I’m very early in my ERP. I tried being brave and jumping right to eating a food that I was afraid of (fear of allergic reaction or bodily sensation) and I panicked really bad and dissociated. I feel like I made a mistake and it backfired on me😞I feel really ashamed and scared and just exhausted by this stuff.
It will be ok. I understand those feelings as I have had similar occurrences myself. Just try to calm yourself down and don't think to far ahead. Just take everything one step at a time right now until you start feeling like you are getting back where you were. Meditation has been helpful for me, but its also good to try and treat yourself to something you enjoy tonight. Be kind to yourself. This is hard and even though it feels like you made a mistake, I promise you did not. You took a step, and sometimes those steps slide out from under us and take us back a step or two. By taking things one step at a time, you will gradually get back to where you were abd you will be better off when it's time to take that step again. You were brave and you deserve to be proud of that. All the rest of us going through this understand and we're proud of you.
@Student of my mind 🧘♂️ Thank you so much for your kind reply 💜
You ate the scary food. Doesn’t matter that you panicked and that you dissociated. What matters is you ate something scary and survived!!!!!!!!! Next time you can just remind yourself that you survived this last time, you can survive it this time as well!!
Wooo! You tried!! That’s awesome! What would be an easier food or way to eat it next time?
I just started working on my first exposure today with my therapist after screening and creating the lists for several weeks now. We did an exposure together and now I feel 100x worse than I did coming in. I won’t go too into detail but it involved looking at a VERY gory image that had to do with my fear of natural disasters. I called my mom and talked with her and she was shocked and wondered how in the hell that would help me! I agree. Did any of y’all feel this way when you first started or is this just not the right kind of therapy for me?
I have contamination OCD that causes me to excessively wash my hands/clean items with disinfectant wipes. I know I just need to start with small exposures but how do I do that without spiraling? I tried a while back by just touching the outside of my dishwasher and not washing my hands after and it led to me being unable to even exist in my house. I basically lived on my couch for three weeks as it was the only 'safe' space that I had not touched with my dirty hands. I had to take a week off work to clean my house to make it somewhat liveable. I still haven't got round to cleaning everything though so things like my kitchen are still no-go zones that I don't enter. I just don't know how to start ERP without it making everything worse. Any advice would be appreciated. I am not seeing a therapist at the moment due to financial constraints.
Where do I begin with this…….. so my OCD has been around since childhood and has had many themes over the years. I only realised I have it just over 2 years ago. I’ve tried many things to help it not be such a monster and thought I had a good grip on it for a length of time until now! Some of my strategies have been acceptance, change of perception of thoughts and sometimes on hard days just telling myself that no matter what, I have to be brave and go out and live life. In the last few months I’ve developed none OCD related anxiety as well and so have been looking at ways to help with that. Sunday morning I was just casually scrolling TikTok and a video only about 30 seconds long or so comes up, seemingly a therapist of some kind, straight away the video began something like “you cannot replace a thought with another thought” along the lines of “you can’t THINK your way out anxiety” I don’t know the full context of the video it wasn’t long enough, I don’t know who the therapist was I didn’t look but now purely because of that one sentence my OCD has gripped onto it so badly and is trying to tear down some of my strategies because I have used changing my thought patterns a lot to help me, self compassion etc but now because of that video I’m struggling! I’m not looking for answers but I am just really upset and it feels like I’m in an impossible grip of OCD again
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