- Date posted
- 5y
- Date posted
- 5y
Hi! With pure O, the compulsions are basically mental- rumination, analysis, catastrophising, memory checking, thought checking, feeling checking, repetitive thoughts, confession and reassurance seeking. ERP should aim to trigger the intrusive thoughts/anxiety, and then the goal is to say "maybe" to the thought and do nothing about it despite every new thought and accusation and danger and urge your brain throws at you. No thinking about consequences, no debate about the validity of a thought, no agreeing with the fear OR arguing with the fear, and none of those other mental compulsions. I find in order to not think, it helps to focus on the feelings in my body: the tension, the pressure, and zoom in on where it is and allowing it to just be there. They're only feelings, they can't actually hurt you and when you stop applying meaning and consequences to them because you are letting go of intrusive thoughts, feelings become purely physical sensations. The beauty of doing this, is you're doing ERP by not doing compulsions trying to get rid of or escape those intrusive thoughts and the feelings they cause and the intrusive thoughts THOSE feelings cause, you're just letting the feelings exist, and letting the thoughts go once they appear instead of following them. If you struggle to not follow thoughts even when you are focusing on physical feelings, you can try repeating any nonsense word in your head over and over to occupy that bit of your brain, and just bring your attention back to the word and your body whenever you have begun to follow the thought. It can feel very unsafe at first. But nothing's going to happen to you, you won't lose control and the bad stuff won't come true while you do this. It's possible to do this method to digest all your feelings until they're gone. Sometimes with pent up feelings, it can take me up to an hour of doing this before the feeling is finally reduced to being gone. But it always goes eventually. I've found it literally only takes a *couple* of times digesting my emotions about a fear in this way to almost completely get rid of my emotional response to the trigger and even the entire topic. I have cured ENTIRE OCDs by doing this a few times. I think that's because it does the emotional response training which ERP aims for, at the same time as doing hardcore emotional reprocessing.
- Date posted
- 5y
Basically, trigger yourself and then refuse to think. Distract yourself by focusing on your body and leaning into the physical sensations of fear, anxiety, guilt etc without judging them using thoughts or trying to escape them. Feel them until they're gone. Your life will change drastically.
- Date posted
- 5y
@Louw Repeat a random word to yourself to distract your brain from thoughts, and go back to the word when you realise you have started to do a thought. You can and will survive the discomfort!
- Date posted
- 5y
Wow! Thank you for your very informative and inspiring response! I wish I could have this pinned for everyone to see lol. This makes a lot of sense. A lot of my compulsions are mental and today I did my first solo ERP exercise so I was wondering how it worked. Bookmarking this for a reference :)
- Date posted
- 5y
@Evelyn4416 :) you're welcome! This process is described excellently, including with many examples and chapters for each emotion, in a book called Letting Go by David R Hawkins. I found the ones on fear, desire and guilt the most helpful. The book isn't about OCD and yet doing this method as ERP about intrusive feelings from OCD is an absolute game-changer.
- Date posted
- 5y
@Louw I’ll be sure to check it out! Thank you!
- Date posted
- 5y
∆∆∆∆ Louw nailed it ?
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