After therapy - what to do????

Hey, I've been diagnosed with OCD 4 years ago... I did CBT therapy twice, now I start schema therapy. However I learnt some CBT skills and how to journal my thoughts, I still don't know a lot of times how to handle OCD alone when something bothers me... My thoughts are hard to recognize because it's mostly ruminating and comparing, my head hurts from it. I see it's not recommended to do ERP without a therapist, but what if I did CBT therapy twice already? Will it be good if I'm trying with ERP technics alone? Unfortunately, there is no "ERP therapist" in my country specifically. How should I handle my thoughts? There is a lot of time when I can let them alone, but I don't know which thoughts are bad or is it a compulsion if I directly DON'T think about something, or is that a compulsion if I DO think about it... So confusing. I'm so sad and lost.

mimi3

Date posted: 1y

Hey! I really feel for you 💛 I’ve recently been doing DBT group therapy which involves things from CBT as well. If it’s available near you, I would recommend trying it. It covers Mindfulness, Distress tolerance skills, Emotional Regulation skills and Interpersonal Relationships skills. It may give you some extra skills to help manage intrusive thoughts and compulsions 🙂 I’ve done ERP as well when I was hospitalised a few months ago and that shit was really tough and triggering (which is kind of the point) but it does help make you realize that what you are scared of doesn’t pose as high of a threat as your brain makes it out to be. However you really should do it under guidance of a psychiatrist or psychologist as it can be very distressing at first and you’ll want to work it through with a professional.

10stat

Date posted: 1y

Yeah they recommended me the schema therapy, I've done a lot to get a good therapist and now I'm starting it. So this is why I shouldn't start another therapy for a while... And I think she could help me, but then we won't do what I went for. And like I said I've already been in two CBD therapy, so I should now how to handle intrustive thoughts now... Some psychologist told me it's bullshit to just go from one therapy to other... I should know how to handle it myself now... And I think I could tolerate distress, I just don't know how to do it or what should I tolerate. I guess I'm going to talk about it with my therapist. Thank you for your help so much and wishing you the best!

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 1y

You HAVE to do ERP!!!!! If you don’t do ERP, you won’t have the tools to handle your thoughts. ERP specifically trains you to handle your thoughts—exactly what you are needing right now. You can do ERP though NOCD. It is all online. The meetings are online, etc, and it’s easy to join. All the therapists are trained in ERP. I don’t think you can truly have your life back until you have done ERP. I don’t know if you can do ERP without a therapist or not. I think you could try it, but it might be less effective? However, in your case, having some less effective ERP training would be better then no training at all. Nathan Peterson has an AWESOME online course that takes people through everything they need to know. NOCD and other places have some really nice videos on ERP and other important tools. So in summary, I would really encourage you to get therapy and/or supplement with some of the online content (which is usually really good, though it lacks the personal touch of a therapist). You got this!!! Things will get better! You will get the tools to put those thoughts behind you!:):)💙

10stat

Date posted: 1y

Hi! Thank you for your response, these are good tips and I'm happier to know that I can do things for myself even if I do it alone. I'm already close to these tools and doing a lot of exposures already I think, but I'm gonna watch the content you recommended and starting a more serious research. The other things are, some psychologists told me that ERP is basically just a part of CBT so hypotethically I've done it?? So confusing. And I'm learning psychology, I'm kinda into these things but still don't understand this system

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 1y

@Anonymous Awesome!!! That sounds really good! I don’t know if ERP is part of CBT or not. But I think you should learn ERP separately anyway. It doesn’t take too long to get trained in ERP. Maybe a couple of weeks or so. The rest is just learning to implement the tools in all the scenarios. :):):) Takes practice

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 25w

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 !!!!!!

Gmoki

Date posted: 24w

How to be alone with your thoughts besides ERP?

Hi - just for some context, I have OCD and ADHD. I hate bringing this up, but with these diagnoses, when intertwined, there is ALWAYS a thought. I never stop thinking. This is really hard, especially because I feel like I always need to be talking to someone. Whether it’s my friends or family, talking to people brings me down to earth from certain kinds of thought spirals. However, when I’m alone it is the hardest. When my friends don’t reply I have this compulsion to text again or I need to constantly check my notifications so that I have none left to check. But then to them or new people I talk to, this behavior probably comes across as overwhelming or too much. I’m trying to control it and use erp, but also, I have my moments where I’m just vunerable and give into the compulsion. It’s genuinely so embarassing and maybe not as big a deal as I’m making it out to be but, how do I manage? And how do I relax?

Anonymous

Date posted: 23w

religious OCD

Please help. I have felt so off/wrong all day. I constantly worry that the “bad guy” is going to get me. I have awful thoughts and I constantly want God to know that I don’t mean these thoughts. I am at a point in my therapy where I need to choose to use my ERP but it feels too scary. I then do compulsions, which makes the OCD worse, which makes me want to use ERP less. And the cycle goes on. I am currently sitting in my car crying because I feel so lost and exhausted. I’m not supposed to figure out my thoughts, but today I just went into a spiral of sadness and depression, thinking that I will always feel like this. When my thoughts got really bad at the end of the day, I tried to use ERP even though I was shaking and not believing my responses and I ended up feeling like I missed something and that I gave into the “bad guy.” I have no one to talk when I’m not doing therapy twice a week. I am alone and have no one to talk to when I am like this… please help

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After therapy - what to do????

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