OCD Station :) . Down below in the comments it’s a place to vent. Whatever you want. Whatever you need. If you need help. If you need someone to talk to. Or if you just want to say hi. It’s an open place :)

You're being so strong by thinking about how to share things with your therapist. Maybe writing things down when you feel them would make it easier to share later with your counselor.

I’m glad you found a space to vent :) I’m always here if you need one lol

Would you mind sharing what are some of the biggest lessons you have learned in therapy to deal with your ocd?

@Sunflower 1234 Biggest one is avoiding compulsions and doing so lessens the intensity and later frequency of OCD. That comes along with ERP. Before I would constantly do mental compulsions but once I stopped doing it during exercises and letting the thoughts exist and leave, it was eye-opening to see the changes that played along. I also learned to not be hard on myself, to always make time for mindfulness and self care, and to keep my head up/keep living life.

@Evelyn4416 Thanks. This is helpful. ❤️

Hey girl! I’m finding myself with this exact same theme. Can you tell me a bit more about it and how you have worked through it in therapy? Possibly some ERP tips?

@Ocdmomma Hey! Yeah of course! I’m not sure if you mean the suicidal or the existential OCD so I’ll elaborate on both. So with the suicidal OCD for me it’s intrusive thoughts/feelings/urges about suicide. Thoughts telling you what if you want to or that you want to. What if you become depressed and eventually desire it, what if you “go crazy” or are experiencing so much distress you want to, or just want to out of nowhere. A lot of things are triggers, could be items, locations, or just situations. It’s not only focused on myself but also on my family members and friends at times, like if I haven’t heard from them in a while or if things haven’t been going so well for them I get scared they’ll commit suicide. ERP for this that I’ve done included looking at my open closet doors since that’s a trigger for me, holding kitchen knives and other potential “weapons”, and doing an ERP self-recorded script where I record myself speaking out my fears and later listening to it. For the existential OCD, to me it focuses on reality and purpose/meaning of life. So with the reality portion it’s intrusive thoughts of “what if I’m not real”, “what if nothing around me is real”, “what if I’m living in a simulation” and so on. My compulsion for this included checking the things and environment around me to see if it was “real”. As for the purpose/meaning thoughts, I’d get intrusive thoughts about “what if my life doesn’t have any meaning”, “what if me improving and working toward goals etc in my life doesn’t mean anything” etc. ERP for this included looking at my environment without checking and also doing the same self-record script of speaking out my fears and listening to it again. Hope this helped :)

@Evelyn4416 Amazing, thank you ❤️