- Date posted
- 6y
- Date posted
- 6y
For physical symptoms, you can recreate them. For many people with anxiety issues, their therapists will have them do things like run on a treadmill (which elevated your heart rate and makes you breathe quickly, similar to having a panic attack) to habituate to the physical sensations of panic. Running, clenching all your muscles, sitting in a small crowded space, etc to recreate those sensations is how you’d do ERP for them. Cause them purposely and then sit with the anxiety without performing compulsions. Do it again and again for a few weeks and see if you notice a difference.
- Date posted
- 6y
You can do a worry script describing in detail how all of that will affect your life.
- Date posted
- 6y
But start small! Don’t just sprint to the next crowded public bus and sit in misery as you listen to your heart race. That’s just torturing yourself. Take small steps to push yourself a little more each week. Start with light jogging and maybe some muscle clenching of areas you frequently feel tense. After doing those a week or two, make it harder: run faster, clench more, maybe do both at once. Maybe sit in a crowded coffee shop for 5 min. Etc. The whole crowded bus scenario could be your end goal after weeks of habituation. But take it one step at a time. Habituation takes patience.
- Date posted
- 6y
@pureo my physical symptoms are brain fog, tension in chest, butterflies and nauseous. Hard to concentrate. My thoughts associated are never going to experience peace, what if I am handicapped and in hospital, very tired with little motivation. I was an D1 athlete and still workout strenuously almost every day so I’m used to that feeling but nothing is more doom and gloom then how I feel
- Date posted
- 6y
Worrying about becoming handicapped when your an athlete is a pretty understandable fear! And it makes sense that your OCD has latched onto it. It sounds like the physical sensations aren’t really your focus at all then, thats just how panic feels when you’re experiencing worries from your obsessive thoughts. To “stop” the panic, you have to deal with the obsessive thoughts, not just expose yourself to panic for panics sake. Your ERP should be about your main fear (becoming handicapped). Unless your OCD was about panic itself, exposing yourself to the sensations alone wouldn’t really do much. The only way to combat OCD is with uncertainty: maybe you’ll become handicapped some day. But maybe not. You can never be 100% sure of that. Accepting that can be very hard for the OCD brain. So you have to train it slowly. Keep in mind that being uncertain doesn’t mean there’s a 50/50 chance you’ll become handicapped. It just means the chance is greater than zero. For ERP, you’ll probably have to do imaginary exposure. I would write out a few different scripts, maybe 5. In each one, write out a very short story about becoming handicapped. The first should be a mild but still upsetting kind of injury. Something where most of your life would be the same but not all. Have each story get progressively more upsetting. The last story should be your absolute worst case scenario. Start with the 1st script for a week: record yourself or just read it out loud over and over for 5 min each day. Let the anxiety that arises from imagining the scenario come and naturally pass without engaging in compulsions (ie ruminating over all the ways your life would change, trying to analyze a way to make it better or worse, or to suppress/neutralize the thoughts.) after a week, see how you respond: is your anxiety lower? If it’s around a 3 or 4/10, move up to the next story for a week. Repeat until you’re listening to your worst case story every day without doing compulsions and keep doing it until you stop having an anxious response. Some thought restructuring (another part of CBT) might also help. If you were to become handicapped, there is a chance you would be okay and even happy with your life. The inevitable risk isn’t even 100% true to begin with. You may want to buy a CBT workbook to guide you through since there’s obviously a bunch of details I can’t cover here. Good luck!
- Date posted
- 6y
I meant handicapped with my sensations and emotions the anxiety and OCD thoughts. Not physically lol
- Date posted
- 6y
You can still do the same. Write out each script with varying degrees of emotional impairment due to your anxiety. I think you may want to speak to a professional. They can walk you through how OCD works, pinpoint your actual fear, and show you what to address.
- Date posted
- 6y
I been talking to OCD therapist. My 2 are the physical sensations of OCD and HOcd
- Date posted
- 6y
Great! I’m sure they can help you structure a proper hierarchy for ERP. Your HOCD may be a good trigger for your OCD about the physical sensations of OCD.
Related posts
- Date posted
- 20w
Medication for OCD? Hello all, 19 male here, this seems like a cool community that isn’t nearly as triggering as reddit. I have pretty severe bouts of existential thinking or fear of going crazy ( psychosis ) after some pretty heavy mushroom trips a few years ago, I know logically I should be fine but I do know what it’s like to lose it and it’s scary. Currently I deal with relationship focused OCD, it’s all day from before I even open my eyes. I want things to work out with my girlfriend badly. Also I can come close to a panic attack sometimes which perpetuates everything. Anyway, I mention the fear of going crazy because the way my anxiety/derealization makes me feel is that I’m not mentally stable cause I feel out of it or unreal. I saw that a lot of anxiety and depression medication can cause psychosis and I feel like I could use some help in getting ahead of my OCD because the compulsions are had not to give into when I’m in such distress/not knowing. Plus overall I just feel like I have no idea how I feel about close to anything. Anyone relate about that ?
- User type
- OCD Conqueror
- Date posted
- 11w
I find while doing exposures, rarely does my anxiety lessen. It usually amps up and stays that way for the remainder of the day. I could be having a fairly decent day, but dutifully do my exposures and then the rest of my day is anxiety filled. I guess that’s just how it is now? Also, I’m wondering if my therapist even believes I have OCD. I totally understand my therapist cannot provide reassurance. But it’s to the point it seems my therapist acts like I actually did the thing I fear. I feel so isolated.
- Date posted
- 7w
Not necessarily asking for reassurance and I know I’ve mentioned this here before but my OCD has been affecting my cognition seemingly. I’ll forget small things or put things in odd places sometimes, or mix up words - things like that. Obviously this triggers me to be like “Alzheimers/dementia.” Can anyone relate? And if you recovered what did you do for it?
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