do that, especially since some of the people spouting these things tried to use science or statistics to prove their points, so I forced myself to analyse as much as I can no matter how much I hated every minute of it. I don’t want to get into the “science” these people used, but it was generally highly biased, cherry picked sources which at best didn’t fully support their beliefs or were built on sketchy foundations and at worst didn’t make any sense at all regardless of how much I tried to understand it. And so much of this contradicted with other sources that I just didn’t know what to believe at times.

But I just do take this any more. I’m living in a constant state of fear and anxiety that every single thought or opinion I have is wrong, with this little voice in my head constantly nagging me to look into these things or else I’m being wilfully ignorant. And it’s not just a few times a week, it’s pretty much every day. These thoughts just keep ruminating in my head, with a worrying thought appearing in my mind and me trying to use my own logic and research to combat it which just devolves into me repeating the same things over and over in my head for what’s sometimes hours. And when one thought eventually fades another just takes its place.

Sometimes I don’t cave into my obsessive need to research these topics, and I’m left feeling this gnawing sense of guilt over choosing not to engage my obsessions, but whenever I do cave I just feel so drained and tired with this pit in my chest, like I’m forcing myself to stay awake for hours on end. In fact, I’ve actually stayed up well into the early morning doing this, as well as take time away from things I could be doing, like studying or my hobbies. Sometimes my obsessions even cause me to research the same things over and over again just in case I missed something potentially world shattering.

I just don’t know what to do anymore. My obsessive tendencies and anxieties feel like some kind of hideous parasite that burrowed into the bask of my skull and started pumping chemicals into my brain to control me. Every time I promise myself that I’m not gonna look these things up or stop obsessing altogether, I eventually just break again and start the cycle again. I just don’t know what to do anymore.

[therising]

Hi Horrendous_Hexapod

I've found a sense of wonder comes at different levels of intensity. There can be a basic sense of wonder, a great sense of wonder, a serious sense of wonder, an incredibly intense sense of wonder and then there's wonder on a whole other level. An obsessive compulsive sense of wonder can definitely lead to some disorder in life. It's like where we just can't help our self but have our sense of wonder fulfilled. We could be neglecting certain other demands or needs in life, just to seek fulfillment of some kind in this way. From my own experience, it can become unbelievably time consuming.

I think to be a basically wonderful or wonder filled person is not a problem. Nothing wrong with a healthy sense of curiosity. An open mind is what leads us to learn and evolve in a lot of ways, as opposed to having a closed mind. When we're easily triggered to wonder or we're wonderful to the point where it's creating significant issues in life, then our sense of wonder needs to be seriously managed. Not sure if it will help but some of the ways I manage involve

• Managing through time. Allotting a fixed amount of time with which to wonder and then removing my laptop from my sight. Just the sight of it will trigger me (it's a lure). For example, something could come to mind like 'I wonder how the vagus nerve works'. 2 hours later and with me not even having started dinner for the family, me wondering is impacting others. It's the old 'I'll just have a 5 minute look'. It's never just 5 minutes
• Managing what I wonder about. Making a pact with myself to never research certain things can be hard to do in some cases but it's one of the ways in which I manage my mental health. I can't wonder about anything seriously depressing, anything that's highly stressful, anything that leads me to dread and so on. Being a gal who's a real feeler, I feel all that kinda stuff. Definitely nothing doom and gloom unless there's something I can do about it, to change things. Then it becomes about the information I need to push me to change things for the better. I also can't afford to wonder about what extremists have to say, based on being led to a sense of anger, more often than not
• I have to plan my day ahead of time. It's the next thing on my list of things to do that'll pull me out of wondering. If I imagine a day where I tick things off my list, one thing after another, there's a sense of satisfaction in that. I'll work on channeling my inner commander or director that can sound like 'No time for wonder, there's work to be done. DO NOT SIT DOWN! (in front of the laptop)'. While people speak of negative inner dialogue that comes to mind, on the flip side there's positive and helpful inner dialogue to be heard too. It can be easy to ignore

The list goes on when it comes to management strategies. I can't not manage it because it can get seriously out of control.

Finding others to help us manage can be handy too. My sense of wonder doesn't just stop at research. It can be a financial issue to. If I have the money, I'll wonder what it'd be like to have this or that, which can get in the way of saving. I have a vivid imagination that tends to run wild at times. My 21yo daughter and 18yo son have said to me on occasion 'Mum, you literally can't afford to wonder about that (item)'.

I think most of us are born naturally wonderful but that wonder is more inclined to be suppressed as opposed to people giving us life skills in managing it. There can be so many skills to be developed in managing it and so many things to be achieved through using it skillfully. There's no denying it, you're a wonderful person. 🙂

[David35]

I found an anxious mind makes listening to the news worse. It's very fear driven to sell (even though it's free to air...). Imhave an analytical mind which also leads me into states of frustration regarding politics, religion because they are based on very little facts. Some issues don't have to be either this or that. There can be  grey areas. For example many scientists don't believe in God. They are atheists trying to discover their own version of God. But the truly great scientists like Newton and Einstein did actually believe in a God. They simply thought they were studying the universe which God created. Maybe evolution sits inside the whole creation theory... There is no right or wrong answer. Some aspects in life, it comes down to what you believe.

As for social media, there are many documentaries highlighting how they use a positive feedback loop for news articles. So if you click on conspiracy theory articles, you will get more of them appearing in your feed. It's totally counter to humans regulate their thoughts by balancing out extreme views with more conservative ones. Food for thought. Social media, and even mainstream media, rely on fear to override the rational thought process.