Today when my anxiety peaked,I used your advice and wrote down my worst case scenario.This really helped me and I would like to thank you very much.However,what about guilt about real life events?How do you overcome guilt when it hits you about things you have done in the past?I am trying to do ERP on my own since I live in Greece and I haven't found anyone here practising it.

Guilt is a big thing your OCD tries to do to you. If you don't listen to it about the future, it guilt trips you about the past. Try to stay focused on the present and practice self-forgiveness

Hi, the same here, I think finding the power to forgive ourselves is key in our healing journey. Maybe we need to understand that with or without OCD we are just humans. We didn’t born in this world to know everything, we all learn as we live, so its normal to make mistakes, to hurt by others but also heart others sometimes without understanding at that time. The problem with OCD it’s that it attacks on those mistakes, and it makes feel guilty over and over again and we really get tired and sometimes even live the situation in more intense terms than people without OCD. Maybe if we managed to understand where the normal regrets end and where the OCD guilts start to find a way to forgive ourselves more easily. Loving ourselves under OCD attacks sometimes feel impossible, but maybe is a key element of overcoming it. If you try to see it as 3rd person sometimes help. Imagine to have a friend that tells you that she/he did something that she regret she/he feels guilty about the situation and cannot stop thinking about it. To you the situation doesn’t sound so strong or maybe a normal reaction of any human being but to him/her seems like the end of the world. After he/she tells you that she also suffer from OCD and that he/she feel for both the situation and the OCD. He/she blame him/her self for everything. What do you think will be your own advice to this friend. To continue to beat up his/her self or to try to accept the situation, to forgive her/his mistakes and maybe just tried to learn so she/he will no repeated them again. You will not hug him/her and told him/her that your are proud of her/him, of how difficult it is to suffer from OCD and how he/she tries to overcome it, to survive it. Sometimes our mind make the story so big so scare full that we forget that a lot of people make mistakes with or without OCD, that enen with our mistakes sometimes people continue to love us, to forgive us and to accept us as we also make the same for them. So maybe it’s time to hug ourselves, we already have a bully in our minds, we don’t need another one, our own self to beat us up. I truly believe that we own it to ourselves, to hug him and told him that we love him, that we are there for him, that it will pass, that sooner or later every thing will be ok. I really hope including my self that we start loving ourselves more, accepting all the situations we past and slowly slowly come to peace inside.

I struggle the same. In fact, past guilt over things I regret/ said/ did become some of my intrusive thoughts. It’s hard!

My OCD makes me feel guilty pretty frequently, too. One thing that has helped me is writing out why I’m guilty in detail - what happened, why I’m a terrible person who deserves to feel guilty, all of the horrible things that will happen because of the choice I made. I keep doing that until I get bored. And then I do it some more. It really helps!

Is self forgiveness a tool used by therapists for ocd guilt?I am trying to do whatever therapists might do because life is torture every day for me.My therapist never did anything for me,just gave me pills and let me talk about my troubles and nothing more.So much money for nothing, because I don't have insurance and she was quite expensive.

I am sorry I really don’t know something official, maybe you can ask some of the advocates of the app, and maybe search for some self books. You can also search for therapists that make online sessions if you don’t find anyone near to you.

Following-I struggle with the same

Yes it’s very important to find a qualified therapist. In my country was also difficult to find one. But I found a CBT therapist, that knows ERP. I think that in Greece are many qualified CBT therapists, if he/she specialized on OCD even better. My therapist helped me a lot.