Ideas for exposure therapy

- challenge yourself to talk to 1 person each time you leave the house. (i.e at the grocery store find a stranger and tell them you like their outfit - helps you gain courage and compliments make both people feel good). - if you're afraid of death, ME FREAKING TOO. I think about it daily multiple times a day. My therapist had me write a script about what it would be like if I lived forever. It was very hard and scary at first, I was bawling my eyes out actually so I recommend starting this with your therapist in session. But later it helped me put things into perspective. Living forever sounds horrible too, if not worse than dying when my time comes. It didn't cure me, but it got me to be able to eat and go back to work again (yes it was that bad). - ah, as an ex-christian I know this well. Not sure which religion you're referring to (or maybe it's all of them), but you are simply a human being and you can not possibly know all that God knows (assuming you believe in a God at all). A key element to almost all religions is faith - lacking the concrete knowledge and choosing to move forward in your belief anyway. It's hard, your going to have doubts, but if you choose to believe you have to rely on faith and uncertainty. If you don't believe, that takes some level of faith as well. You have to trust that you're an intelligent person that is making the informed decision with all of the evidence you have so far that there is no God and leave it alone the best you can. I hope this helps ❤

-Talk to people In person more often constantly - no clue -agree with your ocd and you will feel very anxious and eventually the anxiety decreases.

I struggle with existential ocd and when i’m working with my therapist on it she will show me videos about like being in a simulation, clips from the truman show, or videos about how the earth is created

Social anxiety, I'll give you examples I used. After I felt triggered, all I wanted to do was go home but chose to go to a store and do lots of erp that day. I purposefully embrassed myself when asking staff for help to find something, even though I was next to the thing I was looking for. I saw a woman who was stunning and my intrusive thoughts said if I said anything it may come across as creepy, so I challenged it and said hear earings were nice (feedback was good). I think someone saw and they had a quick joke with me later in the store about something probably because I looked approachable, I dunno but felt good. Chose the longest queue to pay to keep me as anxious as possible for as long as possible so I could sit with it and then did grounding techniques. Later on I went for a walk through a local forest and challenged a phobia of mine, also said hi to a few dog walkers. Had to get something for lunch and when I was in another store there was the most intimidatingly beautiful woman and it scared me to go talk to her but I had to get something near her, I complimented her tattoos and she was genuinely thankful for it like it made her day. All of these could've went horribly wrong but then you just deal with it. I did this after what I knew what would be my last time seeing my best friend 😩my ocd wanted me to go home, curl up into a ball and ruminate about how crappy of a friend I was because of my ocd which is mental if you think about it.

1. give random people compliments 2. not sure 3. go to a church maybe