Don’t neglect your ERP. Try your best to do it often, and on a **consistent** basis. Even on your good days- practice, practice, practice! Getting into the habit is so crucial for the recovery process. Doing this has definitely helped me stay on top of my OCD before it spikes up and sends me into another spiral.
I wish this app would have reminders for doing practice, or more tools to manage being consistent. I'm already aversive to ERP so I could use a way to nudge myself to practice
@Anonymous They do! I get a notification once a day from this app which reminds me to practice my exposures. I'm not sure if it's the same for everyone though. But you can set reminders on your phone to help you remember to do ERP.
@blazed How long do you do exposures
@Anonymous Usually 30 minutes to an hour.
Wow , still? Have you habituated to a lot?
@Anonymous Yep! I don’t do an exposure for 30 minutes straight, I do them in 10 minute intervals throughout the day which helps a ton.
@blazed I know this is an old post but somehow just saw this. Wondering what you did or still do if your SUDS hasn’t gone done to a 2 in 10 minutes? Sometimes mine takes me about 45 mins to an hour to go down. Therapist told me if I didn’t go down I wasn’t rehabituating my brain.
@Debbrooks That’s interesting, I’m not sure if that’s entirely true, especially if you’re first starting out with ERP? With my therapist, we have a goal of getting my SUDS down by 50% each time I practice an exposure - but not by a specific number like 2. If you’re doing more intense exposures, it’s unrealistic for your therapist to expect your anxiety to go down that low in a short amount of time. That will eventually happen but with consistent practice- it took me a while to get to that point. I think the exposure you’re doing may be too high, and I would suggest doing one that’s lower on your hierarchy.
@blazed Thank you for the advice…I do think that is the problem. I will talk with her and request that we do lower hierarchy erps. 🙂
@blazed Less intense exposures as it is so difficult to sit wi the the uncertainty, I’ll go down a bit but then start to catastrophize as I have a very difficult time letting the fears, thoughts go by with engaging in story.
@blazed And yes I did talk with her once before…will assert myself!
@Debbrooks I hope it goes well! Remember if you can’t completely stop your compulsions, delay them for as long as possible. And if you don’t mind me asking, what theme are you struggling with and what exposures have you been doing?
@blazed I think she referred to them as Pure OCD with fear of being rejected, hurting others feelings, being abandoned, guilt and shame, and have some hoarding symptoms, some religious scrupulosity, fears of making the wrong decisions, intrusive thoughts/vatastrophizing with compulsive behaviors of seeking reassurance, and will sometimes replay an interaction i had with someone over and over in my head believing I said something wrong. She had me doing what if scripts about the worst that could happen, getting rid of clothes and shoes, loop tapes about worst case scenarios , etc.
@Debbrooks Sounds like you’re on the right track! I’ve been doing those types of exposures too and they’re really difficult. I’d suggest just sticking to one or two of those exposures rather than doing all of them right away. It can get pretty overwhelming that way, and doing it one at a time may be more manageable for you.
@blazed Yes indeed they are! I appreciate your patience, listening ear, encouragement and suggestions and will choose one a day and I’m also going to try to do it for 10 minutes 3x a day. I’m also reading a book on self compassion and self acceptance and reminding myself when an intrusive thought pops up that I may or may not have done something wrong and I am able to do hard things❤️
Oh I see , that helps
Hi! I've been on my OCD healing journey for about half a year and I have seen a lot of success. I'm reaching out for advice, I am very willing to do exposures because I know the more I do them, the more I get better, but I struggle with the response prevention part. I don't know how to control my brain when it comes to facing the fears especially since most of my compulsions are mental. I can tell myself the typical things "I am okay with the uncertainty of this happening", etc. but its like my brain doesn't believe them. I've been stuck in this disconnect for a while and would love advice you have heard from a therapist or learned that has really help you.
Any tips on how to deal with the rollercoaster of good and bad days with OCD? I had such a good day yesterday with tackling my compulsions and rumination. I tend to get up in the mornings and my OCD loves to start immediately. It becomes frustrating when you feel like you made progress, only to go right back to where you were. Any positive encouragement of how you’ve dealt with this would be appreciated!
I had just posted a summary of ERP for a group member, and I thought it might be useful for everybody. Here it is below (with a little extra added)…. ERP therapy is researched-based. Most other therapies don’t work. There have been people who have been literally stuck in their houses (from their OCD) who gained their lives back through ERP therapy. NOCD does ERP therapy exclusively. You can find it in other places too, but you have to ask around. There are two tenants of ERP therapy: The first one has to do with the repetitive thoughts inside our heads. These thoughts are actually defined as “obsessions”. You are not supposed to do anything with the obsessions. You are supposed to let them run through your head freely, without trying to fix them or stop them. Imagine a tree planted by a river. The leaves fall off and float down the river. You can see the leaves falling, but you don’t try to stop them or pick them up. You don’t try to fix them. You just let them float away. This is really important to do with your obsessive thoughts. The more you try to fight them off, the worse they get. I used to have blasphemous sentences running in my head 24/7. I felt like I had to put a “not” next to each sentence in order to “fix” it. But this just took hours of my time every day, and it was very scary, because I was worried that if I messed up, that I would go to hell. It was very freeing to learn later that I could just let those sentences run freely through my head without trying to fix them. The second part of ERP therapy is all about “denying your compulsions.” Every time OCD tells you that if you don’t do things a certain way that something really bad will happen, that is a compulsion. Once you recognize what your compulsions are, ERP therapy will have you practice stopping doing all of those things. For some people, that will mean stopping washing their hands or touching lights switches or, in my case, putting “fixing” words in their head. Compulsions are safety behaviors. During ERP therapy, you will practice stopping engaging with safety behaviors. All this is very hard to do and scary, so during therapy you will be given tools to help you deal with the fear. Often ERP therapy will take people from being non-functional to functional. I highly recommend it. ————————————————- PITFALL #1: After you have been doing ERP for a while and become somewhat successful, the OCD will try subtle little tricks to bring you down again. The first one is to tell you that your thoughts are REAL and not OCD, and therefore you can’t apply ERP therapy. Don’t fall for this trick! All thoughts are just thoughts. They are all meaningless. Don’t try to figure out what is real and what is OCD. Just treat all thoughts with ERP therapy. PITFALL #2: The second pitfall is that OCD will tell you that you can’t move forward unless you have absolute certainty that you will be safe. Hate to tell you this, folks, but there is no certainty in life. You will never know for SURE that you or your loved ones will be “safe” from the OCD rules. Therefore, you have to move forward in the uncertainty. It’s hard, but it gets easier with time and practice. We got this, guys !!!!!!
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