What’s the best exposure therapy for hocd? I can not afford a therapist as I’m a college student and don’t want to ask my parents for help because I don’t want to have to explain what I’m going through to them. Does anyone know the best ways to help me with exposure for hocd?

I live in a country where there is almost no erp therapist so i can relate to you , you can start your exposure here , in this app , i too have hocd and trying my best to do the exposures , we got this ?

Well self epr can be dangerous but a good mental exposure would be that everytime you think a thought you say “yes that makes me gay” and then kinda create a story in your head that is super gay for instance if u found a guy attractive say “yes I’m gay because I find him attractive, I’m going to go ask him on a date and we’re going to have a really good time and then I may even ask him over after and who knows maybe we’ll be in a lifelong relationship” something super out there and maybe even to the point where it seems ridiculous.

It’ll create a sense of “this is rly stupid” and make u realize there’s nothing to fear.

There’s not a one best exposure. The best treatment is simply to do ERP correctly. You’re going to want to create a hierarchy of triggers going from least distressing to most distressing. Then you’re going to design exposure exercises for the first and practice exposure to it daily until your response to it lessens drastically. Then you tackle the next item on the hierarchy. That’s a super brief summary. But here’s a great article for more details: https://iocdf.org/expert-opinions/expert-opinion-self-directed-erp/ Just to get you started, some common exposures would be watching tv shows with gay characters, reading about or watching videos about coming out stories, going to lgbtq events, writing scripts about being with a member of the same sex, etc. Please don’t make a common mistake many do and jump into watching gay porn and then waiting to see if your body reacts. (1) bodies react to all sexual content regardless of orientation and (2) that’s a compulsion called body checking and (3) it will not give you the answer you want and is entirely inaccurate and will simply cause more distress/confusion. Eventually you may watch gay porn for exposure, maybe, but only after months of other exposures after you know exactly how to do them correctly and have tackled many other stages of your hierarchy. Good luck!

Thank you so much really appreciate it

*erp

Thank u