Guys I’m struggling. So I’ve been doing erp and my therapist is amazing. She’s supportive and doesn’t reassure me which is good for OCD. I’m so frustrated because I’m not feeling better yet. It’s SO FRUSTRATING. I’ve gotten my reassurance down from 200 times a day to like 5 times a day. It’s unbelievable. At the same time, I still feel horrible. I can go a few days with 0 reassurance, but then it will go back up to 10-15 reassurance a day. I get so bad at 0 reassurance that I give in. My ocd will tell me “you might not have ocd” and “this plan won’t work.” Then I get so discouraged. It literally convinces me I don’t have ocd. I NEED MOTIVATION TO do 0 reassurance FOREVER. I need motivation TO PUSH THROUGH A FEW WERKS OF TOUGHNESS AT 0 reassurance TO BEAT THIS. I also am not ruminating as much and I never avoid anymore. The main fear is that I don’t have ocd. I’m also getting frustrated lately because It will convince me on autopilot that “I can’t enjoy politics” and “I don’t like girls”. It attacks everything I love. I also feel like I’m so out of it sometimes. I’m working so hard. Just need that motivation to keep going. My ocd mainly makes me feel doom and down. That’s why it bothers me. I’m working on accepting it and not doing reassurance!

Hey today I’m feeling very tired because of my OCD I’m just so tired of it. I feel I’m doing everything to get better. I disregard the thoughts, I’m trying to do things like I don’t have ocd but it doesn’t want to go away. I was doing fine for a long period of time and now I feel like I’m back a square one. It’s been almost 2 months now I’m battling with OCD and I’m just tired. Sure I have moments where it’s better than others, I also have days where I barely have OCD but I also have really bad days like today where I just don’t want to get out of bed. Last time I had a relapse it took my 4 weeks to get out of it I don’t understand why this time it takes me more. I’m starting believing that I will never feel better again. Anyway I’m gonna try to find the strength to get out of bed and to start my day. But I just wanted to share. It’s such a horrible illness.

Lately my OCD has been very horrible, it’s been more convincing than ever to the point where I’m genuinely convinced that I like this stuff, when I get a thought, I’ll hear my intrusive thoughts go “oooh, I like that, I’d do that.” and I just don’t freak out nor feel bad, I just feel like I like it even more, and feel like I would do/act on it and like it, and the feeling is strong and it lingers forever? It genuinely feels like I do, and I’m just lying now, i can’t tell if I make these thoughts worse or anything All I remember mostly just being like confused sometimes when these thoughts happen, but since I’m getting strong emotions that I like it, my brain says that means I did and I’m worried about that being true because I don’t understand nor know It’s like I am resisting to like this stuff now, it’s even tougher now than it was before

Looking back, I realize I’ve had OCD since I was 7. though I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 30. As a kid, I was consumed by fears I couldn’t explain: "What if God isn’t real? What happens when we die? How do I know I’m real?" These existential thoughts terrified me, and while everyone has them from time to time, I felt like they were consuming my life. By 12, I was having daily panic attacks about death and war, feeling untethered from reality as depersonalization and derealization set in. At 15, I turned to drinking, spending the next 15 years drunk, trying to escape my mind. I hated myself, struggled with my body, and my intrusive thoughts. Sobriety forced me to face it all head-on. In May 2022, I finally learned I had OCD. I remember the exact date: May 10th. Reading about it, I thought, "Oh my God, this is it. This explains everything." My main themes were existential OCD and self-harm intrusive thoughts. The self-harm fears were the hardest: "What if I kill myself? What if I lose control?" These thoughts terrified me because I didn’t want to die. ERP changed everything. At first, I thought, "You want me to confront my worst fears? Are you kidding me?" But ERP is gradual and done at your pace. My therapist taught me to lean into uncertainty instead of fighting it. She’d say, "Maybe you’ll kill yourself—who knows?" At first, it felt scary, but for OCD, it was freeing. Slowly, I realized my thoughts were just thoughts. ERP gave me my life back. I’m working again, I’m sober, and for the first time, I can imagine a future. If you’re scared to try ERP, I get it. But if you’re already living in fear, why not try a set of tools that can give you hope?