Originally Posted by
Sheila
For some people in w/d, including me, one of the most harrowing symptoms is the appearance of one or two major obsessions which stay with us throughout the course of our recovery. This is above and beyond the many, small obsessions that plague us.
The magnetizing obsession is definitely driven by the neurological problems resulting from psych med use and w/d, but *what* it focuses on has to do with *your* life experience.
The major, relentless obsession may become focused on something that happened in the past (eg something you feel guilty or bitter over); something happening in the present (eg worry about another specific w/d symptom or ongoing life circumstance), or something that could happen in the future (eg something bad that could happen to you).
In early w/d, the magnetizing obsession is pretty immovable. It seems like The Truth, and we live in terror, rage, or depression about it.
As you move forward with your healing it becomes possible to work with the magnetizing obsession somewhat – either to take steps to mitigate the issue or to question its validity. Occasionally, we may even have windows of being free of it. But, it keeps coming back and we keep having to wrestle with it again.
Later in your recovery, if you are interested, you can analyze your magnetizing obsession for its symbolic meaning, and you may learn that, among other things, it symbolizes some unhealed issues from your life prior to w/d. I have found this very helpful, but it’s not really doable until you get to a certain point in your healing.
Eventually, after a long time, and as the magnetizing obsession started to break up, it became clear to me that flare ups of the obsession were always, always, always accompanied by a flare up of feeling bad about myself. So, that’s in interesting thing to look for and then chip away at and heal.
Finally, the magnetizing obsession fades away. We wonder how we could have believed and felt the way we did. The issue either disappears or we think *very* differently about it – possibly even the *reverse* of what we had thought during w/d.
But, for a long time, for many of us, the magnetizing obsession is entrancing, irresistible, compelling, inescapable, imperative, unavoidable, unconquerable, beguiling, entrapping, and deceiving.
