I just told my son in law how much it hurts me when he treats my daughter badly. I made sure I said it hurts me. Now I am worried I may have done it wrong. I go over and over conversations in my mind wanting reassurance . Realizing reassurance feeling is temporary and I am feeding my OCD. Is that what Exposure and Response Prevention is about?

Hi everyone. I'm feeling kinda scared because I have to wait a whole month to start ERP therapy, but I feel like I need to start doing exposures now because the longer I wait, the more anxiety I get. It just feels like the OCD monster is getting worse. One thing that helps me is asking one person about an obsession I have...asking a person that I trust, and then doing an exposure after I get the "ok" to do it. I feel like I do need 1 reassurance and then I can go ahead and do it. I know i'm not supposed to ask for reassurance at all, but i dont think you're supposed to do ERP on your own right? Does anyone have any suggestions for what to do while waiting for therapy? PS-the reason there is a wait is bc she's on vacation. After she's back we will meet regularly.

I was sitting down and my child wanted me tl hug her. She extended her arms. I leaned in and hugged her but my pocd freaks out says “dont brush up lr do anything inappropriate. Dont thrust my hips”. I leaned in and hugged her. I had these intrusive thoughts and worries. I hugged her still and i think i did compulsions to avoid these pocd and intrusive thoughts. I moved on and now im habing doubts and false memories on the details. I know as i hugged her i worried about brushing up or hips thrusting and i was anxious and uncomfortable. I known its ocd. I still hugged my child. Despite ocd discomfort. I thought i felt my body react like a hip thrust twitch or maybe its just in my head. I dont want to hip thrust. Thats why my mind was freaking out worrying about it when she asked for anhug. My therapist said my ocd and anxiety and these intrusive thiughts can cause my body to involuntarily react and do those things my ocd is obssessing over like hip thrusting or twitches or groinals down there.

So, I know my capacity to get fixated on things. And it's normally something that's relatively remote but, my latest issue is really getting to me and I was wondering if people have any advice. I'm avoiding getting too into specifics, as I don't want this to get reassurance-y but, in essence.. I came to the realisation recently that people who I'd been "friends" (feels like the wrong term now) when I was younger were not very nice people, and normalized a lot of very unpleasant behaviour towards other members of the group. They really normalized it, sold themselves as figures of authority, as older and more responsible and grown-up than others, and looking back, they acted horribly. And coming to this realisation, that I'd been manipulated into just accepting their behaviour has just... broken me. My OCD has latched onto it and I can't stop feeling irreversibly tainted by it. I've talked to others about it, and they've reassured me, told me it's not a big deal and that I hold myself to too high a standard, but none of that sticks. I feel better for a bit, then think 'Maybe when you told them you were skewing it to make yourself look better' or 'Did you leave out a crucial detail'. I keep ruminating over and over, trying to remember exactly how everything played out, trying to figure out if I fed into the behaviour, if I did something bad myself (because y'know, I feel like I was accepting of it at the time, so what does it say about my own values?). I know I need to stop doing all this if I want to improve, but then some part of me keeps saying 'So, you're just going to let yourself off the hook then?' Normally, I can rationalize my own fears to some degree, assure myself something won't happen, but the realness of the situation, and the fact I only came to understand the reality of it because the thought had been bothering me means it feels so much more all-encompassing. I know confessing in itself is a compulsion, but I keep feeling that if I'm not I'm somehow concealing what I 'really am' from others around me, and any positive interactions are me deceiving them in some way. I feel like I can't enjoy anything in life right now, and a good part of me feels I should not enjoy it ever again. If anybody has any advice on it, I'm all ears. Or even hearing if you relate to these feelings, I might appreciate the solidarity at least.