Yes, I have 😙 It took a few years of intense therapy (not just ERP for OCD, but also trauma therapy too) for me to recover after 6 years of giving into my mental illnesses. It’s a lot of hard work but I didn’t want to live that way anymore, so I dedicated myself of getting better and staying better. I’ve been better since 2018.
do you still get compulsions? do you still feel urges and just manage it better ?
@anon818 You’ll always have intrusive thoughts but I don’t have compulsions and obsessions because I don’t give into my OCD.
@Nica thank you 🙏🏽
I just read the book Being Me with OCD and it gave a lot of good info about what recovery can look and feel like. The writer is now living a very happy life!
I feel like recovery is less of a north star or a final destination and much more of a big picture kind of experience. I like to tell my members that we will never really get rid of the intrusive experiences (obsessions), we will probably never totally and entirely get rid of safety behaviors/compulsions (we all avoid from time to time) - but we can get rid of the disorder part. The part where it distresses you, impairs your life, takes up more than an hour per day, etc. These are all things that we can work with and that I would encourage you to focus on. Speaking from experience since I also have lived experience with OCD, I feel like I am leaps and bounds where I was from years ago but it also is something (ERP) that I have to practice on a daily basis and adopt as a lifestyle, not just something I do every once in a while. Good luck to you!