ERP on own

Hi gom. In order for ERP to be truly successful, you have to engage in the exposure part of ERP. Simply engaging in Response Prevention practice generally does not lead to significant improvements in symptoms. If you are not going to be seeking out stimuli in a purposeful manner to exposure yourself to, you would need to stop what you are doing whenever the trigger occurs and focus on it until the anxiety significantly reduces.

Hi Gom! I have certainly been in your shoes. I was a student at university and could not afford therapy. Luckily, my school had an excellent program for struggling students, and I managed to get on a waitlist to see a very good therapist. I would encourage you to call your administration office and inquire about their mental health resources and whether they have therapists on site who specialize in treating OCD through ERP. You might be surprised by the response. Other than that, Nathan Peterson has a one-time fee online course for OCD and NOCD offers payment flexible plans as well. It might be helpful even to see a therapist once a month to keep you on track with your fear hierarchy, as well as attending support groups which will provide excellent exposure to ideas and resources for you to tap into. Doing ERP on your own can be extremely challenging, even when guided by a book from a mental health professional, but I certainly commend you for your efforts! It shows an amazing willingness to stick to the therapy. Finding professional guidance with ERP would be my highest recommendation, however creating an exposure hierarchy of your own, tracking your rumination cycles/compulsions and creating very specific goals each week for exposures would be one way to tackle your OCD. Your goals must be detailed and within your initial limits in order to teach your brain that ERP is effective. An example of this would be: only washing your hands for 5 seconds instead of 30 after touching something you might consider contaminated. Then the next week, not washing your hands at all and sitting with the distress that might bring without performing a compulsion, and so on and so forth. I hope you manage to find the resources you are looking for and best of luck on your journey!