What facts would you need to give a more coherent answer @TQfromtheU ?
@pickledginger, that sounds very helpful and insightful. Nonetheless, how does my suggestion for myself sound to you though?
Sounds like the logical thing to do to me, if it can be put off, and dealing with it harms your grades / time management / well-being.
@NightRogue I go back to not letting anything interfere with your education. If the summer is not long enough, wait until you graduate before picking up your research again. You are choosing to set priorities. That is a positive thing.
A break from the issue sounds good- you aren’t “running” from anything; you are putting it on the back burner until your studies are over for the semester. This is a reasonable solution if you can do it. If you can’t put it on the back burner, so to speak, and it’s interfering with your studies, then you need to see someone (a therapist) to discuss it.
I agree…you are not running from anything. You are prioritizing what to concentrate on at this point in your life. I think Uni is a fine thing to concentrate on.
While learning about treatment for OCD (which, unfortunately, came after more than ten years of not realizing what appropriate OCD treatment is - very common, sadly), I became aware that I had been engaging in a very typical, but extremely unhelpful, response to my family members with OCD.
Specifically, I was engaging in accommodation. If my family members expressed anxiety, doubt, worry, etc. over a recurring issue and sought my opinion to try to gain certainty about what the “right” answer was, I did my best to reassure them or answer them from a logical perspective. For example, my son would ask repeatedly if he was taking the right courses. This might happen dozens of times a day for weeks on end. He would search online to see if others had better suggestions for him. He spoke to his guidance counselor. He got my advice and the advice of friends. He was seeking certainty that he was doing the right thing and that there wasn’t a better path. Since this is CC, I am pretty sure we all have engaged in extended deliberation about course selection. However, most of us know and believe that at some point, you make your selection and move on. Perhaps it would have been better to take Calc BC than AB, but there are deadlines, you need to make a decision, and you will never really know how it would have turned out the other way. Before I knew about accommodation, I would reiterate to my son that I thought he was taking the right class for XYZ reason, that the deadline had passed anyway, etc. etc. However, when a person is caught in an OCD thought loop, there is no direct, logical response that will release their anxiety. Their brain is stuck.
In order to help my family members become unstuck, I finally learned that I had to stop this accommodation. It was not helping them. What I thought would alleviate their anxiety (because it is so hard to see your loved one suffer, of course) actually perpetuated it by not moving them in the direction of unsticking the brain. While it can be difficult to distinguish between legitimate fact gathering/opinion seeking and OCD reassurance seeking, I believe that most observers know it when they see it, especially if they have experience with this sort of thing.
Again, I am not diagnosing anyone here, of course, but I hope my response is helpful. Regardless, I cannot answer your question in good conscience, @NightRogue.
I also want to focus on my social life too, so is that alright?
Yes, focus on school and your social life. Come back to the spiritual issue once the semester is over.
I think that if you are able to put this issue to the back until the semester is over, that might mean that you are not OCD and it might also mean that you will view it in a different light after not thinking about it for a few months and it will resolve itself.
If you can’t stop thinking about it, you should seek out counseling, at the very least to help you deal with the issue of obsessing, even if it doesn’t resolve the underlying issue.
We can’t say if you are running away from your problems but it sounds like a good plan to set aside your research on the spiritual issue until this summer.
I was wondering, this summer I will be doing an internship, so I was wondering, do you think I should maybe put this issue off until I graduate? I mean, if I do summer research, it could bother me going into the school year. Also, last summer I obsessed over it and I don’t want a repeat. What do you think?
I think you should consider strongly putting this issue off until you graduate. If you are asking this question, that tells me that you know that you need finish school before you spend 4 months on this issue…and even then, not sure when you can really take 4 months off. Internships are important for getting jobs, adn you should start looking for jobs while you are in college senior year.
Once you start working, is it something you can work on in the evenings/weekends? You won’t have homework to worry about then.
Also, if you have OCD, it may be worth getting diagnosed and on medications.
Hi. My advice is still the same. Don’t let anything derail you from your school work and internship. Get real life help to help you with your choice to deal with the present.
So I should just wait until graduation?
I think so. Concentrate on your studies so you have the most options in the future.
Delete thread please.
MODERTATOR’S NOTE:
I’ve closed, but per Terms of Service, threads are not deleted on request.
http://www.collegeconfidential.com/policies/terms-of-service/