Not understanding ERP

It's possible to do it on your own, but ERP is basically exposing yourself to your fears (ie. If you have a health theme, you come up with a hierarchy of exposures with your therapist that start "easy" and get "harder". Maybe an easy one is watching someone sneeze into their hand and then touch a door knob). The goal is not to do compulsions when you see the trigger event happening, so you break the OCD cycle. I can honestly say that ERP has saved my life and you should 100% consider going through with it. It doesn't work for everyone, but it works for a lot of people and that was a risk I was willing to take. I also told myself that maybe I'll have to live like this for my entire life (depressed, anxious and going through damaging thought cycles all the time) and then I started ERP and I'm so glad I did it. So so so glad. I'm a huge advocate for it as you can tell.

I found doing exposures on my own incredibly hard. I was overestimating how much I could handle because I was desperate to get better. Maybe you can try only doing exposures under your therapist's supervision if you're not doing that already?

I think you are allowed to really want to get better and believe that you can. This is what gives you the push you need to start facing your fears (in small ways at first) and the motivation to keep at it. ERP is kind of a paradox. In the moment it can feel like it will make your fear and anxiety worse, but in the long term it has the opposite effect. If you stick with the discomfort until your anxiety decreases on its own, your brain eventually realizes that there’s no need to panic. ERP changes your brain’s response over time and eventually you will be able to tolerate more and more of the things you’re currently afraid of. Think of it as tolerating the uncomfortable feelings now to have an easier time and a better life in the near future. I know how scary it feels, especially at first! It’s a lot easier with a therapist, but if that’s not possible you can start small on your own and work your way up. Take stock of your fears and start with the one that causes you the least anxiety. That will give you a confidence boost and the motivation to keep moving up the ladder. This is a lot already but one more thing that really helped me was realizing that “sit with it” doesn’t mean you have to literally sit and do nothing while feeling anxious. You can do something you enjoy, you can do some chores, you can ask yourself “what do I want to do while I feel anxious about this?” and go do it while the fear swirls around in your head. Just acknowledge it’s there “Thank you for your concern, brain! Duly noted!” then continue on with your task. It will feel very loud in your head for a while but do your best not to engage or argue with the thoughts (it can be fun to make fun of them though!) and eventually things will calm down. I wish you the best of luck ❤️

For me ERP helped me manage my OCD so I wasn’t so consumed with depression/ nothingness. In my case I was in residential treatment where in addition to ERP I attend groups on CBT and DBT which also helped me depression. If your OCD isn’t specifically related to obsessing about being depressed then ERP should be around what you fear. If OCD is about depression then you actually can fix that obsession by taking the risk of thinking you may or may not get better. Paradoxically taking the risk and accepting the uncertainty of the situation are what fixes OCD. I hope you have an ERP therapist helping you with this.