I believe that self confidence and self esteem are really important in ocd recovery and to prevent relapse , at least bad relapse (not talking about a bad day or so which is expected). Any good advice or sources on how to develop this and become more self assured ?

I think that self care is an essential for a base line of confidence and then having all your things together (I.e. Money, living situation) is another big confidence booster because what’s anybody or yourself gunna tell you if you have all your things together? You gotta be your biggest fan

Hi block123, I would say one thing to make sure to do is to give yourself credit for every step of your recovery and progress. The fact that you even took the first step towards recovery is something most people have the courage to do, for many illnesses and you should be very proud of yourself for doing so! Also, anytime a slip up happens remember that it does not erase your progress. Make sure that you have compassion for yourself when you slip or have a bad day, our OCD Bully’s make our lives hard enough without us adding to it. Your OCD Bully will try to make you doubt anything and everything about yourself, especially your self worth leading to tendencies for a lot of us to over-apologize or confess looking for validation and reassurance that we are a good person or worthy of being loved, etc…. One thing to do is to look around at all of the positive you have in your life, not dwell on the negatives like OCD would want us to. Whether it’s having all your stuff together like @Meezy said, or you have amazing friends, or a great family or the partner of your dreams or have crossed things off your bucket list you never thought possible, or whatever it is that makes you smile and makes you realize all that OCD can try but won’t be able to take away from you as long as you keep fighting the fight. Maybe it’s because your OCD prevents you from doing what you used to like doing or it’s standing in the way of achieving what you want, use that as motivation to keep going. You are already stronger than your OCD Bully because you made the difficult and scary choice to get better and you’re hear because you realized you are not alone and we can all help each other and motivate each other in keeping on the path to recovery.