After months upon months of suffering, confusion and deep distress, I can finally say that I am coming to the end of my battle. I avoided ERP for a long while in the fears that it would prove my my obsessions to be true and that I would come out worse off than I was prior. Accepting that I was only going to end the suffering by facing the fear was the first step to recovery. I did in fact feel worse before I felt better. I had to face things that I had spent so much time avoiding. Once you open your eyes to your fears and force yourself to confront them in the most aggressive way you probably ever have up until that point, you finally can loosen your grip and set yourself free. I felt so comfortable with my compulsions that I had practically adapted to them. It was a reflex to my anxiety by the time I entered ERP. To resist that reflex felt like standing rigid with your eyes open when there’s an object flying towards your face - in other words, it felt impossible (at first at least!). There’s various hurdles that you get over. The first one being the biggest and most challenging one, but they gradually get smaller and smaller. You start off with something that isn’t going to cause you mass amounts of anxiety, but is still going to elicit an anxiety response - you then work your way up through developmental progression until you reach the metaphorical ‘boss level’ - you’ve built up a tool kit and the fear response swiftly gets smaller and smaller and smaller. I strongly encourage all of you to access an ERP therapist and start your ERP journey now. Surviving is not living. Living (you’ll soon find out) is not surviving.

Thank you!!! I wish you well with your recovery too

Yeah, well for me it pretty much did. Before the theme came in, I didn’t question my sexuality at all and only ever had crushes on guys. I sort of returned to that state. I don’t want you to use this as reassurance though, because that’s also a compulsion. I’m not at the end yet, I’m still getting a lot of intrusive thoughts, but I’m considerably ahead from where I was. My only advice for you is to just go for it!

Yes, that’s completely normal with OCD. I just stopped myself as I felt the thoughts come in that acted to mediate and decrease my anxiety - I scrapped those and let the anxiety heighten, and then let it decrease naturally. It’s not easy stuff but you will get there!

Yes, probably within about 3 sessions for me - but that is completely unique to me! Like you say, it’s different for everyone. And I’ll reiterate that I’m not completely out of the mess yet. But, that was definitely when I started to find peace within myself!

@Ellie Ah I see. I’m on session 4 and it’s so hard to gauge sometimes I’m I feeling relief or not. I’m trying to just resist compulsions and reassurance (my worst one!). It’s so difficult to just let these thoughts pass. I worry I’m not making progress.

What do you mean by reflexive compulsions? I feel like I may not be fully resisting my mental reassurance compulsion bc I don’t desalt know how to, besides just saying “yeah maybe that’s true”.

@Anonymous Yes, I completely understand this and I struggled with it in the early days. It’s hard for me to describe it in terms that will translate to someone else as I’m speaking on behalf of myself. So, you’re exposing yourself to one of your exposures... you’re taking on the content of the exposure as though it is real - are you detaching in any way as a means to decrease the anxiety, I felt myself doing that and that prevented me from moving forward and I noticed that my anxiety did not really change and my OCD persisted because of this detaching compulsion I was doing which I didn’t recognise. Yours could be completely different, have a deep think about if you may be doing something during exposure that’s stunting you. Hope this has helped, sending you my best wishes

@Ellie This makes sense, and I think I’m guilty of it. Thanks so much!