Interested in your experience: How do you guys recognise that ocd tries to trick you into a compulsion that could trigger you into spiralling/relapsing? I sometimes find it difficult to recognize in the moment but for me its usually when I get a sudden urge/idea to review/read/watch something related to my theme. my theme is sexual orientation OCD, so usually it's when I see a video or book/article about that theme that I suddenly feel I have to watch it right now to make sure that I don't relate or feel triggered by it to make sure it doesn't bother me. Then when I do it often it does trigger me hard and I feel scared and upset with myself. I feel the difference between a compulsion and using it for ERP is to not watch it while I feel that urge and need to know right now but wait until it passes and then maybe watching it later with a more mindful attitude about what I am doing... would you agree? I am curious how you experience that and where you draw the line between a trigger, a compulsion and exposure? It's so difficult to differentiate, especially when you deal with mostly mental compulsions...

Hey there :) so I struggle with pure O and I definitely do experience what you do. I'm so used to giving into my compulsions that when I'm triggered the response becomes automatic until I realize that what I am doing is submitting to my ocd. It is quite difficult to differentiate between the three because one leads the other on. So for me a trigger is something (physical or mental) that causes me to get the urge to want to do a compulsions in relation to that trigger. A compulsion is what I do to satisfy the urge, remove the present perceived danger, and make me feel safe again. An exposure is when consciously expose myself to a trigger for the sake of recognizing that it is driving me to do a compulsion and closing to feel my urges but to not engage them. I get triggered all the time, little triggers and big triggers that are harder to resist. The little triggers feel natural because I've been living with this disorder for so long responding to them just feels like my organic built in reaction even though thats not really true. It take practice to recognize every trigger and every compulsion, you gonna miss step sometimes. But once you recognize them, they can become an exposure and you can start to remedy it

Thanks for your interesting input. I definitely relate to the automatic compulsive response to little triggers or thoughts like "no, don't worry, thats not true" or "it's not like that".. it's hard to stop them completely but once I recognise what I am doing I try to refocus and change my response to something like "maybe it's true, maybe not" or "I am not sure about this but I don't have to figure this out right now". But its extra tricky when I get a sudden urge to watch/read something triggering related to my theme and my mind tries to push me to do it right now as an exposure otherwise I would be avoiding. This is a very sneaky trap because I either will get relief when the trigger doesn't bother me or it will hit me so hard that I'll panic that I am relapsing. I think I can use these triggers as an exposure but in the moment of the urge it is better to wait until it passes, after all it should be me who decides what and when I am doing them and not ocd 😏

Yeah definitely. You're the head, not the tail. What I've been telling myself thats been really helping me when I'm triggered and am in public or at work and I can't do my compulsions,is reminding myself that the trigger and the fear only exists in my head and not in the external world, so I can use my head to remind myself that what I fear isn't real and can't really hurt me. For example, I fear that looking at someone, I will absorb their negative traits. When someone triggers me, I have to remind myself that the concept of absorbing someone's traits is only real in my head and that I the physical world, thats not actually happening. So that's an exposure I use when I expose myself to what I fera the most