- Username
- canigetawitness1992
- Date posted
- 6y ago
Could you please repost this in comment here. For some reason, it is not showing completely
Habituation means that something that caused you anxiety ceases to cause you anxiety because you get used to it. If you have contamination fears and feel contaminated by toilet seats and you touch a toilet seat for a long time, over and over, eventually touching a toilet won't make you feel gross. If you don't believe it will work then maybe you should try it out yourself instead of assuming it won't work.
Ok, but I don't even have contamination fears. However, if I go into a public bathroom, that's dirty & nasty & I touch that toilet seat with my bare hands, you can guarantee I'm going to wash my hands. The rational reality is that's gross. This is the problem with exposure. It logically makes no sense. I refuse for myself to think a dirty, public restroom is sparkly clean, healthy & free from being gross. Wtf.
Would you rather eat your food off a plate or the raw floor? Seriously, as a human being, which would you pick? I'd be the plate.
If you don't have contamination obsessions then you don't need to expose yourself to these things. I really don't understand what your point is. You only need to expose yourself to things that you have irrational and excessive fears of.
Question about ERP. So, if the goal is to habituate to whatever we are exposed to, how does that work logically on some exposures. For example, put your hand in a toilet & habituate to the discomfort. Or even, lick the bottom of your shoe & habituate to the discomfort. Make a picture crooked on the wall & habituate to the discomfort. My concern arises because even outside of OCD, I wouldn't completely habituate to these things as a person. #1, i don't have contamination OCD & I think sticking my hand in a toilet is icky. Licking the bottom of my shoe is icky too. Yeah, I can handle a picture crooked on the wall, but I prefer my pictures to hang straight. Get what I'm saying? Sometimes I wonder if I went through ERP, it wouldn't work anyway because outside of it, I'm not going to 100% habituate to these things. Not sure alot of people would completely.
ERP doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense for a person to do things against their values/likes/interests/preferences until they habituate. It's torture is what it is! People without the disorder would never do it. Why? Because no one should be told they need to live a backwards life in order to get better.
Skeptical about ERP? I found ERP really conflicts with some other theories, like the theories of Louise Hay (who wrote the book “you can heal your life). I will elaborate on my confusions. 1. ERP asks us to experience obsessions without thinking “no I won’t hurt myself” “no I won’t hurt others”. “No, I am safe and those thoughts are not real”. Thinking “i won’t do dangerous stuff and I am completely safe” is considered as compulsion to rid us of anxiety, but Louise Hay thinks it as positive affirmation. 2. Will ERP make us believe what we think even more? ERP asks you to write your fears into those stories and scripts and repeat them again and again until you habituate. But why would I say to myself “oh, maybe I will kill my parents and I will accept that and move on”? How does this make any sense? 3. I read the book of Shannon Shy who has recovered from OCD and he used his own strategies. I remembered that when he confronted his obsession of whether he left the pot on, he would say to himself that “do you think the pot will turn itself on”? to help him better move on to do things that he should do. But according to ERP, isn’t this a compulsion? Cuz ERP asks us to accept that ok the pot may be on and my house may be burned down and I accept that and I move on? I just find ERP theories weird.
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