#just last night i went to sleep instead of checking tumblr one last time 👍

[ratbastarddotfuck]

btw y'all my notification checking compulsion used to be so bad that I'd go through every LIKE in my tumblr notes to see what posts people were liking. even if they weren't mutuals, if I didn't know them, if they were total strangers. I STILL go through all the tags, though that's more of an information-seeking thing. it can be hard to tell what's compulsive and what's not sometimes. but the likes thing was utter compulsion and I hated doing it at the time. it felt time consuming and boring but it also felt like something I Needed To Do because I Had To Know.

I had to break myself of my notification checking compulsions bc they were absolutely ruining me. that's when I turned off push notifications for every single social app a couple years back. For a while I just started opening my apps more to check them. But I also made a knowing effort to Not Do That, even in the face of the discomfort of not feeding my compulsion, and it worked! and then eventually when I did open my apps, I just started looking at the relevant stuff, bc I didn't want to waste my time. I broke part of the compulsion. It feels good to remember that I did that before I even realised it was OCD I was dealing with lmfao. That I AM very capable of facing my compulsions and telling them, No.

Another, deadly part of the notification compulsion is the dreaded Discord Server. I was in so many servers I didn't care about getting so many pings. I was making it my solemn duty to check every message in every sever every day. It was time consuming and not okay. In some cases the answer was simply to leave the server or mute notifications. In some cases, where I was still getting pings for certain things that I wasn't necessarily interested in for servers that I DID want to stay in for whatever reason, I discovered that the answer was, well... sometimes you just have to let your notifications fill up. It's really okay. Let them build up. Stare that compulsion in the face and tell it to fuck off.

if I ever send a screenshot of my discord, people tend to balk at how many notifications I have. or my texts, with unread (spam) messages. people will say "omg how can you live like this why aren't you checking your notifications why aren't you clearing them!" and holy shit sometimes I just wanna throttle em. because in doing this, not only are you feeding my compulsions, but you're creating your own! and if I say "well yeah I have OCD and I'm trying to break myself of the notification checking compulsion" I'll often get the response of "oh... well that's great but I couldn't live like that lol". MY FRIEND!!! YOU'RE PUTTING YOURSELF IN THE CHILLI!! FREE YOURSELF FROM THE SHACKLES OF COMPULSION!!!!!!!! YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO IT!!

Waugh. My point is. You Can fight your compulsions. They don't have to rule your life. I have done it and I am doing it constantly. It works and it does feel better. You just have to be willing and able to tell yourself No and sit in that discomfort for a while.