If you have some, share your recovery stories! Myself, I was lucky and strong enough to completely overcome Contamination OCD and had a small period of Pedophilia OCD. there are still rare thoughts but they don’t affect me at all. Additionally I’ve made a tremendous progress in relationship ocd, so now thoughts rarely disturb me or have much effect on me. You all got this!

Thanks! Can you elaborate a bit more on acceptance part? Anything you did in particular when it was affecting you a bit stronger?

@lilly_lu Acceptance in my case, regarding my disorder: I allowed myself to forgive myself first and then I accepted that my girlfriends past is what made her into the women she is today and that i was not in her life then, and I have no reason to be judgemental or hold anykind I’d resent towards it. I learnt to accept the past. When the condition spiked in my head and caused thoughts and anxiety, at first, I didn’t know how to handle it so I ruminated and asked my girlfriend irrelevant questions in regards to her past, making the issue worse and making my mental compulsions worse. As time went on by I researched the problem, came across many stumbling blocks along the way and then developed my 30 mins of silent meditation everyday: inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth, deep breathing and eyes closed. And I learnt to not act on my thoughts, I let them be. Acting on them or trying to meddle with them just feeds the ego that establishes them. Don’t fight them, don’t avoid them, leave them be. Overtime you will notice that they dissipate, you may still get spikes but you’ll regain your control. That’s what all suffers of OCD want back, their self control.

@JS?? Of resent****

I think I need to work on letting the thoughts/guilt just be there and moving forward. I think the hardest thing is doing that for me.

I found it difficult at first, it’s the only way you can cope with this. You need to let them be in your head and not entertain them. Don’t even agree with them, just leave them. They feed off any sort of reaction you give them. If you practise meditating this will learn you to not interfere with your negative thoughts or problems which plague you in your everyday life.

Agreeing with thoughts is actually such a good tip, it’s been helping me today

@lilly_lu Agreeing with them will only ease the pain until it comes back again.

@lilly_lu Yes my ocd therapist encourages you to agree with them because that’s the ERP! It does help. I think I’m stuck on forgiving myself

@lilly_lu Letting them be part of your mind and linger eradicates the problem.

@blech123 I found that any sort of interaction with the thought creates a more diverse issue. Developing the skill of dividing your thoughts from yourself is what helped me.

@blech123 I think that’s the hardest thing for all of us today. We got this though! We can do hard things!

@JS?? Thanks JS - I think mine issue is already pretty complex as I’ve been dealing with it for about a year and half now, hence I’ve already created some bad habits and anxieties ??‍♀️ but I do think that this is some great exercises to employ for other things that come along ?

@Sunrise22 Thank you!! ?

@blech123 I’d also advice you to take up exercise, that’s if you already haven’t. A high intense regimen too. It’s a known fact that exercise can combat OCD in many ways.

It will get better. I don’t think it was my biggest problem, I just was able to recognize that my mind was just messing with me and say a giant fuck it to it

Congrats! Did you also do it by yourself or did you get therapy?

@Sumsum I did it by using medication with controlling the compulsions of contamination OCD.

No, for contamination I really had to just stop every time I had an urge to do something like clean etc. For others I just let it be and most importantly stopped internalizing it and trying to make sense of it. It just left eventually once I stopped fueling it and I was free.

@lilly_lu For contamination, how long did you have it before you did this? And how long did you have to consciously stop your compulsions to clean before the obsessions went away?

@??? It was a while ago, but I’ve had it for solid half a year, stopping it took like a month. For contamination what helps is try to get it more dirty lol, like drop your food on the floor and eat it, counteract it

@lilly_lu Was your contamination OCD severe or mild?

@Sumsum I’d say it was mostly mild but getting moderate

@Sumsum That’s when it itself started freaking me out so much I’ve done everything to stop it

@lilly_lu Hmm, maybe it's easier to stop it then when it's not severe.

@Sumsum I still believe it’s possible for you to stop it even if it is really hard, you got this and we all are rooting for you if that’s what you’re struggling with!

@Sumsum Also it’s not nice to undermine someone else’s experience

I’m still going through therapy for this, so I wouldn’t say I’m completely in recovery unfortunately :/. It’s hard because I have OCD, not just pure O, so I do physical compulsions too and it can leave a lot of shame and guilt. There’s good days and bad days but I try to do my ERP practices regularly and remind myself that I have a disorder and this isn’t who I am. How about you?

I strictly learnt this from a mindfulness approach. It’s holistic therapy that I’d advise to deal with Pure O. But that’s my advice.