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(This is just speaking from personal experience!) The concern that a relapse is possible. I’ve had similar worry spikes here and there, even sometimes for consistent periods of time! A good saying thats helped me through trusting the process, is: “action creates agency, agency creates confidence, confidence creates momentum, and momentum crushes fear”— not to say one should crush fears as a way to handle it, but moreso; the longer you practice thought patterns that aid your growth, the easier it becomes, and by building that trust with yourself in putting a foot forward, you can more often say that you’ll be there for yourself to help you through the tougher times, even in the face of a feared relapse. Because frankly, what I’ve learned, is that its less about finding a cure-all— and more-so about allowing yourself to experience stress, and gradually building up the trust that you can handle it when it comes, regardless of the future. Hope that makes sense! And wishing you well on your journey 💖

That thought that you put inside (") is itself an obsession and you don't need to bargain with it. Maybe you're doing something contradictory but you do it anyway. I would say something "yeah maybe it's contradictory and maybe I'm stupid and random for doing this but the random number generator decided to do it anyway". Moreover, I don't think it's as contradictory as you think. You hope that it will reduce your anxiety in the long term but you accept that it's not a guarantee and it might come back. But you are doing the best that you can. Also the main goal of ERP is not to remove the anxiety from the thoughts. It's to get stronger and be able to live while the thoughts and emotions are there. To live in this gray area. This is the hard part. Once you're comfortable with that, the thoughts lose their power too. You don't need to conceptualize the whole thing and make a map out of it. Ocd always beats you in abstraction.