Crying

I was like this for a few weeks after starting treatment. I was feeling upset about the amount of time and energy I had wasted feeding my OCD cycles. The road to recovery is not fast or easy but it is brave of you to start treatment. It took me around 4 weeks to start feeling better. Talk to your therapist about how you are feeling and perhaps a psychiatrist to see if medication might be helpful for you. Your therapist can help you create ERP exercises that will help you overcome your OCD cycles little by little. My best advice would be not to engage with the thoughts. Just let them flow by and keep yourself busy and focused on gentle tasks. A low dose SSRI was a game changer for me as well.

Hi rose marie 👋 honestly, this is how I felt during the first few months of therapy…like my entire grasp on reality was shattered and I had no idea how to pick up the pieces. How was I unaware that OCD had been slowly strangling my life? How could I have let this happen? How much was me, and how much was OCD? How do I move forward when everything I do seems to be “wrong” or feeding the OCD cycle? My advice? Breathe. Take things one day at a time. Trust that in time, you will reorient yourself to these new discoveries. It may take a few months before you get a handle on things, and there may be many “low” days ahead…but stick with therapy and ERP and you may look up one day and realize “Wait a sec…I don’t feel terrible, and OCD is entirely managed…how did I do that?” The answer will be: slow, steady progress, without panicking or despairing. The best news I could hear early on in therapy was that *this condition is completely manageable*, and that *ERP has an insanely high success rate*. Many people report vast improvements in 6 months to a year. You can do this. You’ll learn how to handle your OCD and learn how to put together your worldview once again. Life is a process of beautiful discovery—you have come to know a new part of yourself now, and get the chance to overcome challenges and integrate it with the rest of you. Who you are was not a lie. You have simply learned something new and need to find out how it fits with the previous you. Give it time! 🫂

I understand where you’re coming from completely. I didn’t always have ocd, what I will say is ERP can change your life. It’s hard and no one else sees the work you are putting in because nobody around you understands. If you stick to this treatment and put 110% of your efforts in day in and day out you will get better. The thoughts may still come up from time to time but you just won’t care anymore because you’ve seen this movie before. There are support groups on here as well, Tracie Ibrahim runs a great one for taboo themes and she has also lived with it. There is a great video on NOCD about Cameron Swanson who had harm ocd towards her sister. You will get through this, you’ll laugh again and it won’t be fake. This isn’t a death sentence or a life sentence, chronic doesn’t mean constant suffering. Wish you the best.