has anybody been working on doing ERP therapy alone without a therapist? has it worked for you? i’m attempting to do it alone but it is soooo hard. any tips would be wonderful as well :)
Yeah I have to do it alone in between sessions, it’s gets easier.
For the past year since I’ve learned about ERP I’ve been doing it on my own. Too scared to ask to see a therapist or get a diagnosis just yet. Some tips I can absolutely give are to keep going! There are some self help OCD books you can buy. I don’t have any but there are some :) just push yourself and remember after the bad there is always good. ERP doesn’t immediately make it better, it takes time and a want to keep going. Do not fall into the trap of “oh god I’m not worried about this!” That’s OCD about OCD. Keep ERP’ing it and don’t avoid things out of fears. I believe in you
I do one session every morning. Part of my routine. Def gets easier. :)
Yes, I have had therapy, but I still work on ERP everyday. LOL, it is really just my life. There are things that trigger me (the exposure) and then I practice the response prevention. I don't ruminate, check, reassurance seek etc. I allow time to pass, I am willing to be uncertain. So, at this point, it is not a specific time set aside for an ERP exercise, but, for example, I know later today I have to pick up a prescription from the pharmacy. There was a time where I would ruminate about this, and then after I picked it up there would be a lot of checking compulsions. So right now, I'm not ruminating, I'm doing things I value, I hopped on here to see if I could contribute anything, I am heading to the gym, etc. I allow and am willing to have uncertainty. A really great book that helped me was "Needing to Know for Sure" by Seif and Winston https://a.co/d/8Hi7oHs Hope this helps! Take care, and it's great that you are working on ERP!
Ye, I don’t have a therapist, or even a proper diagnoses yet, and so I’ve been trying to do ERP on my own but it’s so so hard
@Catinabox i believe in you, we can do this together. you have the potential to be so great and although i don’t know you, i know you are a kind and loving person who has good intentions. you are not your thoughts and i believe in you.
@formyfuture Thanks, that means a lot
At first I started doing it by myself, which did help and kept me afloat for a while. Now that I’ve been doing it with a therapist, I’ve made progress a lot faster - but mostly bc I had a specific structure to follow. Outside of my sessions I did ERP 5+ times a day for about 4 weeks which reduced my symptoms significantly. Then I decreased it to 1-3 times per day. Don’t go as hard as I did bc it can get extremely overwhelming, but the most important thing is to stay consistent. So doing it just once a day for 10 minutes can make all the difference. Don’t be discouraged if you have some setbacks along the way, it’s totally normal and you’ll gain more confidence in your abilities to get through it. Also check out the Mindfulness Workbook for OCD by Jon Hershfield, it gave me a new perspective and hopefully you’ll find it insightful too! You got this, keep going!
Happy Tuesday friends. Question for you all: I have recently started ERP therapy (about one month ago) and I feel in a way it has helped. But I also notice that I feel the thoughts I do have are SO intense that I feel like I’m gonna explode and then I’ll cry and get upset but then feel better after having a “freak out”. Does this happen to any of you guys? Also, I told my therapist yesterday some of the exposures we had been doing made me uncomfortable. Like really really uncomfortable. She made me feel a little bad about not doing it and stated this would prolong my progress if I didn’t do it. I’m not sure if I should push my self to do this exposure because she told me to or to stick up for myself and move at my own pace. Thanks everyone.
I have contamination OCD that causes me to excessively wash my hands/clean items with disinfectant wipes. I know I just need to start with small exposures but how do I do that without spiraling? I tried a while back by just touching the outside of my dishwasher and not washing my hands after and it led to me being unable to even exist in my house. I basically lived on my couch for three weeks as it was the only 'safe' space that I had not touched with my dirty hands. I had to take a week off work to clean my house to make it somewhat liveable. I still haven't got round to cleaning everything though so things like my kitchen are still no-go zones that I don't enter. I just don't know how to start ERP without it making everything worse. Any advice would be appreciated. I am not seeing a therapist at the moment due to financial constraints.
Hi everyone. I'm feeling kinda scared because I have to wait a whole month to start ERP therapy, but I feel like I need to start doing exposures now because the longer I wait, the more anxiety I get. It just feels like the OCD monster is getting worse. One thing that helps me is asking one person about an obsession I have...asking a person that I trust, and then doing an exposure after I get the "ok" to do it. I feel like I do need 1 reassurance and then I can go ahead and do it. I know i'm not supposed to ask for reassurance at all, but i dont think you're supposed to do ERP on your own right? Does anyone have any suggestions for what to do while waiting for therapy? PS-the reason there is a wait is bc she's on vacation. After she's back we will meet regularly.
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