Can't thank God enough for your channel brother. It's like you're slowly helping me to escape from one this worst prison inside my head! 👏

Duuuuuuuude. This was the single most important video I've seen on youtube ever. Seriously. 100% you have saved lives.

Mark, you have helped me in so many ways....Thank you for your genuine care in helping others..

This video is so dense in information and eye opening. I've watched it three times and I still feel like I'm only scratching the surface and truly understanding what you're trying to convey. Love it.

I was in the early stages of yet another cycle of compulsions and ruminations, after the first calm period in a while. Your advice helped me refocus on the Now and the real world around me. Thank you Mark. OCPD here :)

Been recently practicing living my life whilst having any thought or feeling and my head feels like it’s going to explode😂

Nailed it again Mark! Like you’re in my brain. So crazy how dead on this is. I’m living my life and my brain says there’s no way it can be this easy. There has to be something to overcome. Has to be an obstacle. Has to be a problem to solve. Has to be a compulsion that needs to be done. Just living life seems to simple like Where’s the catch. Truly believing there is “no catch” is the hardest leap of faith to make. But the most impactful I would imagine!

Thank you so much for all these videos, they are really helpful🙏

Thank you for putting this feeling into words. I wish more therapists understood ocd and anxiety like this, I’ve been judged for having this. Mine overlaps my CPTSD which makes it hard.

Thank you Mark!

I love your channel so much. Thank you so much man

Another really helpful video thank you 👍

Ruminating = distraction, Living your life = practice! Funny I realised that I used "manifestation" to continue my ruminating and compulsive thoughts patterns... and I thought this was me helping myself. I can't say thank you enough for your videos, it has helped me understand myself and my behaviours and slowly I am improving my life because of this.

Thank you. This is very comforting ❤

This message is so strong and powerful for ocd sufferers.

You’re on a roll. It’s giving!

Fantastic advice. Thank you, and thank you for your book.

Thank you brother ❤ you always deliver the quality content.

Great information ❤️❤️

Great stuff ❤️

So needed this. Thank you so much! I’ve been thinking about this a lot!

Markkkkkk you are changing my life

Thank you for your wisdom on OCD. I really enjoy your videos!

I love this guy 😭

Not gonna lie you cooked with this one🔥🔥🔥

Mark, after years of struggling with OCD and with one ruined relationship on the verge of another due to this, you've finally given me hope this can be done. Thank you.

Yourself, Nathan Peterson, Drew Linsalata and Reid Wilson the 4 champs of destroying OCD. Truly.

I got a little emotional hearing this bec it’s been such a massive internal struggle for me lately. I can’t thank you enough for your help🙏

Thank you so much 😭

Thanks!

Wow. This is a light bulb moment for me. Thank you Mark ❤

You and Joanna Hardis have done more for me than years of therapy and any dedicated OCD account on social media. Thank you for all of your content and your experience.

For me personally, learning the idea that rumination was a choice instead of something that happened automatically made me feel the most empowered and gave back my sense of agency. I’m addition, instead of feeling a void of insecurity when I stopped doing it, I felt a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. That’s when I knew I was finally free.

Keep doing

I realized now that the ONLY problem I think we all here have is that we hate on everything. I was hating on thoughts , hating emotions, hating people, hating weather ,hating clothes, hating pain, hating and hating and hating and hating and what all this hate is giving me is a closed road. All of this got me where I was , in a dark "WRONG" painful place waiting for some magic feeling to happen. If I continue to hate on everything even after 5 10 20 89 years I will be in the same place,probably even worse, certainly worse because ai can see where this road goes. I stopped hating because of this, I know where I'm going if I hate so THE ONLY OPTION is to have compassion, to learn that every thought, every sensation,every emotion can be there and it has a reason why it is there. Even if I believe that is wrong to have some thought and I'm doing lets say a compolsion, that is OK everything is OK , this is the only choice healthy choice I can do and than learn and be curious. Sorry for my bad english and mistakes, but its ok to make mistakes and I wrote this message for you all because I want to give this advice from my experience. The hating road is closed trust me ,or maybe better trust your experience with it . Start having compassion,even if you want to get rid of something, make that ok, it is ok, and learn from there.

where has this channel been for most of my life

I developed a similar fear when it came to somatic therapy. I became obsessed with my emotions and sensations, worrying that if I wasn’t hyper vigilant I was dissociating. It can be so insidious. This is a great video, man, it’s helped me to notice this bigger pattern.

As the Beatles once said. "Let it be". As always thanks so much Mark. I'm in recovery 4 years now because of you and my support team. Awesome video!

I struggle with this and Mal adaptive day dreaming

I have been watching you videos and have been given great relief that I don’t need to answer the questions popping in my head, the doubts and uncertainty. However, with my attempts to just stop investing my energy into that. They’re leaping back at me. Questions “is this my fault?”, alot of what if’s about my thoughts,I can even get into existential rumination and I feel like I need to answer these questions, A need. Is there anyway to convince myself that I don’t need to answer them or would that just lead to more compulsive thinking. Is it really just to stop investing my energy in that?

Hey mark I have a question.Like you said I am trying to practise mental fitness goals.But as soon as thought pops up, a further confusion comes along with it that Do I have to say this line to my brain that "Saba you have to focus on mental fitness rather than removing this thought" or simply doing what I am doing. Cz in this case my brain will not know that a thought popped up and it will be easy for me to continue doing my tasks. But then after this, another question pops up in my mind like.. "do I have to decide at this point which thing to prefer"? For example living my life or contiously choosing things ...

Hi. I have a question if you don’t mind. You are 100 percent right. My checking if there was issues was essentially me asking myself implicitly “what thoughts would come up if I’m not over this issue or whatever iv realised I haven’t ?” Or what thoughts would come up if I haven’t accepted things or if I’m not ok. So I want to go forward now, iv accepted the good of my path, and I want to start a new job. What I don’t want to happen is when I’m working get thoughts that make me sad or angry, ie you started too late, or why didn’t i figure this out sooner, now it’s much harder because I could have been further along. So then I try to ruminate it away, because I think if those thoughts can disturb me or come up, it means I’m not fully ok with everything or I haven’t really accepted it. So I’m checking to see if difficult thoughts or feelings coming up in the future means I haven’t resolved or accepted those issues. Because I don’t want anything to ruin my happiness or going forward now. How does automatic checking now go away, and any advice you have to overcome this fear of something bad happening in the future that’s within my control?

Hey mark! i applied all of the stratigies i learned through you And i may be i am doing a compulsion by asking you this question(i know) but since i have choosed to live life and not judging and trying to eliminate the thoughts and bad experiences from my life i got a relief for one day or two but after that the noises in my head became louder and louder till i cant ignored them and then i was unable to go and live my life,i felt deprived of energy i dont know whats happening.I was not overthinking ,just doing what i want to do,doing uncomfortable tasks but still the brain is getting louder and louder.why is it so...... Plz tell me...

Thanks Mark, always so insightful and helpful. I just had a question, at the end there you said 'let ourselves be curious' but isn't being curious about the thought the problem? Shouldn't we not br curious about it so we don't ruminate? Would be great to understand what you mean by that :)

I have found myself in this very situation when recovering from a breakup. Just living life seems so strange. Do you recommend cutting rumination step by step or completely? Because one huge cut feels soo tough to make(

Question mark. How do I differentiate addiction rather from obsessiveness. I think I have that right… for example. I want to quit smoking. Or watching po*n. But when I get anxious my immediate go to for comfort is either one of those. Which in turn makes me more shameful and furthers rumination on how I fail and snowballs into a day of intrusive thoughts (today will be a bad day now, I can’t get over this).

Hey mark. I had really bad ocd and my ocd themes have changed over and over again. From the past few weeks, i got obsessed with the way i look. I started to hate how uneven my face was, no matter how ever i looked, from whatever angle, I couldn’t make myself better. I started having those panic attacks back. All i could think was that i’m gonna end up alone because of my ugly face. I don’t know whether this is ocd or not because it is about something real that is my face. My friends and family try to convince me lthat i’m not gonna end up alone but no amount of reassurance is helping me. What should i do?? This doesn’t seem like ocd so how do i treat my anxiety now? I know to to tackle ocd but not this thing

This is a amazing video.thank you😊 how to overcome the anxiety that comes along with irrational fears? my problem is the hiperfocus i put on a thought and the projection of that thought in a real world. it's actually a fraction of a thought ,it almost don't have content ,its empty meaning but i associate the fear of the projection ..the what if even though i dont have any urge i fear the urge do you know what i mean? I dont have any thought but i fear the thought. if there is a trauma wih a theme that feels wrong to you ,that feeling its enough to cause distress. Só my question is..how can i navigate that feeling til its gone?Many thanks

Hey mark, how do I go about this feeling that I want the thoughts? Like the first time I had the thought I was extremely anxious but now it feels as if I’m actually wanting this to happen. Is this all just rumination? I even doubt that

Hi mark. I was wondering, is it important to understand why or how OCD/GAD/Depression developed in our lives? I lived most of my life free of any mental health issues, then developed many of these stress/mood disorders. Is the root cause really important? Or just our behavior moving forward? Because after reflecting and obsessively digging for over a year - I still don’t know what changed and what drove me to this as it was completely subconscious.

Wow

Do you have suggestions on downgrading triggers that bring up the instrusive thought? (My children).

How do i approach food compulsions? I always binge on junk food.... I overeat even junk food even when i have food at home.....i cook very tasty meals still i eat hotel food wgich costs me money and health.....how do i explore to cut out this compulsions?

I have been suffering from existential OCD for probably 8 months now. It was triggered by a tiktok video on the simulation theory, I had a panic attack, started looking around me asking what’s real.. and it went from there to compulsively watching videos and reading forums on other existential theories trying to disprove it. Then I came across the theory of Solipsism 🤦🏼‍♀️ this has been by far the stickiest and hardest to get over. I just had a good period where I thought I was getting better but then I feel like Iv done a major relapse and I’m obsessing about it again, ruminating, very depressed at the thought. My issue with this theme is that unlike contamination or harm etc these theories and questions are the biggest questions of life and anyone of them could actually be true.. the thought of nothing and no one else being real feels like life or death to know. I want so bad to go back to being clueless. Please help me with some advice 😞

So in order to recover fully from ocd you just have to destroy rumination, compulsions and avoidance?

You don't fear losing your job with high quality material like this? 😉

Hello Mark ,why i cant see the comment i left here yesterday?

My problem started with what I can only describe as a "despair attack." It was an anxiety attack that woke me up at 3:00am and was comprised of waves of impending doom and feeling like I was drowning in hopelessness. Was there any context to this hopeless feeling? No, none. It was not attached to anything in my life. I wasn't hopeless about money, job, relationship, health...nothing. I was feeling some guilt over ending a relationship, but that was the only thing on my mind. So what was/is this whole despair thing about? Is this just a sudden depression attack? It must MEAN something? It was - and is - SO goddamn awful that I've been trying to solve it/get rid of it since. And clearly, it ain't working. Can dropping all of the rumination and trying to solve it actually work? Thank you.

If I don't ruminate I get anxiety so severe that I feel like throwing up, I get severe tension headaches and break out into hives. Then I retreat back into my "house" as you said in the video. Does anyone have any advice on how to deal with these symptoms?

Mark, try to live our life and expect that the thoughts won’t come back is that another compulsion or not ?

Hi mark do you think social anxiety is a form of OCD?

does this approach work for existential crisis

But my rumination is automatic.. i m aware i m ruminating and yet i can't stop it.. i m always planning and analysing the moments in past so it cannot happen in future.. the moment i realize and stop it comes back the next second

How do i know the difference between ocd thoughts and feelings and real feelings? Like envy, jealousy and destructive thoughts about loved ones, which i do not act upon but they make me anxious. I have panic attacks too. I was never envious or jealous before but now I feel like i am secretly evil and narcissistic. Please help me. I want to be better.

I find it tough to understand if im supressing thoughts or just not paying attention to it and living life instead. Is it about accepting whatever is in your mind instead of trying to ignore it?

I've watched this a few times and what is said makes sense to me, but I don't see it described how to apply the ideas. Videos say how not to stop ruminating, but not how to stop ruminating, as far as I've been able to tell. I like the notion that rumination is part of trying to "get" rather than participate. That is a very useful idea, but is the advice to do what I've always done: once I am distracted, look at it, accept it, return focus to where it was. My main problem with rumination is when doing sitting meditation, or when reading. When focusing on something, I distract myself, with internal dialog. What the words are is not he problem, it's that the dialog happens and mental activity follows that train of thought distracting me.

Mark everything you say make extremely sense. However i cannot do it 😄 especially something like gronial response. My brain says its ok if you have it only in your brain but look you have real response. Aand here we are !

Sometimes just to not ruminate i do random things to stay out of the head and i do distracting things and over do it, how to manage that?

Thankyou so much It’s really helpful and comfort.🤍