ERP with mental compulsions

Thank you for responding! I would want a therapist but I'm not too well off with money and nor is my family so I can't do much for now at least, but yeah, my OCD thoughts fluctuate and change but still all cause the same distress, most of the thoughts are involved with numbers and I feel the need to repeat things over in my head with rituals to take away the anxiety and uncertainty, and now a new one is continuing the thought pattern even after my brain is satisfied with the ritual I had done, so basically I worry I'll continue it and then I keep that thought pattern going on even afterwards because I'm scared of it coming back so it does basically. I do try and do the opposite and let the thought be of course, but the anxiety is like still there even when I let the thought be over and over again, so I feel kind of stuck know. Hope this could give you more information and I hope that you could recommend some more things to try to help it go away if that's possible, thank you regardless

@melsxae - So it sounds like this boils down to: - Some intrusive thoughts involving numbers appear. - You start to feel anxious, and a strong need to repeat those thoughts X number of times, and/or perform some mental rituals until the anxiety goes away. To me, this is the most important line from your message: "I do try and do the opposite and let the thought be of course, but the anxiety is like still there even when I let the thought be over and over again" One of the most difficult, yet crucial, things to understand in OCD treatment is that the anxiety is not the problem, and neither are the thoughts. The goal of ERP is not to "get rid" of anxiety, it's to demonstrate to yourself that you can, in fact, handle feeling anxious. The OCD cycle is fueled by resistance to the thoughts and the anxiety. As long as you are hoping for those things to "go away," the cycle will repeat itself. Again this is the most difficult thing with ERP, but once you understand it, your life will change. As an obvious disclaimer, I'm not a therapist, so please take my advice with a grain of salt. My suggestion is to start small, and set aside maybe 5 minutes of time every day to fully allow these thoughts to be there without any agenda of getting rid of them. During this time, you actually WANT to feel anxiety; that's a sign that you are on the right track. While you feel it, your only job is to be fully aware of it. Notice how the anxiety feels in your body. What does your chest feel like? Does it feel warm? Tight? Tingly? Is your jaw clenched, or your forehead scrunched? What does your stomach feel like? Notice everything, as if you are an alien that just inhabited a human body for the first time. Be curious, even if it's uncomfortable. This is time for you to become more in tune with your body and how it responds to what it thinks is a threat. Everything you feel in this time is okay. Simply note how the anxiety arises, and how it changes as you are aware of it. Try that for a while, and then slowly increase the amount of time you do it. What you're doing here is SHOWING yourself that you can survive the thoughts and anxiety. We try so hard to use logic to get out of uncomfortable thought patterns and feelings, but the parts of the brain responsible for those patterns don't understand logic or language. They understand experiences. Hope this helps!

@djflorio Thank you so much, I feel like this will help so much and I will try and practice that, also thank you for making me understand that I shouldn't be wanting to get rid of it and actually cope with it instead because I do struggle to accept the thoughts most times, this has been the most helpful thing ever said to me so again thank you very much! I appreciate your help and time ❤️