Guys I’ve been working my butt off at ERP and getting my reassurance down to 0. At same time, I feel so awful and am so worked up over the fact that I’m not feeling better yet. I’m so worked up. I feel like this will never get better. I’m so sad. Idk what to do. I love my therapist and believe in my erp plan, but I don’t feel results yet after so much hard work. I’m drained and want my life back.

Ahh yeah it always do that. Best to say "yep maybe that's true but I'm going to keep treating it like it's OCD and we'll see what happens" and then not dwell on the idea. You can direct your attention! It's your superpower ❤️

Even self-reassurance like telling yourself when you feel bad that it will work or analysing whether it will work to try to feel more sure that it will, can make the obsession stronger. Sneaky mental compulsions can undo a lot of hard work :(

I can’t stop thinking about it all. That’s my main compulsion besides reassurance I think. I can’t help it tho

@jakemen20 Me too. Rumination is definitely one which you can stop when you notice that you're doing it. It's just as difficult a habit to break as getting reassurance or confessing is, but unfortunately ERP doesn't really work until you cut out all compulsions in one go and totally surf the uncertainty wave. But then it gets better quickly. Do you want to know some of my methods to reduce it down?

@Scoggy Ya sure!

@jakemen20 Well putting it off is my favourite one. When I notice myself going over it again, I try to tell myself that I'll do it later on or maybe tomorrow. I've found no problem genuinely is urgent enough that I need to know right at the present moment, even though the urge to think about it can feel pretty strong. As you know that ruminating about it is a huge part of what is keeping your OCD going as well as making you feel awful, hopefully that can give you some extra strength to be able to put it off. Really important to remember that thinking about it is a compulsion. It can help to actually set yourself up a "worry period", maybe having a half hour period every day where you're going to let yourself go over and over this, and you time it so you don't go over. Any time that isn't during that worry period where you feel you want to go over it again, you can promise yourself that you'll wait until the next one. Over time you could extend this out to once every few days or once a week, once a month etc. Personally I've found that as soon as I start using this method on a worry, my urges to think about it really decrease a lot. It instantly puts a great big distance between the moment of the obsession being triggered and the compulsion, and that's enough to break them apart in your brain just as if you weren't doing compulsions. You've assured yourself that you WILL worry, you won't neglect the problem, and in the meantime you surf that wave, which gets easier and easier very quickly! Yep it is a minor "compulsion" to reassure yourself by saying that you'll worry about it later, but so long as you just make that "later" decision and then refocus to something else, it's not going to interfere with your life. For me, after a bit of time doing this, I'm no longer getting urges to worry at all, in fact I can see the issue more clearly and both recognise and *feel* that there is no need for me to ruminate over it :) I love this method because it gives you your life and time back straight away! I'm not surprised you're feeling drained and as if your life is passing by if you spend all day exhaustingly thinking about it. This should undo that!

@jakemen20 Also- I *don't* recommend keeping track of how much/long you ruminate so that you can see it reduce. You'll know that it's reduced by the amount of free time and thinking time it opens up for you, so keeping track with lists and numbers only serves to add another layer of compulsion for you to use to reassure yourself with- which would be counterproductive :)

@jakemen20 Just do this consistently, and don't beat yourself up if you forget and realise you've been ruminating, just mindfully put it aside for later when you notice.

Good job living your life despite what the OCD says! Hopefully it can get better quickly if you're spending less time ruminating and feeling so down about it and filling your mind with other things instead. You can really shove OCD into tiny pockets of your life once you get a handle on rumination. It says you can't watch the news so you watch it anyway AND you think about other things instead of about the OCD/about whether you should be watching the news/whether you've done the right thing/whether something bad will happen. Boom, the illness has been shoved into a few daily tiny intrusive moments whose butt you kick, instead of it hounding you all day. It's going to feel so good to find that you managed to not only not get reassurance or permission that it's ok to do the things you want, but also to not think about it once you've made that decision, and you survived. Your confidence will build up and build up! Those intrusive ideas it sends you really will stop coming and stop seeming important when you're showing your brain how unimportant they are. You can totally do it, you quit reassurance which is extremely hard to do, so you can definitely do this one too.