Is it possible for ERP to be too much for people? I am suffering with postpartum ocd among some harm and religious stuff... mostly always geared towards my son. I’m just wondering if there have been other modes of therapy that have been have been found effective and less anxiety inducing inducing. I’m doing ERP, but it’s very hard to just sit with my anxiety when I’m trying to take care of a baby. Thanks for any tips!

Hello- I have been battling many types of OCD on and off for 25+ years. Medication works but wanted to go off for 1st trimester of pregnancy. I am doing a good job deploying ERP tactics for pure o and real event ocd and it has removed physically anxiety symptoms and I can concentrate in life. However I do have a big sense of fear and all day gloomy feeling knowing that the thoughts that are disturbing are sitting out there and fear I will come up with new ones. Will this get better the longer I keep deploying the ERP tactics? I never have this when I am on medication. Thanks in advance.

I am 7 weeks postpartum and my OCD has been awful since the baby was about a week old. I am currently seeing a therapist that specializes in perinatal mood disorders. She gave me a paper titled the 4 steps in the self treatment of OCD. Relabel, reattribute, refocus, and revalue written by Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz. Has anyone tried this? I know that ERP is the standard but wanted to see if this was effective.

So, I do have OCD. That’s not a question (Pure O mainly. Compulsions are mental and emotional checking and ruminating and comparing). And my OCD was ramping up pretty bad a while back so I started ERP counseling through NOCD. I learned some basic skills and good ways to respond and not engage to thoughts. But now, I think the therapy just brings things up that didn’t need to be that big. It makes minor things bigger. It brings overwhelm thinking I have all this “work” to do, when I think what I need is to let go. Of course with OCD letting go is not a simple task, but hear me out. I didn’t do therapy for over a month and started feeling better. I used some of the tools I learned a few times and things just seemed more minor and less serious. I’m now postpartum with anxiety panic and ocd so I upped my therapy and I truly think it’s making things worse. Does anyone else share this opinion or experience? I also think back to when OCD was darn near nonexistent and I was not in ERP therapy. I know things come and go but I’m just realizing this.