ERP Compulsion

Has anyone else struggled with compulsions around using ERP itself? It creeped in subtly, but I’ve noticed myself now starting to repeat phrases/mantras before I try to do exposures. Ironically, that itself has become a compulsion. It’s wild, how do you get a compulsion about not doing compulsions 🤯 It honestly probably got this way and doesn’t help that I haven’t been able to access therapy in over 3 yrs. So as I’ve tried to use ERP on my own without professional support, it just kind of morphed into this. Well I should be able to access services again in January. I suppose it’s not that far away anymore at this point, 4 months. Grateful for that at least.

Gabbie H

Date posted: 24d

I’m sorry. Have you tried to look at YouTube for some help?

Anonymous

Date posted: 24d

Hoping you will be able to gain access to therapy again soon! Meta anxiety is a real thing and I can see repeating ERP mantras easily becoming a compulsion. I was actually talking to my therapist yesterday that I am not needing to repeat these mantras to myself often I am able to just shut down the barrage of thoughts and allow me to sit with that anxiety and accept it. Perhaps trying that or varying your method of employing ERP can help? Use different phrases, avoid repeating them think them instead, sometimes try just focusing on allowing that anxiety to sit there instead. Hoping for the best!

Kong Rong

Date posted: 24d

@Anonymous Me too! Not having health insurance and such can get pretty hard. Oh that’s also a good point. When I’m doing ERP with different parts of my hierarchy, I’m ending up doing a variety of different types of activities. I’m actually really creative, so I can use that to my advantage to keep varying my activities, words etc. I can just do random stuff like find symbolic objects that represent anxiety/obsessions, use pictures, use cacophonic sounds, drive somewhere random without gps and sit with the anxiety in the car. Idk there’s probably a million different creative things you could do to expose. Put a long complicated document in front of me etc.

Kong Rong

Date posted: 24d

@Anonymous I used to repeat prayers with religious scrupulosity in the past, so I think using words is probably not my best option for sitting with the anxiety/obsession.

benz11

Date posted: 16d

This is where I am at the moment. I felt like I was making strides with erp then BAM…. Now I feel like erp is a compulsion. Or is it? I keep going back and forth on it and going crazy. So now I’m just trying to let it be and go about my day. All the thoughts around what is right/wrong and needing to respond a certain way. Instead just letting it be and challenging it that way.

Kong Rong

Date posted: 16d

@benz11 I feel you. And it’s terrible when it’s about ERP itself, bc then it’s like how are you supposed to encourage or help yourself. But I guess that’s part of the problem itself, when we have ocd we often struggle with trying way too hard to better and improve ourselves. It sounds like you’re trying to figure out how to balance accepting vs. changing. Let us know if we can help in any way! Always open to listening 😇

benz11

Date posted: 16d

@Kong Rong Exactly, trying to but super wrapped up in it all and feel power less with what I’m “supposed to do”

Kong Rong

Date posted: 16d

@benz11 Your words remind me of step 1 of the 12 steps to addiction recovery. “We admitted we were powerless over …” That step is about acceptance with our condition and that we can’t solve it in our own strength. We would’ve already if we could. I guess that can apply to OCD as well. Not only can we not solve it through muster, we actually make it worse bc we end up forming more and more compulsions to cope. Thinking through this with you has taught me something new.

Kong Rong

Date posted: 24d

Good idea, I’ll try to access resources in other ways 👍 interestingly, it seems that if I use ERP with some exposures it isn’t an issue, but for others this happens. Mainly if I try to use ERP directly in the context of the admin duties of my job, this happens and it doesn’t work too well. I think the work stuff might be too high on the hierarchy for where I’m at right now. But I also don’t have money to meet my basic needs, so I kind of need to prioritize that. Or so that seems intuitive, but I’m probably going to literally save time doing exposures. So when I actually think about it like this, then it’s more efficient to prioritize progressively using ERP with my hierarchy as opposed to putting work over this.

Anonymous

Date posted: 24d

That’s good you can find a lot of ways to do it. I’m getting the pattern of being able to make excersizes myself but I’m not as creative with it yet. Im sure vocalizing things is a good thing to do but just varying it and not relying on it as a crutch might be the best route to go.

Kong Rong

Date posted: 23d

@Anonymous lol just ideas I have a million of those, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll work though. But you never know until you try, right 🏞️ true true, and you’ll never be able to fly with crutches 😎

Estelle_11

Date posted: 21w

What is correct ERP for mental compulsions?

If your mind purposely keeps fetching a repetitive word, and you’re afraid it will never go away, is the ERP therapy to STOP the mind from doing it? Or ALLOW the mind to do it, and not react? Also, is repeating a word in your head a mental compulsion? Or would that be the obsession? So then what’s the compulsion? Posting on here? Lol

Hobbit

Date posted: 15w

Not making ERP a compulsion?

Anyone have any tips on not making ERP a compulsion? I find myself sometimes wanting to do exposures in order to make myself feel better (feel my anxiety go down and feel relief). 😅

Anonymous

Date posted: 15w

Mental compulsions

So I've been working to address my OCD for about a month now. So far, I haven't been working on it with a therapist and have instead been trying to create my own exposure exercises. The primary obsession I'm working on is the fear that I'm somehow flawed or invalid on a fundamental level. The best way I can describe it it is that its similar to the feeling you get when you have germ OCD and you feel contaminated, except my whole existence and being feels contaminated, so to speak. I've identified a list of triggers, and a list of compulsions (pretty much all mental) that I've noticed myself performing. I started out by doing imaginal exposures and scripts where I'd write out triggering fictional scenarios and read them over and over, combined with mindfulness techniques to focus on my breath and bring myself back to the present when I noticed myself performing compulsions mentally. At first it worked to some extent, but eventually I started to feel like the stories I was writing about this obsession weren't triggering any anxiety anymore or a very low level. So I stopped reading them and focused solely on improving my ability to stay present and identifying compulsions as I perform them, and disengaging. Now, I'm at the point where it seems like my general anxiety levels throughout the day are lower, and the triggers I've identified are producing noticeably less anxiety. But that makes me wonder if somehow I'm just secretly doing mental compulsions without knowing it? Is only a month of rather disorganized and unstructured ERP enough to produce this much improvement? To avoid giving me re-assurance, I'd appreciate if you guys don't directly answer those questions, maybe just provide some possibilities or your own experiences so I can get a better idea of where I'm at. Any info would be appreciated. Thanks!

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