I did my erp today and I felt pretty good about it! Afterwords I was scrolling through social media and a video of a male working out pops up, I don’t feel attracted to their bodies or I’m not like in awe of it. This caused me major anxiety and thoughts of how I think women’s bodies are better than men’s and part of me even agrees that they are more aesthetically pleasing so this is where it’s really attacking me.. then it throws in how I’m more physically and sexually attracted to woman, etc etc. It just tries to come at me with thoughts to get me down again, making me believe I’m actually a lesbian like others who realized they were and harder to believe it’s ocd :/ At least I can work on this fear too and keep trying with erp and stopping my mental compulsions

Thank you so much! It takes a lot of practice, but hopefully I’ll get there.

I definitely gave into my compulsions here, I checked how I was feeling, disprove or prove my thoughts, and argued/tried to figure it out. These are my big compulsions now, not to mention posting on here for me is one and even checking this app to see what others are feeling like is one too. This is my sort of “reassurance” since I stopped googling and looking stuff up on the internet. I’m still working on being better with my mental compulsions, I need to sit with the anxiety instead and not try to ruminate right away.

@Corie yeah same i do a lot of checking . sometimes it takes me a long time until i feel reassurance

@lmaocd🍓🥰 it’s bad but sometimes i will tell myself it’s okay if i do a compulsion because i can always do erp after

@lmaocd🍓🥰 I always have thoughts of “just doing this one time won’t do anything” but then eventually that one time turns into all the time. It’s obviously okay to slip up as we are so used to doing these behaviors. The entire point is trying to unlearn and relearn healthier responses/behaviors to our thoughts and anxiety. I’m still working at it and am not anywhere near where I would like to be and feel like I’m still doing a lot of compulsions but little by little I hope to cut them down.

@lmaocd🍓🥰 It’s just SO hard when the thoughts become more real feeling as we tend to get better, I’ve seen such a shift since I first had this theme. The start of it was more scared and like I still knew who I was and not convinced but still hated the constant thoughts/questioning. Now it’s like statements of “I am this and I know it” and it’s WAY more persistent and convincing. But any theme can be like this and feel as real and convincing as it can get, some just bother us more.

@Corie that’s so true n very wise of u

@Corie YES! mine has morphed from uncertainty to a sense of fearful certainty too

@lmaocd🍓🥰 it’s been 9 months with the theme . what about u?

@lmaocd🍓🥰 It’s going on 3 years, but for 7 months it kind of took a back seat when I started talking to my now boyfriend and then came back.

@Corie ohhh i see. i’m sorry. i hope erp will work for us soon

@Corie But I only just started treatment through end of last June/July. I went through their treatment plan twice and still see me therapist every other week. It’s gotten better, but healing always has its ups and downs. There is no time limit to recovery, everyone is on their own timeline. My biggest mistake was expecting to get better fast and try to put a timeline on it because that’s not how it works!

@Corie yeah i definitely struggle with that too. i don’t want to rush it but i get impatient.