As soon as I booked an appointment for ERP, my OCD decided to fade away after months of dealing with it. Now my mind is telling me to cancel the appointment because I’m “better” now 🤦♀️
No, don’t cancel it! It’ll always be with you and it’s better to get help now than cancel and have it come back even worse.
@Nica I definitely agree!
Oh Lord this is literally it. It's like the clarity of super fear.
It sounds a bit like your mind is trying to trick you. Hope you remember that your OCD doesn't want to go away, so it will be sneaky making you stay away from treatment.
@Emilhaagen99 You’re 100% right! OCD can make any feeling feel so real.
This happened with me ! I was really bad for a long period of time and then when I started getting help I felt “better” and I wasn’t really passionate about ERP or therapy in general because I thought I didn’t need it. Then when it finished and my therapist sent me on my way a few weeks later it was all back 🥲😂 it was some sick joke but it is what it is I guess
@markson This is exactly how I feel right now 😭 since I’m feeling good at the moment I feel like it’s not necessary to go through with it, but if I don’t it’ll probably get worse.
I had the exact same thing!! Ocd was so bad then booked an appointment with an erp therapist for the first time, and felt so much better and spent the whole first session saying how I didn't need therapy ... therapist saw through it (thank god) and I spent 6 months in Erp therapy where I had numerous relapses. Go to the appointment 🙌 even if you feel better the whole time, it's good to get the tools in case you ever relapse!
I’ve been feeling this exact way I thought I was gaslighting myself into thinking I have ocd! I have over a week before my first session and wake up everyday thinking “I’m not bad enough” when my thoughts before making the appointment were “I’m so bad!” I guess the ocd always shows you what you don’t “want” to see. When I admitted this to my partner, I started the sentence with, “I’ve been obsessing over if I have ocd or not” and then realized saying it outloud… it’s an obsession no matter what it’s trying to disguise itself as. I feel proud when I make connections like that and feel I am looking ocd in the face and saying “HA!”
From my experience, I’ve done this many times with different things and it didn’t work out very well lol.
(21+ ONLY: TRIGGER WARNING) I have therapy today and I’m nervous. I just started going to therapy and I really like my therapist. She talked to me about doing ERP and I’m really nervous about it. I’m scared to tell her the extent of my OCD, and my themes. I’m scared to tell her about my false memory OCD, because I’m scared that what I did was real and I’m just excusing it as false memory, although I have no memory of it. I’m scared that I am truly a monster and I’m using OCD as an excuse—and that she’ll find out and distance herself. I’m just scared that my whole world is gonna fall apart, all around me.
I’m thinking about doing erp but my ocd is so severe the thought of accepting my fears happening to me makes me sick to my stomach. I also believe in the power of my words and saying I accept this Bad thing will attract it into my life. I’m not sure what I should do🥲
So I've been working to address my OCD for about a month now. So far, I haven't been working on it with a therapist and have instead been trying to create my own exposure exercises. The primary obsession I'm working on is the fear that I'm somehow flawed or invalid on a fundamental level. The best way I can describe it it is that its similar to the feeling you get when you have germ OCD and you feel contaminated, except my whole existence and being feels contaminated, so to speak. I've identified a list of triggers, and a list of compulsions (pretty much all mental) that I've noticed myself performing. I started out by doing imaginal exposures and scripts where I'd write out triggering fictional scenarios and read them over and over, combined with mindfulness techniques to focus on my breath and bring myself back to the present when I noticed myself performing compulsions mentally. At first it worked to some extent, but eventually I started to feel like the stories I was writing about this obsession weren't triggering any anxiety anymore or a very low level. So I stopped reading them and focused solely on improving my ability to stay present and identifying compulsions as I perform them, and disengaging. Now, I'm at the point where it seems like my general anxiety levels throughout the day are lower, and the triggers I've identified are producing noticeably less anxiety. But that makes me wonder if somehow I'm just secretly doing mental compulsions without knowing it? Is only a month of rather disorganized and unstructured ERP enough to produce this much improvement? To avoid giving me re-assurance, I'd appreciate if you guys don't directly answer those questions, maybe just provide some possibilities or your own experiences so I can get a better idea of where I'm at. Any info would be appreciated. Thanks!
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