- Date posted
- 5y
- Date posted
- 5y
Erp at its best ?? learn to sit with your anxiety while facing your fear. Try to avoid rituals that keep you away from your fear. My biggest one is instruisve thoughts and doing rituals to avoid those thoughts. ERP has taught me to allow those thoughts to be there, to not react to them, and let them float away. It produces a lot of anxiety in the beginning, but I give myself points whenever I don’t react to these thoughts! I gets easier with consistency promise ??????
- Date posted
- 5y
Thanks, but my OCD tells me if a dead or alive bug is on me; it matters.
- Date posted
- 5y
Of course and if a bug is on me, I’m human, I’m going to remove it. I don’t have to kill the bug, but if I do, I accept that anxiety as I am human. The point is to not be afraid of the bug, it’s harmless. It will get easier especially with therapy. I suggest getting a therapist from this ap or a virtual CBT therapist the specializes in ocd disorder.
- Date posted
- 5y
@kati1 Thanks, you are right!!!
- Date posted
- 5y
In OCD our feelings don't line up properly with what we know. You know there's nothing bad about being touched by a bug but your feelings haven't caught up with that. The way to make your feelings become more aligned with what you know is to act based on what you know instead of how you feel. When you have the urge to obsess about it or imagine it, deliberately choose to think about something else. When you have the urge to check or avoid, just behave as normal even though it makes you anxious. Eventually your feelings will understand it's not dangerous. You know it's not dangerous, so it's not risky to listen to what you know. This is the only way to beat OCD.
- Date posted
- 5y
Thanks, I try to rush the checking for bugs. Does that help. I personally know nothing is there.
- Date posted
- 5y
@Stealthhero22 I'm not sure, you should probably check with your therapist about that. There needs to be a shift for you away from checking even though there's probably nothing there, towards NOT checking even though YES there might be something there. It's much better to work on accepting that there might be bugs and that that's okay, than to try to prove to yourself that there aren't bugs. You already know that a bug isn't going to do you any harm and that you'd handle it just like anybody else if you touched one. But your feelings are saying differently, as you've taught the fear-response part of your brain that bugs are important and that making sure they're not there is important. Seeing as we can't eliminate bugs from the world, and seeing as your compulsions and anxiety over bugs are only causing suffering, really the only way to get through this problem you're having is to reduce your fear of bugs. That can only be done through exposure, which means not checking at all when you feel the need to, and eventually working up to deliberately being around and touching bugs without doing compulsions. That's the only way to prove to your brain that it doesn't need to be so hyped up around bugs. I know it's unpleasant but treating OCD is about conquering fears so that your brain stops sending you adrenaline and warnings about the idea, so that your life doesn't revolve around it anymore. It's not about reducing the likelihood of fears happening.
- Date posted
- 5y
@Scoggy Thanks
Related posts
- Date posted
- 9w
sorry if im putting to much detail in here I can take it down if it is too much and makes people uncomfy. Last night was watching some ex*pl*cit content while lying on the rug in the room in my house I spend most of my time and where my family usually goes into and it caused a physical reaction. I went to the bathroom to clean up and then sprayed the shower done and put bleach on the floor but I wiped the floor with a towel to kinda clean it but idk if I put enough bleach to clean it and if I got it in the areas that mattered and I sprayed Lysol on the bathroom counter to make sure no germs of my earlier reaction got any where but I ran out of Lysol after spraying everything but I made sure to spray the rug with some Lysol before I ran out but idk if I got everything I mean I focused on the rug but I didn’t spray all of it and I didn’t spray all the stuff that was in the room. And to make things worse after my reaction earlier I put my devices and charger on the floor of my room before washing my hands or my devices so I had to clean the floor in my room I used bleach but I didn’t put it everywhere on the floor which makes me anxious and idk if I cleaned my devices or charger well enough and I’m scared they are still infected. But back to the rug i sprayed it down with odoban it says disinfectant on it but I think it’s only for hard surfaces it disinfects but I still sprayed it around on the rug but I don’t know if it actually disinfected anything. And of course to make matters worse my baby cousins toys were in the room so I sprayed them with what little Lysol I had left but idk if I cleaned it well enough but I already put them with their other toys so idk what to do. After I thought I cleaned everything I put my devices on my mattress I don’t have my blankets on my mattress yet cause I washed them like a week or 2 ago and they are just laying on my bed but not put on my mattress so I’m scared my mattress if infected since I’m laying on my mattress with my feet on my chair and my devices are on my mattress. And idk I don’t want people getting those bad germs in them and I,worry about this a lot and Ik a lot of people will say that it isn’t that huge of a deal and I want to,believe them and it helps but my mind is always telling me that even if that’s true I have a responsibility to make sure everything is clean so people don’t get hurt and it doesn’t help that I’ve been so,itchy and idk why and my little brother is also itchy idk if it’s because I don’t clean well enough and it’s my germs or not but I’m tired do I need,to clean my mattress and covers again and reclean the rug I think I do but I’m trying to go against that thinking but it’s hard because I feel like a bad persons. And today I’m scared to leave my room i feel like I’m filthy and that the rug in the other room is contaminated and it doesn’t help I need to go to the doctor today when I’m feeling like anyone I’m around im infecting
- Date posted
- 8w
potential trigger warning cus insects and stuff (contamination ocd?) . Its summer in the UK, and theres a lot more bugs around. I dont dislike bugs, and if we're outside its whatever, but I realised i have huge fears when bugs are in my house. I keep getting images of fruit flies or other bugs bein at the bottom of my drink whenever i see one, or them flying into my eyes or mouth and how horrible that would feel. Ive realised i constantly feel on edge when theres insects. Its not debilitating and i can push past it pretty easily but I will stay stressed and anxious until i forget about them or go somewhere else. I also sometimes search rooms for bugs kindof subconciously? like when I enter a room - especially the bathroom cus you feel more vulnerable and all that in there - im always looking around, checking walls and the ceilings and looking to see if the window was left open and bugs mightve gotten in. Dead insects also make me feel really guilty. I remember as a kid i used to litterally break into sobbing tears when my dad would kill a fly, and although I dont cry anymore I feel just as bad whenever I see a insect dead in the bathtub or sink (where they often get stuck cus slippery surface + water) Does anyone know how to lessen my fears around bugs and the guilt? Im not scared of the bugs themselves at all. I love bugs, i find moths and ladybugs and spiders really cute but its just the "what if they get in my eye" and "what if i kill them" that repeats in my head whenever im around one.
- Date posted
- 7w
I came home from a trip today to find mold growing out of every vent in my apartment. This has been an intrusive thought of mine for a long time (i.e. everything is infected, spores in my possessions, spores in the air) and I feel like this has just confirmed everything I thought to be true. I’ve been reading statistics about mold to try to calm down (how common it is to have an issue with mold in vents and how low the chances are of illness from it) but I don’t know how to stop thinking about it being everywhere. Any advice?
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