I’m having a really hard time doing any exposures whatsoever. Does anyone have any tips? I have been living with ROCD for 20+ years and only recently got diagnosed and seeing a therapist - so my rituals are pretty deeply ingrained. I see how bad it’s screwing up my life but I feel powerless to stop myself.

I am struggling to live life and do my ERPs. I am taking medication and doing ERP still along with therapy (had 10+ years of PTSD therapy). I don't have anything to look forward to. I've accomplished a lot in life but they don't matter to me anymore. There's little to no reward or there's stimuli of feeling or being treated badly even if I did good. Coping skills have become maladaptive. My values have changed and there is nothing I really want but my ex for the past years. ROCD is making my body react as if I am unable to be happy without my ex. He helped me through hard times and heal from trauma, but he was his own mess of trauma that I could not heal (he needs a real therapist and to go consistently). Yet when I was with him ROCD (didn't know about it at the time) kept telling me to leave from his unreasonable actions. Hard time sitting in limbo as I'm unable to decide and hard to keep doing nothing without something to look forward in life. I feel self abandonment whether I go back to him or stay away. I want to be able to live with myself even if I'll never end up with anyone. I hate not doing something of self care or feeling anything but apathy or worse every day despite doing things anyways. I worked hard to get safe only to have no joy in life anymore.

I am in an incredible relationship with the most patient and gentle person I have ever met. We have been together for 4 years and I realized I had OCD a year ago, got diagnosed a month ago. Its quite difficult going from a narcissistic/abusive household to experiencing the gentle and constant love that comes with a healthy relationship. Since he doesn’t have explosive (big) feelings my OCD insists that he doesn’t love me enough. Which is crazy. I have set a few rules for myself, biggest one being: No picking fights after 6:30 pm. (If im still upset in the morning, bring it up then) But I am new to this and appreciate any advice.

I still do not have an OFFICIAL diagnosis (I dont have the means to do so) but given my symptoms, past and present in my life hugely suggest OCD is what I am dealing with. I cannot be 100 percent certain but after searching for answers and researching for a long time now, I am fairly certain and confident this is what I am struggling with. Given this step forward, I am making more effort into giving up compulsions. at the current moment I believe to be dealing with ROCD, as I have been having several intrusive thoughts that conflict with my relationship. For starters, recently over the past month or 2, I have been struggling with intrusive thoughts like not being over my ex, being attracted to someone else, losing feelings for my partner and not being in love, etc. I can consciously identify that I dont believe these thoughts to be true but it causes me so much distress and anxiety. It gets extremely unbearable some days, and I have leaned into 2 main compulsions. I have relied on thought checking and googling as my source of relief. At first the googling was genuinely to start finding answers; hence why I have made some of the discoveries I have about OCD including this site. But it developed into every time I was anxious, I would whip my phone out and start googling strictly to find an answer that would reassure me or calm me down. As for thought checking, it acted as a way to reaffirm my love for my girlfriend in my head when I have had the thoughts that collide with my relationship and how I feel about my girlfriend. It worked at first but developed into a compulsion where every time a bad thought got me worked up id either do my normal googling or Id think about that in my head to calm myself down. Over time these compulsions have gotten less and less affective and now when I do them it only gets me more anxious and desperate for reassurance (strengthening the cycle or whatever it is lol). I did some more research and finally have accepted the very real fact that I am going to have to sit in heavy anxiety and not give into compulsions for a while in order to treat this. I have to sit in the thoughts that make me feel all this hightened anxiety and distress without giving into compulsion. to be honest I am scared, the thoughts are more rampant than ever, but I am ready to commit to this. I dont think I am gonna be able to go cold turkey on my compulsions so I am ready for the reality I might relapse on the compulsions sometimes, But am gonna keep going until I can break these shackles OCD has on my life right now. I wanna ask, what is everyones methods they use to avoid giving into compulsion when the thoughts get loud? any advice is welcome :)