Hi, is journaling good for OCD? I would love to journal but obviously don’t want to feed into my rumination. Any tips would be helpful, thanks.

Amazing question, journaling is what led me to NOCD (literally joined this community today). I’ve been journaling for 3-4 months but kept on going in a loop. My therapist (not NOCD therapist) told me journaling is good so I just started it but it never led me anywhere, it wasn’t productive at all!! That being said, I’m curious after my first few sessions if theres helpful journaling tactics for people with OCD using doing ERP!

Hi! My OCD IOP therapist LOOOOVED it when I journalled, and my NOCD therapist has encouraged me to keep up that work. As with most things, it *can* be a compulsion or something that feeds into rumination, but it doesn't have to be. It all comes down to approach and intention. If you're writing as a way to seek certainty, or to reassure yourself, or if you're going back and reading what you wrote over and over and getting caught up in it, those are red flags that compulsion is involved. If you're writing to process your feelings around a fear, or explore and understand your responses to it, or just to get it out onto the paper so it's not all in your head, those approaches are less likely to lead to compulsion. I think it's definitely valuable and worth trying--you just have to check in with yourself occasionally about how you're doing it. Best of luck!

I’d like to know too