- Username
- SueJ
- Date posted
- 6y ago
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.
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.
I was wondering this too! Which is better?
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.
What if the compulsions of the repetitive thoughts and reassurances?
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!
Skeptical about ERP? I found ERP really conflicts with some other theories, like the theories of Louise Hay (who wrote the book “you can heal your life). I will elaborate on my confusions. 1. ERP asks us to experience obsessions without thinking “no I won’t hurt myself” “no I won’t hurt others”. “No, I am safe and those thoughts are not real”. Thinking “i won’t do dangerous stuff and I am completely safe” is considered as compulsion to rid us of anxiety, but Louise Hay thinks it as positive affirmation. 2. Will ERP make us believe what we think even more? ERP asks you to write your fears into those stories and scripts and repeat them again and again until you habituate. But why would I say to myself “oh, maybe I will kill my parents and I will accept that and move on”? How does this make any sense? 3. I read the book of Shannon Shy who has recovered from OCD and he used his own strategies. I remembered that when he confronted his obsession of whether he left the pot on, he would say to himself that “do you think the pot will turn itself on”? to help him better move on to do things that he should do. But according to ERP, isn’t this a compulsion? Cuz ERP asks us to accept that ok the pot may be on and my house may be burned down and I accept that and I move on? I just find ERP theories weird.
I'm really confused about what ERP actually is. I've read that it's all about facing your intrusive thoughts & not doing the compulsions, but then I also hear it's about more than that, like eating off a toilet seat, or even licking a toilet seat. So I guess my question is if ERP is really about letting my intrusive thoughts be there and not reacting to them, whats the point of doing far-out-there exposures that would bother be OCD or no OCD. I could lick toilets, eat from them, roll around in dumpsters, make things opposite from the way I want them all day, but I'm still not going to like doing those things. It's weird because the description of ERP seems to contradict things when it's actually put into practice.
One for the therapists or those that have done ERP or followed some of the advice on here.... If the best way to deal with the intrusive thought is to not give it certainty and to say "that might happen, who knows?" then surely you're fuelling the thought which is going to heighten anxiety levels? For example if you have POCD and have a thought such as "What if I think sexual thoughts about that child?" and you sit with the thought saying to yourself "I might do, I might not" surely that's going to make you ruminate on it and we're told rumination is wrong. Or another example "I'm going to hurt myself later" and then thinking "maybe I will, I don't know" you're just going to make yourself worse? If there's a chance that thought is gonna come true it's make you feel worse surely? Please tell me if I'm wrong and I've got the wrong end of the stick here but it's been playing on my mind. Surely it's better to ignore the thought the entirely or just observe it as if to say haha yeah OK keep trying to tell me that, that's ridiculous. Advice and thoughts appreciated.
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