When reading about how to manage OCD, some books say that, when you get an intrusive thought, just say “it’s not important.” However, if you use ERP, you dwell on the thought, feel the anxiety, thereby giving it some importance. Are these just two different ways to manage OCD?

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!