So I’ve heard to get over your triggers you need to expose yourself to them, well I have harm ocd and whenever I listen to metal music which is my FAVORITE usually it triggers my ocd realllllly bad. Is it a good idea to keep exposing it to myself to get over it?

Hi all, I will try to make it short (and will probably fail). I had my first real bout of pure ocd 15 years ago (I was 15). It started after smoking weed and a sort of depersonalization episode. Back then I did not understand what was happening so I spent almost a year keeping things to myself. The first obsessions I had centered around not being able to tell if I was real, or in a dream which created acute anxiety, I was also afraid of losing my mind as I did not understand what was happening. When I finally talked about it to my parents, they sent me to a therapist but he only wanted to give me meds and I was against it so I had to find another way. Through research and from experience I developed an habit of blocking thoughts that I started to recognize as obsessions by saying "I know this is all in my head". The disorder came and went throughout the years, I had many different themes, homosexual OCD, paedophile OCD, BDD. It was insufferable until I recognized it as a new theme (partly because it was listed as one on wikipedia) and then after a few weeks of telling myself this was just the disorder morphing I started to get better. I got a lot better, I went to study abroad, had the best year of my life, met my girlfriend who is wonderful. I think for three years I barely felt any deep anxiety, at least nothing compared to what I use to feel. But things got out of hand some months ago, I think due to life stressors (having to reconsider my career plans, feeling mike a failure, money and relationship problems). I think I went through a massive depressive episode, I lost interest in my creative passions, I was too anxious to feel anything anyway. I got a bit better but what I struggle with now is kind of hard to shake. See music as always been my main passion and it helped me a lot to get over ocd in the first place. But since this episode, I started to develop a fear of not being able to feel anything, especially toward music. I have tried to treat it as OCD and expose myself to the fear, but I can't help checking my feelings whenever I listen to or make music which I think might be a mental compulsion. I'll just tell myself "oh see you aren't feeling anything" or "you are feeling anxious listening to this song that you use to like so that must mean you don't love music anymore" and it makes me feel really anxious because I feel like it is a part of me dying and of course I can't enjoy the music because I'm constantly judging my feelings. It's kind of tricky because it is not really a typical theme, which maintains the doubt that it might just be real. Although I sort of see it as somewhere between ROCD (the loved one being music) and health OCD (the fear of having damaged my brain because of anxiety and thus being unable to feel joy anymore) So does anyone as ideas about what I should do if I want to use ERP for this thoughts ? Try to accept that maybe I lost my passion ? And do they sound like OCD at all ? Thank you ! (And sorry for the long post.)

Is anyone struggling with Halloween at all if you have Harm OCD? Would watching horror films be a form of ERP to help face this fear head-on? The past 20 years, I couldn’t watch these films, but since the past 2 months of dealing with some OCD on steroids harm ocd out of nowhere, I want to face it head-on but smart at the same time.

I am probably a lot older than most members on here having had ocd for over 40 years and I have had every type of ocd but its always thoughts based and mental rituals around harming people I love. . I have been doing great using self help books, and thought I had everything under control at last. I had quit worrying about it and realised I was never going to do any of the things I feared and would never ever want to. However out of the blue a few weeks ago I had a weird but horrible thought pop up, which I tried to do exposure for, by telling myself we can say anything in our heads even if its not true, as the self help books taught me. . that then started a whole new ball game as I then started bringing the horrible thoughts up on purpose and made them the worst I could for exposure , thinking it was the right thing to do but now i am feeling even worse again as by doing that I actually said the things I feared coming into my head for example:..'I could say I want ******to happen to the people i love ( then I kept repeating in my head that I wouldnt say that) I would never want anything bad to happen to them ever , they are my world and I love them more than Ive ever loved anyone. has this exposure I tried to do become a compulsion? . I seem to be constantly repeating this and then praying to keep everyone safe,,, why am i being tortured like this its as though the ocd bully is now saying ah but what if you hurt people by saying horrible things. please, please someone help me as I am really anxious and upset over this.