I’m trying so hard today not to seek reassuring, every time I have an intrusive thought, I tell myself “it’s not me, it’s ocd” - but ocd is very sneaky, it “tells” me “well this time is probably the time that you did do something” - but I’m gonna keep trying.

Thank you, I was wondering if I was doing this right lol

@RH_92 Ahh yep, bummer, this one is seeking reassurance from yourself. It does tend to trigger comebacks from your OCD, and that can spiral. You could also try the "worry later" method, of promising yourself that you'll ruminate over and analyse and work on addressing the issue...... But not right that moment. It works weirdly well for me. I assure myself that I'll get to it later. Feels scary, but not as scary as doing ERP-acceptance every time, and it still works towards treating the OCD because it teaches your brain that the urges aren't urgent and that when you don't respond to them with compulsions like they're important, nothing bad happens. Over time it makes the thoughts happen less and makes the urges and urgency less convincing. Plus, you start claiming your life and time back from day 1 of doing it. Often you find that when "later" arrives, you're actually less anxious, because you've been able to get on with your day without any horrible mental arguments and spirals, and so you're even able to say "actually, I don't want to worry about that now, I can do it later". Delay delay delay. It feels wobbly and genuinely dangerous and irresponsible to not scratch the itch to do compulsions and engage with the thoughts. But the more time you're able to spend getting emotional distance from your habitual OCD loops, the more clear your outlook on the problem gets. And a clearer outlook makes it feel less dangerous to do those accepting or maybe/maybe not statements in response to bouts of intense anxiety. Hopefully this method can nip the feelings of urgency in the bud for you.

@Louw Thank you! I will try that as well, I’m desperate, lol, yesterday was a really bad day, I just want my life back ?

It's a tricky one. Saying this to yourself (that it's OCD not a real issue) is indeed, as 199903 said, usually the case, and it can actually be better to do a self-reassurance compulsion than to do one which seeks it from others, just because we all know that doing that can damage relationships and have consequences like making people worry a lot about you or misunderstand you etc. If you feel it's a better choice to reassure yourself that way than to ask your husband, then that's reasonable. It's not really good for your OCD, but if in a pinch you truly feel unable to respond with a "maybe" or do the "worry later" (or have attempted both of those and it keeps coming back intensely), this might be an OK fallback for temporary relief sometimes. You do need that for your mental health. It's a hard habit to break. You wouldn't have caught me saying this a couple of days ago lol but I think I need to be more flexible about what is actually practical for people's lives. Don't feel bad if you slip up sometimes, or even a lot, forwards is still forwards. Nobody can treat their OCD successfully 24/7, I certainly can't. I've very rarely had reassurance seeking compulsions (only in severe distress which was on 4 occasions in my life) because I had a lot of trust issues, so since I joined the app, the amount of it has felt a bit irritating and unnecessary to me. But I do know what it's like to feel desperate.