- Date posted
- 6y
- Date posted
- 6y
I’m not sure if you mean me Bob999, but sure! Let’s say you had a fear of being contaminated by door knobs. Your first job would be to stop avoiding situations where you would have to be the first one to open the door, or you would be by yourself so you would have to open the door. Then you would PREPARE yourself to not respond for as long as you can to the compulsion (washing your hands x times) to the exposure of the door knob. You would open the door and first make yourself wait 5 minutes until you wash your hands, and then 15 minutes, and then 2 hours and so on. While you are doing this you would also decrease the AMOUNT of time you need to wash your hands, gradually.
- Date posted
- 6y
Hang in there. I don’t have suggestions since I’m struggling on this myself and I have tried less than you but I wish you the best.
- Date posted
- 6y
I see:/ ACT is basically changing our relationship with our thoughts! It is usually added alongside ERP to broaden the scope of the treatment. https://iocdf.org/expert-opinions/expert-opinion-what-is-act/ Here’s an article explaining it- it’s worth looking into!
- Date posted
- 6y
Thanks Leah and Bob super helpful!
- Date posted
- 6y
Laurpln - I got a prescription for Prozac but cannot take it until finals is over. I am worried the tiredness or nausea or whatever that is will make my studying challenging and my grades drop
- Date posted
- 6y
I felt slight nausea at first but that was the only side effect ! Feel better and good luck !
- Date posted
- 6y
Hmm. I’m sorry nothing seems to be working for you!:( Just wondering, did your therapist practice Exposure Response Prevention with you? Also did they go over Acceptance and Commitment therapy and mindfulness? Trust me every time I would hear ‘mindfulness’ I’d think yadda yadda okay yoga whatever- until I realized what it really was and how it was basically what I was internally doing to beat ocd. Also I know Clomipramine is the most studied ocd medication and some have said it worked wonders for them, but I know it comes with the most side effects for some too. Maybe you could talk to your doctor about that one too. Just some ideas!
- Date posted
- 6y
Bob999- any tips for situations where you actually got exposed to a major contaminant? I struggle with that.
- Date posted
- 6y
The most important part of ERP is obviously the “response PREVENTION”. Which also includes stopping ‘avoidance’ of certain situations (which is a compulsion).
- Date posted
- 6y
@Bob999 thank you for that, i’ve attempted but i can never do it i guess because of the fact that it scares me and no one is telling me too. but i’m going to try harder now so thank you for that!
- Date posted
- 6y
@Lark thank you, we will both get through it i know it just takes some people a long time sadly):
- Date posted
- 6y
@leah25 oh yes the mindfulness and ERP we did and it did help for some situations, but as some of my issues would go away, more would appear and id still be left with bad ocd if that makes sense. but I can’t remember Acceptance and commitment therapy. what is that?
- Date posted
- 6y
Prozac worked well for me I know everyone is different
Related posts
- Date posted
- 16w
I’ve recently been struggling a lot with OCD. I have had OCD for a long time I just didn’t realize it until more recently. About seven months ago I developed panic attacks one day randomly at work. I thought I was having a heart attack and went to the hospital where they told me it was just a panic attack and I assumed I would snap out and be better within a few days. However it didn’t. Here’s where it gets scary, I was staying at my then boyfriends house while dealing with blurry vision, anxiety attacks everyday, and more (unsure of what was going on). But at some point I saw my bfs (pew pew 🔫) on his table and it sent me into an anxiety attack after sudden thoughts that I was going to hurt myself with it. I begged him to put it away when I’m not looking so I didn’t know where he put it. He did. These thoughts lasted for about four days but began to go away. (I thought that was it and I would be back to normal). Unfortunately though I ended up moving back in with my family when we couldn’t get my panic attacks under control in time for me to get back to work and pay bills. However, coming home brought up a lot of trauma from when I was kid. My anxiety got worse but I didn’t have those thoughts again. About two and half months ago though, I got sick and went to the hospital where they gave me steroid pills and a steroid shot but sent me into some kind of psychiatric event. Ever since then though, I have been suffering from harm OCD, I have had moments of intense anger that I usually have to completely walk away and go on my own because of how intense they are, and it feels like it’s getting worse. Today I felt fine until about and hour and half ago where I started to dwell on the fact that my suicidal thought was influenced by my OCD and at the moment my OCD is at the worst it’s been. This caused me to get suddenly really depressed and I started crying thinking about how I can’t handle this. I then saw a post talking about how suicide rates are high for people with this form of OCD and it made me question if I am mentally strong enough to pull through this. I fear that at times I’m getting worse. I have good days but I have a lot of bad days. Unfortunately this sent me into such a bad panic attack I went over to my nanas crying about how I can’t deal with this. I took a 0.25 mg Xanax which helped calm down the panic attack portion of it but my brain is still uncomfortably active. I guess I just need hope. I’m so saddened by this. It’s like my life took a total 360 in 10 months and got even worse since the steroid shot. Idk what to do about it. I can’t stop the spiral. I talk to two different therapist weekly and start more next week, making it 5 times a week. I feel no improvements…
- Date posted
- 15w
i want to get this out of the way; i’m not suicidal. i’m a 17 y/o guy whose been living with OCD for what i assume is most of my life despite only getting the diagnoses last year. i’ve been hustling on despite my mental health really consuming my life to moments in time where i question my sanity and self control. it’s the lack of control that really kills me with this disorder. each day i wake up, it’s the same persistent reminders; it’s the same meaningless conversations replaying; it’s the same small rituals that just barely let me breathe before the thoughts return. nothing i do is gonna stop that unbearable monogamy where i have to sit back and let my eyes be peeled open; i don’t know how to live with that. no pill has worked on me, and any response i give the thoughts just make them worse. right now i’m trying to just sit through it and not care. don’t let it effect me emotionally; try not to feel the discomfort. then it starts to manifest into physical pain where i feel the bones of my chest have this pressure—like staples entering them at the rhythm of a heart beat. i’m getting though this, but i’m not enjoying my life when doing so. i don’t know if i have a future where it isn’t just this repeating through the process of each day. i don’t want to spend the rest of my life avoiding the one thing i’m supposed to have control over. i also don’t want to drown my days in self medicating or get addicted doing so—like i already am. i don’t see the way to make this life of mine work, especially given how much i don’t have to do deal with at my age. of course that will come to. look, i’m not at risk; i really don’t want in anyway to die despite being basically hopeless. i’m numb to the pain of it, i don’t feel anything in my desire to escape these cycles, i just need an out. i’m not seeing a way to move forward. i’m willing to hear anything.
- Date posted
- 8w
My theme is suicidal OCD. I’ve been doing ERP since last year November and the overall intensity of my thoughts have not reduced at all. I have these thoughts 24/7 and my life feels like a living hell. Not two minutes goes by throughout the day where I’m not suffering from relentless thoughts. I don’t want to take meds because of the side effects and my insurance is coming to an end so it’d be difficult to ween off them by myself. I’m starting to feel so hopeless because I’ve done the toughest of the toughest exposures and I’m not getting better at all. My life is a living hell and I don’t see my condition with OCD getting better anytime sooner.
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