after ERP can you handle your thoughts without ruminating? because I dont think it will ever go away and that makes me sad cuz I cant have this forever cuz it will.kill me

Yes it’s very much possible to live a long very happy life. I started having anxiety/ocd since I was 17 and now 40 years old. I’ve been through many themes of ocd and if you would of asked the the 17 18 year old me I would of said never but now it’s very much possible to full recovery 😊

I have my bad days still, I’ve come to accept that I will be with this forever but it is no where near how it used to be when I was younger, but acceptance is a huge part in recovery and knowing that I may have some bad days but I know it’s temporary

Yes. I do ERP only in the sense of simply living my life and not doing compulsions on a daily basis, rather than doing exposure hierarchies. I get both fresh thoughts and urges to check on old themes, and because I can recognise what my brain is doing, I can redirect it. Some tasks are still hard, like getting schoolwork done (I have a cheating/plagiarism theme) and take a longer time/have to be done differently (in short bursts), but I'm better at being able to have thoughts without ruminating. It just takes practice. It's probably always going to feel a bit like I'm doing something negligent by not ruminating. But I ignore that feeling too. And my brain moves on. It'll get better.

I find myself still ruminating but my thoughts are not as powerful as they used to be, this year has been a pretty tough year for my anxiety and ocd but I’ve been through 100 times worst and you will get through this (;