How do you recover when OCD attacks your own recovery? At this point I don't know what's OCD and what's recovery. It's gone meta. And I'm trying to hold out, trying to just sit with these feelings, but I'm going insane. I desperately need to find a therapist soon who gets it.

Yes, thank you. I'm actually on a wait to possibly work with her.

@canigetawitness Excellent!! 👍

It's all focused on ERP right now & how to do it the right way. Like sitting with the original thought & not doing the compulsion isn't enough. I need to do extra exposure work whenever I get triggered instead of just sitting with it. This is where I keep getting tripped up. I always feel like I'm avoiding an exposure I need to be doing. For example I got the thought "Did I drop some money over there?" And my compulsion was to check, my mind would say "now for exposure you need to drop a whole lot of money & habituate to that or else you're doing therapy wrong". It's a mess.

@canigetawitness And there's a ton of guilt, shame, fear, etc. associated with this cycle

@canigetawitness Ah, I can relate. I had to realize that, in terms of your example, dropping the money to habituate was yet another compulsion. My therapist’s response was that anything you’re doing to feel more certain is a compulsion. E.g having to make sure that you’ve “really” done ERP right or overdoing it. What helped me, as recommended by my therapist, was setting aside time each day to intentionally trigger myself and practice ERP until the anxiety subsided rather than wait for triggering things to happen in the day and try to practice ERP in the moment. That way it’s more intentional and you’ll feel like you’re actually being proactive as opposed to just waiting for things to hit you.

@orangey That makes sense. I guess I have a hard time figuring out how to take what bothers me & make it purposeful.

@orangey Also, do you find that ERP helps you?

@canigetawitness Take a thought that causes anxiety and go from there. Have you gotten to see a therapist at all? And yes, ERP helps me massively. Cutting out compulsions and being diligent about that in the long term is the main thing that keeps me stable - and at this point I’ve seen a *direct* correlation between doing compulsions and seeing an increase in obsessions -, but ERP can be useful as a tool when the fear is so intense or when maybe there aren’t many obvious compulsions besides lots of mental obsessing. For example I had a fear of schizophrenia or becoming delusional and one of my ERP exercises was to watch a short YouTube video of a guy with schizophrenia talk about his experiences every day. This was my way of facing the fear “head on” and it helped.

@orangey I have seen a few OCD therapists. This meta theme has been difficult to express to them so I'm switching to another therapist soon. I'm glad you're finding how to apply ERP in a way that works best for you. That's awesome! Maybe I will try to just start with a fear at a time & try not to worry about "overcorrection" or doing more than I need to be doing than just facing the fear as it is

@canigetawitness It makes sense to me so I think you’re doing a fine job of expressing it! If it’s any consolation, my therapist didn’t 100% get it either when I explained it to them. You might find Mark Freeman’s videos on YouTube helpful, he also has a Q&A where you could ask him about this and I think he’d have a good answer. But yeah, working with thoughts like “maybe I AM doing ERP wrong - if so, oh well!” Might help.