- Date posted
- 3y
- User type
- Staff
- Date posted
- 3y
Hi! Exposure and Response Prevention is the gold standard treatment for OCD, anxiety, and related conditions. This means that it is by and large, with no other treatment coming close, the most effective way to treat OCD. It is in fact more effective for OCD and anxiety than any other treatment for any other disorder according to some of the evidence based literature. With that said, everyone is different. Research also shows that the one factor that is most consistently correlated with ongoing recovery is ritual prevention - that is, how often you are resisting your rituals. ERP will help you how to do that. We have lots of free tools on our app outside of just the forum and we are of course ready for you whenever/if you ever feel the need to start therapy! :) Good luck.
- User type
- OCD Conqueror
- Date posted
- 3y
In my experience, which is the only one I can speak to, ERP has been extremely effective in the treatment of my ocd. What you need to know is that ERP takes a commitment on your part to see results, even in those times when it feels too hard. Intrusive thoughts will never end because everyone has intrusive thoughts but those of us with OCD treat them with importance and ERP helps us to recognize intrusive thoughts and let them be without doing compulsions. It is common in the beginning to feel like it won’t get better, but that’s ocd trying to work its magic and the more you practice ERP the less alarmed you will become by intrusive thoughts. I hope this helps.
- Date posted
- 3y
Id like to know this too. Following
- Date posted
- 3y
I'm a few weeks in and I'd say it's helping! It's uncomfortable but I think the thing is not that the thoughts disappear, it's just that you can become less bothered by them, and they don't scare you as much. So you stop really noticing them as much. We all have loads of thoughts all the time, but most we let go or don't attach much meaning to. With ocd, some of those thoughts - normally about things we really care about - feel impossible to let go. We wonder what they mean, we feel like we have to know an answer, have to make it feel better, and that's where the compulsions come in. So if we can make our reaction to the ocd thoughts - the ones we really care about - more like all the other ones, we can get a lot less bothered by them. Like I said I'm only a few weeks in but I have noticed a difference, and I'm catching myself a bunch of times before i ruminate on something for the 100th time. Solidarity for the thoughts! Sounds like that's been hard
- Date posted
- 3y
I think what is tripping me up is something my fiancé lied about the past 2 yrs. I asked him & he denied it. Then i stopped thinking about it & the truth came out that it actually did happen. It is something that is on my mind CONSTANTLY & then I wonder amen will it happen again because I know it will
- Date posted
- 3y
Yeah at some point I start laughing about my thoughts like they are just amusing. Like that's the point to have these really weirdo thoughts and be like ehhh whatever. That is kind of weird to me and wonderful when that happens. like what an effed up thought, okay! Haha.
Related posts
- Date posted
- 25w
Hi! I've been on my OCD healing journey for about half a year and I have seen a lot of success. I'm reaching out for advice, I am very willing to do exposures because I know the more I do them, the more I get better, but I struggle with the response prevention part. I don't know how to control my brain when it comes to facing the fears especially since most of my compulsions are mental. I can tell myself the typical things "I am okay with the uncertainty of this happening", etc. but its like my brain doesn't believe them. I've been stuck in this disconnect for a while and would love advice you have heard from a therapist or learned that has really help you.
- Date posted
- 16w
I had just posted a summary of ERP for a group member, and I thought it might be useful for everybody. Here it is below (with a little extra added)…. ERP therapy is researched-based. Most other therapies don’t work. There have been people who have been literally stuck in their houses (from their OCD) who gained their lives back through ERP therapy. NOCD does ERP therapy exclusively. You can find it in other places too, but you have to ask around. There are two tenants of ERP therapy: The first one has to do with the repetitive thoughts inside our heads. These thoughts are actually defined as “obsessions”. You are not supposed to do anything with the obsessions. You are supposed to let them run through your head freely, without trying to fix them or stop them. Imagine a tree planted by a river. The leaves fall off and float down the river. You can see the leaves falling, but you don’t try to stop them or pick them up. You don’t try to fix them. You just let them float away. This is really important to do with your obsessive thoughts. The more you try to fight them off, the worse they get. I used to have blasphemous sentences running in my head 24/7. I felt like I had to put a “not” next to each sentence in order to “fix” it. But this just took hours of my time every day, and it was very scary, because I was worried that if I messed up, that I would go to hell. It was very freeing to learn later that I could just let those sentences run freely through my head without trying to fix them. The second part of ERP therapy is all about “denying your compulsions.” Every time OCD tells you that if you don’t do things a certain way that something really bad will happen, that is a compulsion. Once you recognize what your compulsions are, ERP therapy will have you practice stopping doing all of those things. For some people, that will mean stopping washing their hands or touching lights switches or, in my case, putting “fixing” words in their head. Compulsions are safety behaviors. During ERP therapy, you will practice stopping engaging with safety behaviors. All this is very hard to do and scary, so during therapy you will be given tools to help you deal with the fear. Often ERP therapy will take people from being non-functional to functional. I highly recommend it. ————————————————- PITFALL #1: After you have been doing ERP for a while and become somewhat successful, the OCD will try subtle little tricks to bring you down again. The first one is to tell you that your thoughts are REAL and not OCD, and therefore you can’t apply ERP therapy. Don’t fall for this trick! All thoughts are just thoughts. They are all meaningless. Don’t try to figure out what is real and what is OCD. Just treat all thoughts with ERP therapy. PITFALL #2: The second pitfall is that OCD will tell you that you can’t move forward unless you have absolute certainty that you will be safe. Hate to tell you this, folks, but there is no certainty in life. You will never know for SURE that you or your loved ones will be “safe” from the OCD rules. Therefore, you have to move forward in the uncertainty. It’s hard, but it gets easier with time and practice. We got this, guys !!!!!!
- Date posted
- 14w
I read about ERP and have seen information about it on here. One of the goals is to say, "maybe I am this or that...ect." That terrified me. The thoughts and images that go in my head are disturbing and upsetting. I don't want to even think about saying, "maybe this or that." It's devasting to have these thoughts and question why you're having these thoughts. Doesn't the "maybe" make it worse? The one thing that helps me is that is to remind myself that these are just thoughts and I know I'm not a monster, even if I feel like one. Is ERP not for everyone? Has anyone else had a problem with the techniques used in this kind of therapy? I had cognitive therapy for years with an OCD specialist and that seemed to help a lot. Writing out the worst case scenarios would make me suicidal. Im having a difficult time not obsessing over the "maybe" after intrusive thoughts now. It doesn't make it better.
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