- Date posted
- 1y
What to expect with ERP NOCD
Hi friends, I had my first session with my NOCD therapist on Thursdays. I was wondering what I can expect from treatment and how to best prepare emotionally.
Hi friends, I had my first session with my NOCD therapist on Thursdays. I was wondering what I can expect from treatment and how to best prepare emotionally.
Just show up and be willing to do the work. You’ll start to feel better soon
@Ghostdog I feel like I’ve been living in a cycle of torture
The general thing to expect is to learn to confront your OCD by working through exposures, sitting through fear and/or anxiety, and sitting in uncertainty (which will make more sense the further you go through therapy). To prepare emotionally, start practicing self-compassion. The work will be tough, but it’s worth it. Be gentle with yourself as you navigate this, express any struggles or concerns to your therapist, and keep showing up for yourself by doing the work. This forum is a wonderful place to reach out to, as well as the support groups. The IOCDF website has good resources too. Best wishes as you start therapy!
@Anonymous Thank you so much! Is there a way I can ask my partner to be supportive to me during this time?
@Anonymous You’re welcome! For asking for support, think of how your partner could meet your emotional needs. If you’re having a rough day, or had a tough session, do you want space, or attention, or a person to vent to? Could you use help with chores that day-cleaning, cooking or getting meals? In my experience, it’s best to directly say what you need, because it may be hard for your partner to understand or know how to help, if they don’t have OCD or their own mental health struggles. Your partner can also look up articles or resources, on what it’s like to have a partner with OCD, to understand more. Something that helped me with my friends, when I needed to vent but couldn’t ask for reassurance (you’ll learn about this in therapy), is to tell my friends “this is what I’m struggling with. These are the thoughts I’m having, this is what I want to do but can’t. I just need to tell you about it, please don’t respond or give words right now.” And it helps get my thoughts off my chest while resisting a compulsion.
@Anonymous Thank you this is so helpful
For now, stop trying to figure it all out. Your OCD is focusing on the major triggers right now. I was where you are now, 6 months ago. It gets better. It feels worse when I push everything away. If I let my thoughts hangout and I don’t fixate on them, they get bored and leave on their own. You’re in the right place. We have all been tortured by our thoughts, you’re not alone.
@Ghostdog How long did it take you to start seeing results
@Anonymous I was happy to be diagnosed officially. That was a great start. Knowing I’m safe to talk about anything. And I’m not going crazy, all of it was helpful. ERP was challenging in the beginning so it probably took me 3 weeks to notice improvement. 2x a week is best in the beginning. It sometimes feels like taking a class. You’re going to learn a lot about how to deal with your compulsive mind. I have “pure o” so it’s mostly all mental. Take heart that your thoughts are just thoughts. They aren’t real.
@Ghostdog I just am so tired of it running my life. It’s getting in the way of my job, my daily functioning, and my relationship. I present with ROCD mostly. It’s been brutal
@Anonymous I’m glad you found this app. Just like me. You are in the right place. Hang in there.
Just chalk it up to your OCD messing with you. With practice, you’ll recognize it quicker. I just caught myself meticulously cleaning up ice off the floor and realized it was my OCD.
What does a therapy session with an OCD specialist look like for y’all? This is something I’ve always wondered because I’ve only had one OCD therapist through NOCD. Our sessions always looked like sit there and “reduce anxiety” meaning don’t think for a few minutes and take a few deep breaths and rate your anxiety level every couple of minutes. AND that was it. Is it supposed to look like that? Because I haven’t seen anyone on this app talk about this or how their therapy sessions go. I’m considering restarting therapy but I want to know how therapy goes for you guys before I go back to the same specialist. Any input 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 !!!!!!
(21+ ONLY: TRIGGER WARNING) I have therapy today and I’m nervous. I just started going to therapy and I really like my therapist. She talked to me about doing ERP and I’m really nervous about it. I’m scared to tell her the extent of my OCD, and my themes. I’m scared to tell her about my false memory OCD, because I’m scared that what I did was real and I’m just excusing it as false memory, although I have no memory of it. I’m scared that I am truly a monster and I’m using OCD as an excuse—and that she’ll find out and distance herself. I’m just scared that my whole world is gonna fall apart, all around me.
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