anyone else feel guilty when they dont do the amount of erps their therapist assigned them in between therapy sessions? she wants me to do 45 min erp sessions a day on my own and ive only managed to do 30 min twice in between sessions but i do multiple sets of 10 so i count them as like 3-5 erp sessions that i do before i see her but its like if i know i have to do erps that day or week i put it off until last minute because doing it before bed sucks then your sleep is even worse but doing it early in the day that can ruin the rest of the day sometimes but i do usually feel accomplished and proud of myself after mostly because my guilt goes away so that i can tell my therapist i did do my homework ... i know its dumb to feel guilty these erps are for me not for her but i feel like im going to class with half of my work completed and i guess i always hate disappointing people and i want her to like me and impress her so its a tug of war with my people pleasing and ocd and adhd and yeah just venting i have therapy monday and i havent done exercises since wednesday im hoping to do three 10 minute sessions tomorrow and then 2 monday morning before my therapy appointment but i just feel bad because i told her id keep her posted and i dont want to lie but i feel bad telling her how little ive done since wednesday also my last session is monday i feel like is it bad im not doing erps more than 2-3 days a week? should i be more dilligent by now? should i already be doing 9/10 levels in my heirarchy? im only at 7/8s still... lol i even want reassurance about if my process is correct or not... just wanted to vent hope someone can relate 🤷‍♀️

MaraNOCD

Date posted: 4y

I do! I really think that there are a lot of exposure themes going on here, and I relate to all of them. Timing, judgment from others, not getting "good enough" sleep. IMO Let's face it, we have life besides trying to better our lives with ERP, so getting an exposure in daily is pretty tough, especially when you consider potential emotional fallout. I'm no therapist here, but I know that I could only potentially be doing higher level exposures twice a week. If you've been doing it awhile and your 7-8's are kind of like what your lower ones were in the beginning, .. like it's all shifted down.. then maybe I could handle more. But if I'm honestly measuring how anxious something is making me RIGHT NOW? I probably would only be doing a level 7 once a week! I try and do level 4-5's on a daily basis, but even that's hard for my schedule. I could be wrong, but I feel like any practice is good practice. Maybe try an be consistent with only one category at a time, because sometimes we want to jump around to different topics, but that can be OCD trying to pull us off track from the progress of experiencing anxiety about a certain thing. .... so that could be my only suggestion as to how to make your current schedule work best for you. I feel ya!

Anonymously

Date posted: 4y

thanks for sharing that, its comforting knowing you can relate yeah i guess its a matter of not beating our selves up about the process and as long as we are making some time thats progress thanks for the advice ill try that out 🙏

Be a part of the largest OCD Community

Share your thoughts so the Community can respond