- Date posted
- 4y
- Date posted
- 4y
I always tell myself that the risk of the bad thing happening is worth it if I can overcome my mental illness. For me it was (and still is) compulsions and ruminations around covid 19 and suffering to death on a ventilator. I had to do a lot of work to choose which hard I was going to tackle and in the end I managed to come up with the ERP mantra that if I died because I didnt do a compulsion, it was okay because it was in an effort to stabilize my mental health. I really got to a point where I had to decide that the life I was living in fear, was not a life at all and that compulsions were fuelling all the horrible things in my life.
- Date posted
- 4y
The kind of ironic thing about erp is that it is meant to teach us how to not use coping mechanisms .... in a way, the response prevention part of an exposure IS the new coping mechanism we are trying to adopt, if that makes sense. The more we try to make erp more comfortable, the further we get away from the whole point of it in the first place. That aside, my therapist always suggests reducing the external stressors in our daily life that make us more vulnerable to the ocd. If we are well rested, well fed, watered, etc. We are more likely to feel confident enough to do erp in the first place which makes a world of difference in feeling like we can handle it
- Date posted
- 4y
That makes sense. My difficulty is insomnia due to the intrusive thoughts so being well rested is a challenge. There's no way around...we must go directly through the fear, to get to the other side.
- Date posted
- 4y
@Anonymous True, I get that. I think then just focusing in on the stressors that you are able to reduce in some way... less caffeine and alcohol for example, or maybe drinking water and getting outside, having a routine, it may help a little! I think you're right though, we gotta go through, take that risk, and trust in the process. Good luck to you!
- Date posted
- 4y
I do a breathing meditation before and after
Related posts
- User type
- Therapist
- Date posted
- 25w
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is one of the hardest but most effective treatments for OCD. If you’ve started ERP, what has been the biggest challenge in resisting compulsions?
- User type
- Therapist
- Date posted
- 23w
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) isn't always easy, but as one of the most effective treatments for OCD, it's worth it. If you've started ERP, what has been the biggest surprise you've experienced in learning to resist compulsions? If you haven't started ERP yet, what is holding you back from starting?
- Date posted
- 16w
I had just posted a summary of ERP for a group member, and I thought it might be useful for everybody. Here it is below (with a little extra added)…. ERP therapy is researched-based. Most other therapies don’t work. There have been people who have been literally stuck in their houses (from their OCD) who gained their lives back through ERP therapy. NOCD does ERP therapy exclusively. You can find it in other places too, but you have to ask around. There are two tenants of ERP therapy: The first one has to do with the repetitive thoughts inside our heads. These thoughts are actually defined as “obsessions”. You are not supposed to do anything with the obsessions. You are supposed to let them run through your head freely, without trying to fix them or stop them. Imagine a tree planted by a river. The leaves fall off and float down the river. You can see the leaves falling, but you don’t try to stop them or pick them up. You don’t try to fix them. You just let them float away. This is really important to do with your obsessive thoughts. The more you try to fight them off, the worse they get. I used to have blasphemous sentences running in my head 24/7. I felt like I had to put a “not” next to each sentence in order to “fix” it. But this just took hours of my time every day, and it was very scary, because I was worried that if I messed up, that I would go to hell. It was very freeing to learn later that I could just let those sentences run freely through my head without trying to fix them. The second part of ERP therapy is all about “denying your compulsions.” Every time OCD tells you that if you don’t do things a certain way that something really bad will happen, that is a compulsion. Once you recognize what your compulsions are, ERP therapy will have you practice stopping doing all of those things. For some people, that will mean stopping washing their hands or touching lights switches or, in my case, putting “fixing” words in their head. Compulsions are safety behaviors. During ERP therapy, you will practice stopping engaging with safety behaviors. All this is very hard to do and scary, so during therapy you will be given tools to help you deal with the fear. Often ERP therapy will take people from being non-functional to functional. I highly recommend it. ————————————————- PITFALL #1: After you have been doing ERP for a while and become somewhat successful, the OCD will try subtle little tricks to bring you down again. The first one is to tell you that your thoughts are REAL and not OCD, and therefore you can’t apply ERP therapy. Don’t fall for this trick! All thoughts are just thoughts. They are all meaningless. Don’t try to figure out what is real and what is OCD. Just treat all thoughts with ERP therapy. PITFALL #2: The second pitfall is that OCD will tell you that you can’t move forward unless you have absolute certainty that you will be safe. Hate to tell you this, folks, but there is no certainty in life. You will never know for SURE that you or your loved ones will be “safe” from the OCD rules. Therefore, you have to move forward in the uncertainty. It’s hard, but it gets easier with time and practice. We got this, guys !!!!!!
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