I don't think any of us truly realize how insanely easy it is to get over our condition. The answer has literally been right under our noses the entire time. Do nothing. Don't negotiate with these senseless fucking fears. Don't try to reason with them by any means. Give into a compulsion for clarity if absolutely dire but don't make this a habit. Think back at how many times this bully has made you repeat the same patterns over and over your whole life. Put an end to it. Breathe.

Maybe this will help someone. I have had Pure O / POCD / ROCD for about 18 years. Recently I’ve started to open my mind to all the negative thoughts, to just sit and say ‘Do your worst’. And when the thoughts come I refuse to deal with them, I just accept that these things might happen. And of course, when I feel like I’ve dealt with one thought, my OCD looks for another, and another...but I just deal with those in the same way. I feel like I’m tiring out my OCD, little by little. It can be really scary, but it definitely works. I don’t know how it works, but it does. In a few weeks I felt a lot better about two specific thoughts that I’ve had for literally the past few years. We all need to remember that the stuff we think works (rumination, reassurance) doesn’t, and the stuff we don’t think will work actually does! Stay strong everyone ?

Anytime I have a thought or feeling that associate with my obsessions my go to winning saying is “I don’t know maybe” and if I can stick to this, no matter how exhausting it can be, freedom lies right ahead! Freedom in the unknown. Which isn’t really the unknown, I know myself and character but if we argue with our OCD it gets worse. No matter how bad your mind is telling you to figure it out right now, it will ALWAYS tell you that every time. Every distressing thought will come with that feeling f to figure it out. So take control! Take it captive!

What has led you to believe that OCD is the source of truth? Or it could be that you cannot distinguish between what are thoughts and what are OCD thoughts. A normal thought considered significant becomes a compulsion especially when you attach meaning and get anxious about it. What OCD is doing in your brain is searching for threats when there are none. Trying not to have a thought is like pushing a baloon into the water in the hope that the balloon will sink, but it will come up and you know it's hopeless. That's how it's with OCD. I get that everybody is afraid to do ERP because I don't know how to emphasze this enough, it's really scary to do ERP. It's not easy. It's not supposed to be easy. If it was easy, we as a community wouldn't exist, nor OCD specialists. Because it would have been easy, and we would have gone on with our lives simply because it was easy. It's hard to do ERP. But it's worth it. And those people who still think they can't do ERP. They can instead actually try "Do nothing" about the intrusive thoughts thing. We are already exposed to intrusive thoughts whether we consciously do it or not in the case of ERP. But take the opportunity and use those intrusive thoughts as exposure and change our response around it. Sometimes I sound like I don't have OCD. And I know that. I suffer from OCD just like you do. I suffer from Pure O, Magical thinking, and superstitious numbers, and the list can go on. Even as I am writing this, my OCD is like erase that sentence and think about something positive or else something bad will happen. So what have I done then? Nothing. How do I feel? Terrible! And the distress is too uncomfortable. But this way I know, I am starving OCD. And then it tries its best to change and attack other things that I value and love. But once you decide and tell yourself with courage that, I can candle anything that OCD throws at me, that's when you claim power back from OCD. OCD knows your limit of tolerance. So it always try to go higher than that. Try not to outsmart OCD. Because you can't. What you can do is sit in the discomfort and do nothing about your thoughts and compulsions. I always say this and I will say it again, it sounds so easy. But when it comes to doing, we are all back to doing compulsions, and neutralizing thoughts. Somehow it just doesn't work. Why? Because deep inside all of us we have the what ifs, and they have us fight and flight response which makes the thoughts, urges feel so real. Except, it's not dangerous at all. So an alternative to the ERP is "Do nothing". And it's not something new, nor do I take credit of inventing it. No. Most of us are tired of OCD. We need to get tired of the default responses we have for the compulsions and replace them with nothing. We can try. Stay Safe. Awais Bahar