- Date posted
- 6y
- Date posted
- 6y
The thought isn’t important and doing ERP won’t make it important. You expose yourself to the thought/fear to desensitize yourself. Right now, we think the thoughts are important already and with ERP we purposely trigger the thoughts while not giving them importance. So, if you have OCD about driving because you’re scared you might run someone over, you-drive, get the thought, feel the anxiety, don’t give the thought importance and do not react to it. It’s a mixture of both. Eventually, after doing this for so long, the thought will become unimportant and you’ll be desensitized. I do radical acceptance, so I’ll get the thought and just that I accept it. I accept the thought and I’m okay with it being there. I don’t give it any extra attention. When you do the exposure and then refuse to do a compulsion you are already telling your brain that it’s not important.
- Date posted
- 6y
I have “Pure O” which is still OCD but everything is mental. So when I get a thought my immediate reaction is to analyze it and ruminate on it. I have looked for reassurance online and just asking people if they think I’m a good person and stuff. But I just had to make it all stop, it’s not easy but it’s what I have to do. So when I get that urge to figure the thought out or to fix it or something, I stop myself from doing it. Like, I can’t stop myself from thinking and getting the thoughts but I definitely don’t let myself react to them. I’ll just say “maybe, but I don’t really care” and try to go on with my day. Ali Greymond on YouTube described it like this- the thought is a ball and when the ball is thrown to you, you have a choice to catch it and run with it(react to the thought and perform mental/physical compulsions) or you can just let it fall to your feet (you notice the thought but you don’t catch it or pick it up, you just leave it there). I don’t really do exposures, because I use my thoughts as exposures and I’m sort of exposed to my fear almost every day anyways. I accept it all- that I have OCD, that I may never recover, that the thoughts have a small possibility of being true, that uncertainty is all I have. I look at it like this tiny little thought that popped into my head didn’t mean a single thing except for the fact that I reacted to it. It still doesn’t mean anything, though. I’m no expert though and I have no idea if this makes any sense or helps you. That’s what I do though and I hope you can start doing it too.
- Date posted
- 6y
I was wondering this too! Which is better?
- Date posted
- 6y
There’s no “set” way to get better. Most of its trial and error. I use a form of ERP where I write out my intrusive thoughts and say “That’s interesting.”, teaching myself that the thoughts are unimportant. So long as you aren’t panicking and trying to perform compulsions when you do exposures, you’re mostly on the right track.
- Date posted
- 6y
What if the compulsions of the repetitive thoughts and reassurances?
- Date posted
- 6y
I had this same thought about CBT: am I not giving importance to thoughts that deserve only to be ignored? But then I get that ignoring thoughts, or trying to, doesn’t always work either. As TabbyKitty says, a lot of it is trial and error!
Related posts
- Date posted
- 18w
If your mind purposely keeps fetching a repetitive word, and you’re afraid it will never go away, is the ERP therapy to STOP the mind from doing it? Or ALLOW the mind to do it, and not react? Also, is repeating a word in your head a mental compulsion? Or would that be the obsession? So then what’s the compulsion? Posting on here? Lol
- Date posted
- 16w
I had just posted a summary of ERP for a group member, and I thought it might be useful for everybody. Here it is below (with a little extra added)…. ERP therapy is researched-based. Most other therapies don’t work. There have been people who have been literally stuck in their houses (from their OCD) who gained their lives back through ERP therapy. NOCD does ERP therapy exclusively. You can find it in other places too, but you have to ask around. There are two tenants of ERP therapy: The first one has to do with the repetitive thoughts inside our heads. These thoughts are actually defined as “obsessions”. You are not supposed to do anything with the obsessions. You are supposed to let them run through your head freely, without trying to fix them or stop them. Imagine a tree planted by a river. The leaves fall off and float down the river. You can see the leaves falling, but you don’t try to stop them or pick them up. You don’t try to fix them. You just let them float away. This is really important to do with your obsessive thoughts. The more you try to fight them off, the worse they get. I used to have blasphemous sentences running in my head 24/7. I felt like I had to put a “not” next to each sentence in order to “fix” it. But this just took hours of my time every day, and it was very scary, because I was worried that if I messed up, that I would go to hell. It was very freeing to learn later that I could just let those sentences run freely through my head without trying to fix them. The second part of ERP therapy is all about “denying your compulsions.” Every time OCD tells you that if you don’t do things a certain way that something really bad will happen, that is a compulsion. Once you recognize what your compulsions are, ERP therapy will have you practice stopping doing all of those things. For some people, that will mean stopping washing their hands or touching lights switches or, in my case, putting “fixing” words in their head. Compulsions are safety behaviors. During ERP therapy, you will practice stopping engaging with safety behaviors. All this is very hard to do and scary, so during therapy you will be given tools to help you deal with the fear. Often ERP therapy will take people from being non-functional to functional. I highly recommend it. ————————————————- PITFALL #1: After you have been doing ERP for a while and become somewhat successful, the OCD will try subtle little tricks to bring you down again. The first one is to tell you that your thoughts are REAL and not OCD, and therefore you can’t apply ERP therapy. Don’t fall for this trick! All thoughts are just thoughts. They are all meaningless. Don’t try to figure out what is real and what is OCD. Just treat all thoughts with ERP therapy. PITFALL #2: The second pitfall is that OCD will tell you that you can’t move forward unless you have absolute certainty that you will be safe. Hate to tell you this, folks, but there is no certainty in life. You will never know for SURE that you or your loved ones will be “safe” from the OCD rules. Therefore, you have to move forward in the uncertainty. It’s hard, but it gets easier with time and practice. We got this, guys !!!!!!
- User type
- OCD Conqueror
- Date posted
- 15w
I see a lot of posts and comments here along the lines of... "the thoughts/urges aren't you -- they're just OCD." Though this is often true and comforting, isn't this just a form of reassurance? The way to beat OCD is by accepting that the distressing thoughts MAY be true/real, a.k.a. "from you" or "not just OCD." By brushing distressing things off as "just OCD," you excuse the thoughts and therefore feel reassured. Obviously it is good to be aware of what OCD does to you and know when you're experiencing a spiral, but crediting all distressing thoughts to OCD is a way of finding certainty about them. What do you guys think of this? Am I right or wrong? This is just the way I think about it, but I see the "this is just OCD" thing so much on here and I often wonder if that is a form of reassurance.
Be a part of the largest OCD Community
Share your thoughts so the Community can respond