Read this I know you have OCD

We all know that ERP is the fix for OCD. Not in the sense that we will not have intrusive thoughts or urges or images. But the ability or mindfulness to recognize those thoughts and be able to deal with it. So the question is we know what ERP is and and how it's done. Still we haven't done it. Why? It seems we have the keys of our freedom in our hands yet we don't have the ability or courage to open the door and stay with what ifs and over-emphasis on how distress we feel. I understand that feeling. I also understand that how horrible it makes one feel. So all of these compulsions, rituals aren't us stopping bad things from happening. NO! It's all us trying to stop feeling bad. It's like an agreement with OCD. Like OCD asks you for a compulsion, and you do the compulsion. That's the deal. Except, you are suffering, and you don't like it. But somehow you are stuck, and you want to he unstuck, but to get unstuck the problem is you want easy steps. ERP isn't easy. Sorry, it's not. So here's your life. Can't you fight for this life so hard to tolerate the pain and discomfort of ERP for a short time than surging the rest of your life in misery with OCD. Think about it. Stay safe. Awais Bahar

Anonymous243

Date posted: 1y

A good reminder to fight. It’s hard when I have no support from family and severe depression as well :(. But I dont want to make those my excuses, I want to fight harder.

Awais Bahar

Date posted: 1y

The fight is worth it! You got this!

Anonymous243

Date posted: 1y

@Awais Bahar Thank you, you too! 💝

Angel20

Date posted: 1y

I’m scared to do ERP because I know how it works and I’m scared that facing my intrusive thoughts will mean having to accept they may be true even though I know deep down they’re not but ERP may heave me convinced that they are true and that’d be worse.

Awais Bahar

Date posted: 1y

I know that feeling, trust me, as I am writing this, I relate so much with what you just said. But what's interesting is, "the deep down" like that place where wisdom resides in, but somehow we can't make it there. The deep down wisdom is our authentic voice blurred by the voice of OCD which is violent and it is violent because we feed it everyday and it knows best what we have already set to tolerate and what we have set never to tolerate. And you know it, it attacks oj things we can't tolerate and never the things we tolerate. Because OCD knows we will have no reaction if it attacks things we can tolerate or don't care about. My OCD may try to attack me with what if there's something poisonous in my tea, but I don't care about that, so I will drink it anyways. But if it says what if your loved one blah blah blah, then I might get disturbed. Not at this moment, not anymore. When you accept your thoughts, it doesn't mean they are true even though you may feel like that. It means you tell OCD, it can keep its bullying on, because you finally realize and acknowledge that these intrusive thoughts aren't real. Now it depends what intrusive thoughts you are having. But these thoughts have to be thoughts. Full stop. OCD attaching meaning to them is one thing, and you finding it important another. You don't have control over the former but later. It's easier said than done. I struggle too on a daily basis and I get panic attacks sometimes by doing ERP. But I tell myself, I have had enough. I can't do this anymore. You can try, and trust me, it's going to be okay. I am no professional to give advise. I am only someone who has also OCD. And I really wish if ERP was easy. I wish if there was an easy way of fixing this. It's hard therefore there are therapists and this platform to help people. Otherwise, I wouldn't have posted this or this commenting wouldn't have been possible all because it would have been easy and no fuss at all. But it's hard, it's very hard to do ERP. But if you don't want to do ERP. You can do something else. How about you do this. Everytime intrusive thoughts pop in your head, don't do anything about it. Initially, you may feel distress and uncomfortable. But as tike goes by, you will soon feel okay. Use the intrusive thoughts as thoughts and let your OCD attach meaning to them, you just sit and live your life, while acknowledging that a part of your brain OCD is abnormally talking. And to rewire it, stop feeding it so your brain learns to trust your response which should be doing nothing over performing a compulsion. I hope it helps. Take care of yourself, and Stay safe

Angel20

Date posted: 1y

@Awais Bahar Thank you so much for your thoughtful and detailed reply. I have tried the “do nothing “ approach when thoughts come in but I end up feeling like I’m in denial and really should be doing something to figure it all out. Logically I know that’s the ocd talking but difficult to ignore! I’ll come up with so many reasons the thought cannot be true but ocd will still keep bugging me with the idea. I feel like screaming at ocd, ok, you prove it instead of me having to prove it wrong! Trouble is the more you think about it the more stuck you become and more real it feels 😫

Awais Bahar

Date posted: 1y

@Angel20 I relate so much with you. The way you express it really captures what I have been through too. I am still struggling and you are absolutely right, OCD doesn't like our answers, nor does it ever get satisfied of all the logical reasons we provide. Because OCD is like it cannot be wrong. I wish if I could express it the way you have expressed how OCD works. And I wish if I could really be of more help to you. Because I know what's it like to suffer from OCD. The only way it works is you do nothing about it, and then you sit with that discomfort. The distress, trust me is just terrible. But over time, the voice of OCD fades, and I want to be honest, when I do this, I feel guilty, like as if I could have performed a compulsion and saved something. But that's OCD. It seems a part of our brain just malfunctions, and we have to get used to this. Like we can't live our entire lives like this. I mean it's scary to think about it that when you are on your deathbed. Of all the regrets, what regret would comsume you the most? For me it's always instead of me regretting I could have helped myself by ERP. Instead, I do the do nothing and sit with the discomfort. It works for me, and I get the exact same experience although respectively unique to us, the same denial thing you mentioned but I still sit with it, and sometimes I want to cry with it, but I know the fight is worth it. If I am not changing this, then I am choosing it. And I didn't want to choose it. I don't know if I really make sense right now. But I think, the only way is either therapy at NOCD, or do nothing exposure until you get so much used to it that OCD feels like a distant voice or next to nonexistent. It takes time, efforts, and more importantly courage. I wish you all the best, my friend. And if you want to talk. Just send a hi, and I will be there. Stay safe. And take good care of yourself. You matter, and you are not alone.

Awais Bahar

Date posted: 1y

There are some mistakes. I didn't double check it. Hope you know what I am talking about.

Angel20

Date posted: 1y

“Leave “

Angel20

Date posted: 1y

A distant voice. How wonderful that would be! It’s the only thing I’d change in my life if I had one wish. I shall try to continue with the do nothing approach for now as hard as it is. In the UK they don’t seem to use ERP. I’ve had CBT which helped a little but I may consider NOCD at some point. Wishing you all the best too and thank you.

Awais Bahar

Date posted: 1y

Thank you. I wish you too all the best for your recovery from OCD. Stay Safe, friend.

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 19w

Summary of recovery through ERP

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 !!!!!!

Anonymous

Date posted: 14w

Actually deciding to confront your fears head on.

Just noticed something that helped me today. I was having the realization a lot of my issues stem from me not taking responsibility for my own life, and also not recognizing my own self-limiting beliefs (SLBs) and automatic negative thoughts (ANTs.) In doing this, I learned that the only way forward is confronting my deepest darkest fears head on and associated irrational/self limiting beliefs- and that for years and years, I have simply retreated and run away. One of my deepest darkest fears (one of my obsessions) is rooted in the understandable fear of the worst of humanity, and the 'what if' I was that (like many of us.) I actually can have compassion for myself because it is perfectly okay to be scared of the worst of people, and if something like that is perpetuated throughout pop culture-media- it would make sense to have associated thoughts about it. The fear is that I am a serial killer or have motives of one. And the OCD has caused me to constantly question my motives and actions to no end (how OCD latches on- makes you look for evidence where there is none.) For the longest time, I have been convinced I am one, and need to hide myself from the world, avoid people more than just because of social anxiety, what my main anxiety was back then. I look for signs everywhere- and the OCD latches on to any perceived (not real) evidence that I am one, that people think I am one. When I decided to confront this fear rather than run away like I have for years, it made me realize it is just a fear- it has nothing to do about who I am as a person, despite how strong the OCD tries to convince you otherwise. It is so sad how strong OCD can be, to make so many of us good intending people be convinced that they are something horrible. Anyway, I hope this can help people realize the best way forward is to confront it head on. It's akin to shining a light on the monster and seeing it for what it is - a goofy thing with fake prosthetics for a movie that isn't a monster after all- a sheep in wolfs clothing. It's just you have been running from it so long, your imagination has gotten so detailed about how horrible it is, hearing its fake growls, instead of turning around and blasting it with a spotlight. This is I guess what ERP is about. For me, one of the struggles with ERP and a specific exposure is that the OCD will jump to a different obsession , which then tells me ERP is a waste because Im not confronting the 'most recent' fear. This is faulty thinking though- because the solution is to confront the fear, not the specific thought. By doing that, you learn to not run away and do all the compulsions in your mind. Tl;dr- long winded post about me realizing how I have actually been avoiding the solutions (ERP) and making up reasons to not confront my fears this whole time. I have been running instead of shining a light on the sheep in wolfs clothing.

Dude01

Date posted: 8w

Does ERP mean you have to be delusional to move on?

I'm trying to get my head around ERP. What is the best way to describe how it's a "solution." Imo I think OCD happens with people who are very concerned with their own genuine integrity and probably their own "morality." So when something (like an uncomfortable "real event" that actually happened) messes that up, it's hard to grapple with that...hence the endless rumination and trying to "problem solve" it. But the mind doesn't let you sleep (i.e. OCD) if something is controversial and doesn't sit with you. Or if you obsess over something and it's based on a rooted fear. You just can't "let it go," it has to be addressed and dealt with. But what happens when it is NEVER dealt with? How does ERP address that dilemma as a permanent solution? Or does ERP only address compulsions and anxiety, but it doesn't actually deal with the issue causing it. Do you ever get REAL peace of mind? Or is just something to make you feel "less anxious" etc? Thanks I just want peace of mind. I haven't had true peace of mind in several years.

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