Therapist for OCD

@issphra 🫶🏻 this helps so much!! thank you! i was really in between finding a therapist but if i really need one i guess i will ask if there trained in ERP?

@Anonymous37. Yes, definitely ask! Just be careful—while a little reassurance (in small, infrequent doses) can be okay, it’s a slippery slope with OCD. It can quickly snowball into an even worse scenario than what you started with, or you might end up relying on constant reassurance to feel okay. Eventually, it can get so bad that reassurance doesn’t even provide temporary relief anymore. I learned this the hard way with my first therapist, who gave me a lot of reassurance. I got to the point where I was having daily panic attacks and would call her constantly just to calm down. But then she also implied that I didn’t actually have OCD, and the unfaithful thoughts I was having (ROCD) weren’t intrusive—they were just me, and I couldn’t blame everything on OCD. That made things even harder to deal with 😀. Best of luck really :) I’m here if you have any more questions!!!

@issphra 🫶🏻 ugh i’m so sorry about your experience with your therapist! i hope your doing better. thank you so much !

@TexasOCD41 do you mind if i ask in what ways it made your ocd worse? or what you mean by giving you more reassurance for your ocd?

@Anonymous37. I had the same experience and having somebody who told me that what I was thinking was okay and that I was alright often kept me from calling out OCD thinking for what it was. Having someone trained well in OCD who doesn’t just give talk therapy really helps with starting to expose OCD thinking. You can’t work through it until you stop allowing it to go unnoticed. The NOCD therapist I’m working with has really helped me with that, and I’ve only seen her for a few months.

@aml3657 that’s great! i see where your coming from. the worst is when people automatically think they have ocd because they need everything to be clean and organized but there’s more to it lol

@Anonymous37. Sure, ask me anything. So seeking reassurance is a compulsion and people with ocd learn how to be very sneaky in getting it. Iv learned how to ask questions in very subtle ways to get the exact reassurance i need. A trained ocd therapist can catch this and won’t give in. A regular therapist isn’t trained in this so when i would ask my old therapist questions, she willingly answered because shewas trained to make me feel better, not to challenge my ocd. Reassurance is a slippery slope because once you get it, you feel EUPHORIC relief… but it’s short lived, so you keep seeking it. It’s like a drug and ocd is the addiction so the more you “ take it” the more you need. She was basically giving me the drug rather than forcing me to sober up. Ocd is treated by learning how to stop compulsions. The goal of ocd treatment isn’t to feel better, it’s to stop compulsions, the by product of this is that eventually you do feel better because you learn to treat the cause of your anxiety rather than individual symptoms. Does that make sense?

@Anonymous37. I rage internally when people say “ oh I’m so ocd” no… you’re just a neat freak. Please go away lol

@TexasOCD41 i 100% understand what you mean. the takeaway i’m getting from this is to pick a well mature therapist who is actually TRAINED into knowing ocd properly 😂

@Steven55! thank you for this !

@I’m Batman Tysm!!