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?
Help me! I acted on a compulsion and now I feel like want to keep doing it. I’m scared. I had been doing okay for these past two days but idk. What should I do?
**TW for POCD** I’ve spoken about this a few times before. That urge I had to type in “child porn” into google. I talked to my NOCD therapist today about it. She told me the ERP for it was to type it in. She even did it with me. Obviously nothing but news stories, crime statistics, and photos someone would use for a project showed up. I’ve been so petrified of typing that in there. She wants me to do it every two hours and listen to what OCD will say. I typed it in that way, I typed it out full, and I typed it out with an additional word. I clicked and browsed through all the google tabs. I’m okay, but I can’t stop crying. I’m scared to do it again. She said it’s not likely going to get flagged due to people looking that up for research projects and stuff. I’m just afraid repeatedly searching it up will cause some sort of alert. I feel so scared and full of nerves. I guess that’s what the ERP is supposed to do, but it was so scary. So scary :(
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