The past couple days I’ve felt what recovery is. My intrusive thoughts are rare, and not particularly unsettling. I often laugh them off or immediately forget about them. Any physical symptoms (disassociation mostly) have been there, but for the first time I really do not care and am not afraid. When that happens, I find I have times where they’re so unimportant that I don’t even feel them, because I don’t care and I’m not trying to make them go away. I’ve been journalling my progress to make note of what makes things worse, and what makes things better, so I thought I’d share them. 1. ERP. Nobody wants to hear that, I know. I make loop tapes of my intrusive thoughts or write them out and read them over and over. Right now my ERP schedule is 15 minutes in the morning, 15 at night, and 15 in the afternoon if I have the time or am particularly anxious. I don’t have many compulsions and have good control over the ones I do have, so just listening to the thoughts makes me think about them less through the rest of the day. 2. Mindfulness meditation. I get really anxious before I go to bed because there aren’t many distractions, so I like to meditate for about 5-15 minutes before sleep, depending on how anxious I feel. Taking the time to focus on my breathing and be able to notice the thoughts without attaching meaning or judgement to them is really helpful. 3. Gentle yoga before bed. If I’m very anxious and restless, I watch YouTube videos on yoga for night time anxiety. Gentle stretches and slow movements help me settle down and feel ready for bed. 4. Exercise. On the days I go to the gym for an hour or so, my anxiety plummets. Its nice to be able to focus on something outside my obsessions and emotions and really engage with something positive. If you don’t like the gym, you could try exercising at home. I do 5 push-ups when I first wake up, and I have an exercise bike (although I don’t use it much since I started at the gym) 5. Reading and writing. I used to love writing stories but I really lost sight of it when my OCD was at its worst. Forcing myself to go ahead and write even though it was crappy and disjointed really made a difference. Lowering the importance of your OCD is SO important (and will become easier with ERP) 6. Not researching. I don’t google OCD. I don’t google my obsessions or my disassociation. I don’t talk about it (I’ve even tried to post less on here) and I don’t dwell on whether or not I will recover. In general, maintaining positive habits and self care and really focusing on things other than OCD, as well as plenty of ERP have really helped me gain control of my life, but I still believe ERP is the most important thing I’ve done for my recovery so far. I wish you all the best in your own journeys, everyone is different so experiment and see what works for you!