Memories

I took Ativan for 3 weeks in 2017 because of a reaction I had to doxycycline. In the beginning I had the black depression. It had gotten better but ocd and anxiety have remained.

About 2 months ago I started out of nowhere thinking about something that happened years ago.  I had peace with this.

Now it is all I can think about and I’m feeling depression.

Has anyone else had this?  Please be specific if possible.

Thank you.

The short answer is to think of something else.  You'll have to train yourself much like you'd train a dog to stop an annoying habit.  As soon as you notice your mind looping back to this or any disturbing thought, deliberately make yourself think of something else.  It helped me to notice something nearby and really try to get into it.  I might, for example, slowly/carefully trace the outline of a cloud in the sky in my mind.  Or I might watch a red car traveling down the street for as long as I could watch it.  Counting things is often effective - people, cars, leaves, birds, steps, breaths, ...  I sometimes watched ants crawling around ant hills.  I'd try to focus on just one ant.  It would require a lot of my concentration.

You have to really practice it.  You've made thinking about this old thought into a habit, and now you're going to have to break that habit.  It's probably going to take a few weeks of really working at it to nullify that old thought.  Fortunately, there are infinite sources of other thoughts out there to draw from.  And the skill you develop (redirecting your thoughts) will help with other looping thoughts as they pop up.

This formed the basis of my 'feed the right wolf' mindset.