Thoughts

I am so sorry you are going through this and that you aren’t currently able to receive help from a therapist. I will try to pass along some things that I have learned and i’m happy to talk more at any point. I am not a therapist and I struggle with OCD immensely but I have learned so much in the last few months since being diagnosed I think I can be of some help. The thing that has helped me the most is learning how to apply ERP principles. This functionally means two things: not doing compulsions and accepting uncertainty. The first step is to identify your compulsions. It sounds like for you these are mostly mental, like mentally reviewing and analyzing your thoughts and memories. The more you do these things and try to figure out what is real, the more OCD will convince you that your fears are real. I know the instinct is to try to deny that these things are real and prove them wrong but again, that just makes it worse because it gives OCD power. Instead, you have to accept uncertainty. It is the scariest thing to do and goes completely against what your brain is wired to do but that’s kind of the whole point. When you have thoughts or think about memories that give you distress, you can acknowledge that you are having these thoughts and you can acknowledge how they make you feel, but you don’t have to analyze them or figure them out. Phrases like “Maybe this is true, maybe it’s not” or “I don’t need to figure this out right now” have helped me a lot to disengage with mental compulsions. At the end of your post you say you’re at a loss of what to do. I can tell you that you don’t need to figure out which memories are real or not. You don’t need to analyze if you are a horrible person or not. These are ultimate acts of trust in yourself which is really scary to do but incredibly healing. For me OCD has been about trying to find a deep sense of trust in myself which enables me to not do compulsions or at least do them less. I hope you can be in a position to talk with a therapist some day because they can help you come up with exposures and talk about the root of your fears which is often a helpful exercise to help address some of the underlying things going on. I am also here to talk more if you want or if you have any questions. Just know that you are not alone and you can beat this ❤️

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