I’ve been working really hard at ERP/Mindfulness/ACT and wanted to share notes I’ve been taking for what’s helped me. Sorry for the overwhelming length! 1. You can’t lose to OCD if you know what it’s doing ahead of time or during. (Ex: reading a triggering article for exposure and saying “okay OCD I know you’re going to twist and manipulate this to make it seem real but I’m not reacting”) 2. You can’t control what goes on in your brain, but you can control how to react 3. The importance of response prevention: once you practice it starts to become second nature instead of the compulsions. Even noticing you’re doing a compulsion (hmm, I think I’m analyzing right now, I’m going to shift my focus here) is progress. 4. A big part of overcoming TERRIBLY intrusive thoughts and makes them less powerful or less frequent is when I hold it in my head and let pass without caring if they’re there or not or never knowing forsure if they mean or don’t mean something (hardest thing to do ever!) this comes from Graysons book on Accepting Uncertainty 5. Its my choice to not monitor and do a compulsion. At first it annoyingly seems like you always have to be on guard and in the zone ready for OCD to strike, but I’d rather that than be down compulsion lane. 6. I can live with discomfort and still do another task. 7. Do not be disappointed w the ups and down. Bounce back. Plan for triggers. (I notice an increase in thoughts at night and started telling myself “I can’t wait for OCD to come back tonight!”) 6. Most of the time, fighting a compulsion feels anxiety ridden or a spike or hard. Do it anyway. 7. Going in with a strong mentality (no matter how crappy or believable my thoughts feel I’ll wake up every morning saying I’m choosing not to believe you today!) even if I felt a spike of anxiety I’d try my best. Even if you disregard 10% of thoughts that day and 20% the next it’s progress. (Ali Greymond podcasts) 8. Predict !!!!! Where will I be triggered? And when it happens you won’t be so shocked 9. Intrusive thoughts related to my theme are just a good practice now for disregarding/response prevention. “thanks brain for sending me these thoughts” *moving on* it’s a choice to believe or not. 10. Actually believing I CAN recover- you don’t HAVE to overthink these. The doubt of having OCD or OCD about OCD is REAL and something I still struggle with. But it doesn’t have to be that way, you can still show your brain you’re in control. 11. 99% of the time your anxiety dies down later in the day and you’re able to think rationally (not to be used as reassurance but rather motivation to delay compulsions) 12. For me, exposures or triggers that happen randomly or in real life instead of me planning them are HARD. It was just this week that I started to address these the same way as other planned exposures: response prevention always wins! 13. Choose to not believe/Choose uncertainty(“okay maybe I’m my worst fear OCD and you can keep screaming at me, but I’m going to do what’s best for me and make my best choice right now even if im wrong in the future”)- even if you have no confidence and are filled with doubt it will come back eventually with practice.