Exposures

Resisting compulsions feels so wrong and dangerous, I’m trying my best but the anxiety of doing so is immense. Especially because my brain is still not allowing myself to believe that my obsession is OCD, it wants me to believe it is a threat, so even calling my compulsions “compulsions” is making me anxious because that is me calling this whole thing OCD and not real if that makes sense?

Anyone have any tips on not making ERP a compulsion? I find myself sometimes wanting to do exposures in order to make myself feel better (feel my anxiety go down and feel relief). 😅

When I catch myself doing compulsions mentally during exposure sessions, it seems alot of the time like the realization that I was just doing a compulsion is more distressing than the actual trigger I'm trying to expose myself to. It feels defeating having to admit the prompt at the end that I performed a compulsion yet again. I still think I've made progress overall, and generally speaking I don't think I'm performing compulsions as much as I used to, and my distress has also gone down noticeably (not completely) but exposure sessions have been kinda tricky for me from the beginning since its all mental. Additionally, I am a bit concerned that I could start using exposures to rid myself of anxiety rather than expose myself to it properly.