Faced some fears tonight :) TW: cutting So alongside my suicidal OCD I have a fear/obsession of self-harm specifically cutting. Don’t wanna look at it, don’t wanna hear about it, nothing but I get intrusive unwanted thoughts about doing it when I don’t wanna. Anyways I’ve been on a Degrassi: The Next Generation binge (for those of you who don’t know degrassi, it’s a show about primarily high schoolers dealing with a variety of issues - great show honestly) and one of the episodes was about a girl who started cutting herself due to her dad leaving for the military and being stuck at home with an alcoholic mom, as well as being super stressed out with an internship opportunity. I knew there was gonna be an episode focused on self-harm and when it started playing my mind was on high alert like “don’t watch this!!!” However instead I knew this was essential for eventually getting over this fear so I didn’t look away and I kept watching the show as they showed the scenes of her self-harming, her friend finding out, and eventually getting her the help she needed. Needless to say I was pretty proud of myself for not avoiding this specific episode and making it through out with performing mental compulsions! I know this show also eventually covers the basis of suicide so that’ll be another hard one to watch but I gotta do it to show OCD it’s not the boss of me. Thanks for reading :)

Thanks! That is my exact issue with suicidal OCD. ERP of course helped the most but in between exercises if I catch myself ruminating or doing mental compulsions I catch myself and just stop. Sometimes I’ll literally tell myself mentally “stop”, then move on to something else. I found it had helped and I don’t think it’s necessarily a distraction because I’m not going on to distract myself from it but I just stop it in it’s tracks. It takes practice to do so because you’ll end up ruminating right back again but just stopping and moving on has helped. Also knowing you’re not alone! We share the shame theme and know each other’s struggle, and I’ve met many others with the same thing :)

@Evelyn4416 Ty for sharing <3 I’ve been trying to do this! It does help but it’s hard to keep up with. And thanks so much for the kind words, I appreciate it friend :)

@Evelyn4416 So you’re saying distracting yourself is bad?

@cambam I think distraction is considered avoidance which is the opposite of what we should do. Before I started therapy I tried to distract myself a lot and while it would offer temporary relief it didn’t solve anything. Once I stopped avoiding and started facing my fears thru ERP that’s where I actually started to see change

@Evelyn4416 Yeah that makes sense. I’m gonna keep trying to just confront the thought with “stop” and then move forward and see how that goes for a bit. I want to do ERP I’m out of network tho and it’s soo expensive

@cambam I know NOCD does payment plans but I don’t know what the specifics are. With ERP you’re supposed to trigger yourself with different triggers you have and face them without doing compulsions, tracking your distress level 1-10 and ending the exercise when your anxiety is down to half the initial level. It’s recommended to do ERP with a therapist first but im sure there are ways to learn how to do it in your own online as well, even on this app I’m pretty sure there’s exercises you create to conduct them. The stop thing is more meanwhile management until you can start ERP, it’s the golden standard and most successful way to start recovery for OCD

@Evelyn4416 Definitely! I hope I can find someone in network who does ERP but until then I’m gonna keep learning on my own as much as I can and working through it. Thanks for being so open tonight and for answering my questions!

@cambam Of course! I hope everything works out for you! :)

@Evelyn4416 You too 💜💜💜

Thanks so much :)