- Username
- Acton123
- Date posted
- 807d ago
- "Pure" OCD
If you were in a waning period, wouldn't the triggers not work anyway?
I think sometimes I might convince myself that I’m in a “waning” period to avoid doing ERP and other recovery work :/ like “oh well my compulsions didn’t feel as hard to move on from as they did last time so I must not have OCD right now” kind of mindset.. I’m not sure
Hey AriannaNoelle, It's been my experience that you never really stop doing ERP work--it just stops being formal and scheduled and becomes more of a daily practice. So if you're feeling confident in your progress and recovery and you want to try not doing planned exposures for a bit, that's up to you--but I would definitely encourage you to continue doing exposures for triggers that arise naturally in the moment. Part of moving from formal ERP to managing your OCD on your own is practicing responding to those daily life triggers the same way you might a planned exposure, by resisting the compulsions and sitting with any anxiety that arises. If you start doing compulsions again on the grounds that resisting them is getting easier, so you must not need to resist them so much anymore, it won't take long for your brain to fall back into its old patterns. My OCD has definitely played the "oh my OCD is cured now so I can start fixing all my typos again" trick on me before, and I just ended up having to do a bunch of exposures all over. It's way less effort in the long run to just keep up the practice. I don't know that you ever get to totally let your guard down around OCD, but it does get easier over time. I hope this helps, and I'm wishing you the best of luck!