I know everyone is different, but I want to hear about your recovery journey. How long were you in ERP before you started to see results? I’m three weeks in and struggling!
6 years of intense therapy for all my mental illnesses—and I have 6 mental illnesses.
@Nica That’s amazing that you stuck through it all and persevered because I know that’s not easy. That’s inspiring! May I ask if you take any sort of medication? (You don’t have to say what you take, of course) but do you find it to be necessary? I’m personally debating on whether I want to go back on meds or not. I like to hear about people’s experience with meds alongside therapy.
@Tee10 No medication works on me.
I started therapy in June 2022 and just ended it in January 2023. It was a lot of back and forth between feeling better for a few days and then back to feeling downright awful. Each time it spaced out a little more though and I was able to conquer things I wasn’t able to before. Keep at it and don’t give up. Don’t beat yourself up if you give into your compulsion. This takes time and healing isn’t linear. It’s hard to say how long it will take for you or anyone to heal from this. I was struggling a little bit today, but I did my best to not give in. It’s hard and takes a lot of practice. You can do it. ❤️
I’m also 3 weeks in and struggling. My therapist said it is different for everyone and it’s about building the muscle memory of this new practice we are learning. I’m frustrated because I wish it was quicker but a lifetime of this ocd prior and those brain groves of how to handle the anxiety (compulsions) are deep and will take time to revert to a new , healthy behavior - we can do this , I feel you
@smyers02 Same! I’ve had OCD since I was 12 and just got diagnosed last year. I have a lifetime of telling my thoughts to “stop” that I have to overcome.
December 14, 2024, marked two years since my first ERP therapy session with my NOCD therapist, Mixi. And October 2024 marked a year of being free from OCD. It was not an easy journey, confronting my fears face to face. Exposing myself to the images and thoughts my brain kept throwing at me, accepting that I might be the worst mother, that my daughter wouldn’t love me, and that I deserved to be considered a bad person. It was challenging having to say, “Yes, I am those things,” feeling the desire to run, but realizing the thoughts followed me. At the start of my therapy, I remember feeling like I couldn’t do this anymore. Life felt unbearable, and I felt so weak. I longed for a time before the OCD, before the flare-ups, before the anxiety, the daily panic attacks. I thought I’d never be myself again. But I now know that ERP saved my life. The first couple of sessions were tough. I wasn’t fully present. I lied to my therapist about what my actual thoughts were, fearing judgment. I pretended that the exposures were working, but when the sessions ended, I went back to not sleeping, constantly overwhelmed by fear and anxiety. But my therapist never judged me. She made me feel safe to be honest with her. She understood OCD and never faltered in supporting me, even when I admitted I had been lying and still continued my compulsions. My biggest milestone in therapy was being 100% transparent with my therapist. That was when real change began. At first, I started small—simply reading the words that terrified me: "bad mom," "hated," "unloved." Then, I worked on listening to those words while doing dishes—not completely stopping my rumination, but noticing it. Just 15 minutes, my therapist said. It wasn’t easy. At one point, I found myself thinking, “Will I ever feel like myself again?” But I kept pushing through. Slowly, I built tolerance and moved to face-to-face exposures—sitting alone with my daughter, leaning into the thought that my siblings might die, reading articles about my worst fears, and calling myself the things I feared. Each session was challenging, but with time, the thoughts started to lose their grip. By my eleventh session, I started to realize: OCD was here, and it wasn’t going away, but I could keep living my life despite it. I didn’t need to wait for it to be quiet or go away to move on. Slowly, it began to quiet down, and I started to feel like myself again. In fact, I am not my old self anymore—I’m a better version. OCD hasn’t completely disappeared, but it’s quieter now. Most of the time, it doesn’t speak, and when it does, I know how to handle it. The last session with my therapist was emotional. I cried because I was finishing therapy. I remember how, in the beginning, I cried because I thought it was just starting—because I was overwhelmed and terrified. But at the end, I cried because I was sad it was ending. It felt like I had come so far, and part of me wasn’t ready to say goodbye, even though I had already learned so much. It was a bittersweet moment, but I knew I was walking away stronger, equipped with the tools to handle OCD on my own. If I could change anything about my journey, it would be being open and honest from the beginning. It was the key to finding true healing. The transparency, the honesty—it opened the door to lasting change. I’m no longer that person who was stuck in constant panic. I’m someone who has fought and survived, and while OCD still appears from time to time, I know it doesn’t define me. I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments. Have you started therapy, is something holding you back? Is there something you want to know about ERP therapy? I'll be live in the app answering each and every one today from 6-7pm EST. Please drop them below!
So you got to ask me anything… Now I’d like to ask you something! I’ve heard from Members that they were so scared coming to their first ERP session. They were terrified that I would think they were crazy, that I would tell them their worst fears were true. That I would confirm they are some form of a terrible person or have them hauled off to prison for their thoughts. I’ve also had Members share how they’re very scared to begin ERP treatment because they’ve researched enough to know it means facing the fear, without the compulsions that have kept them feeling safe (but not really safe) this entire time. They struggled to see how they could be capable of doing this, while simultaneously acknowledging that they did not want to live like this anymore. If you have had your first session, what were your thoughts before? Did you have any hesitations or fears going into it? How did it turn out? If you haven’t yet begun to work with an ERP specialist, what is holding you back?
Can someone please tell me at what point did you finally accept that it’s OCD? When did the ERP click for you? When did you just stop buying into the lies of OCD and finally let go? Like what does it take. It’s been 2 years of this for me and I’m in ERP currently and it’s just not clicking 😣 is it just me???
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