The biggest thing you have to learn about OCD recovery is that you have to stop fighting the thoughts in your head. You have to learn to ALLOW the thoughts to be there. It doesn't matter what kind of taboo thoughts they are, whether about sex or about violence or about any taboo theme. it just doesn't matter. ERP therapy should train you to STOP fighting them off.
I am going to copy and paste something that I've written and have sent to quite a lot of people on this app. Let me know if it helps you. Just remember that what I have written applies to all all forms of OCD. POCD is not different than any other form of OCD. It is just the SAME. And you treat it in exactly the same way.
Here is the copy and paste:
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The key is to STOP fighting off the thoughts. You need to just accept that they are in your head, and that they are MEANINGLESS—so it doesn’t matter if they are there or not.
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Don’t ever fight the thoughts. This is very important for OCD recovery. ERP therapy trains us to never fight the thoughts. If you try to fight them off, they’re just going to get worse. My therapist explained it like this:
Imagine a tree planted by river. The leaves from the tree fall off and float down the river. You watch the leaves fall, but you don’t try to stop them. You just let them float down the river.
This is the same with ALL intrusive thoughts. It doesn’t matter if these are bad thoughts about God, violence, sex, attractions, etc. All intrusive thoughts are the SAME. You just let them fall off the tree and float down the river.
Here’s another analogy: Imagine a swarm of angry bees around someone’s head. The bees can’t really bite or sting, but they are very annoying as they swarm around the person’s head. They’re not really harmful to the person, but they are disturbing just because they are there. This is the same thing as the intrusive thoughts. They can’t really harm anything, and they don’t have any real power. But they are distracting and disturbing because they are there.
If you take a stick and try to fight them off, they’re just going to swarm around even worse and get even stronger. It doesn’t work to try to fight them off with a stick. They will always keep swarming.
In the same way, we can’t fight off the intrusive thoughts. It’s impossible. Besides, the thoughts are meaningless, and they can’t hurt us anyway. So don’t try to fight them off.
Here’s one more analogy: Imagine your little brother is always saying mean things to you. Sometimes he shout means things; sometimes he whispers mean things; sometimes he shows you ugly pictures that he has drawn. He’s always trying to tease you and always trying to get you upset, and he’s always saying horrible things to you.
If you shout at him to stop doing it, he’s just going to do it more. You have to accept that you can’t stop what he says. But if you ignore him and don’t give him any response and don’t get upset , he will eventually get bored and stop trying so hard.
It’s the same with the intrusive thoughts. You can’t stop them. But if you get upset every time they come into your head, you are giving them power. You OCD (like a little brother) is going to feed you more of the things that “rile you up.” But if you don’t get upset and don’t care if these things are coming into your brain, then you can go about your life as normal. In this way, you are showing that these thoughts really have no power over you.
Your OCD will try to trick you into giving “meaning” to the thoughts by saying maybe you will like them or maybe you will accept them, blah, blah, blah, blah blah blah. Don’t listen to the OCD.
Practice strict ERP no matter how you feel and no matter how the OCD tries to tell you the danger you’re in if you start ignoring the thoughts.
The truth is the thoughts don’t mean anything, so you can ignore them. You can’t make them go away (like the bees), but you can give them no power by acknowledging that they are meaningless