One thing people do CONSTANTLY that they don’t even realize is a compulsion: checking whether they feel anxious.
It sounds like this.
“How do I feel?”
“Am I anxious?”
“Do I feel normal today?”
“Wait why does my chest feel weird?”
“Am I spiraling?”
“Do I still feel triggered?”
“Why am I thinking about anxiety already?”
And this is one of the sneakiest OCD/anxiety patterns because it doesn’t LOOK like a compulsion.
It just feels like being aware.
Your Brain Learns What You Keep Paying Attention To
I’ve worked with OCD and anxiety since 2008 and one thing I see over and over is people accidentally turning themselves into full-time anxiety detectives.
Now every moment becomes:
- checking your body
- checking your thoughts
- checking your feelings
- checking whether recovery is working
- checking whether you still feel triggered
- checking whether you’re “backsliding”
You’re not even living your life anymore. You’re supervising yourself living your life, which is different.
And unfortunately, the more attention you give anxiety, the more your brain starts treating it like the most important thing.
This is one of the biggest things we untangle inside The OCD & Anxiety Recovery Blueprint, because most people are focused on the intrusive thought itself while completely missing the compulsive monitoring happening around it.
The Trap Nobody Talks About
People think: “If I can just figure out whether I’m anxious, then I’ll know what to do.”
But what actually happens is:
you check,
then recheck,
then analyze,
then monitor whether the anxiety is leaving,
then panic because it ISN’T leaving,
then monitor harder.
Now your entire day revolves around:
“How am I feeling right now?”
And social media honestly makes this worse sometimes because people are encouraged to constantly monitor:
- their triggers
- their emotions
- their reactions
- their body sensations
- their “healing progress”
At some point your brain stops experiencing life and starts grading it with a goal in mind.
Why This Keeps The Cycle Going
Your brain learns through repetition.
So if every uncomfortable feeling gets:
- monitored
- analyzed
- checked
- solved
- researched
- reacted to
…your brain keeps sending more of it.
This is also why people can spend hours consuming recovery content and still feel trapped.
Understanding anxiety intellectually is very different from interrupting these patterns in real life.
That’s why I’m constantly talking about practice inside my content, my masterclasses, and especially inside The OCD & Anxiety Recovery Blueprint. Eventually there has to be a moment where you stop checking whether anxiety is there and start learning how to live your life WHILE uncertainty, discomfort, and intrusive thoughts exist.
And if this blog made you realize “oh my god I check myself literally all day,” start here, too:
I hope this helps. XO
Jenna
