The hardest thing about ocd treatment is to stop doing the compulsions. I have "pure O" and I do alot of mental compulsions and I've been doing them for a long time and I got used to them. I don't even need to do anything or expose myself to anything to trigger my anxiety. The thought can just pop in my head and I start getting anxious. I know I shouldn't be giving them attention or engaging in them but sometimes I feel it's too hard and I just can't resist. Can anyone give me any helpful advice?

I been dealing with OCD my entire life but recently I been finding it really difficult to find the slightest relief. I know it’s not good to do but I been trying not to think of the thoughts but of course they come back even stronger. Does anyone know what I could do in the meanwhile ? Thank you

I’ve been stuck in this cycle for the last month or two and am not sure how to get out of it. Basically, I will work on ignoring the thoughts and not responding or engaging plus limiting/completely eliminating compulsions. After a week or two of constant work, the amount of intrusive thoughts in a day goes down. The anxiety each thought causes also goes down with some, but not all, thoughts passing without notice like they would for a normal person. The thoughts that do stick cause anxiety and make me want to ruminate or do other compulsions but I make sure to limit them. After a bit, I’m in a pretty good head space. This is usually when it goes down hill. I’ll start to question if I even have ocd because some of the thoughts (once again not all) pass without notice. The difficulty resisting compulsions goes down and so does the anxiety, only increasing the questioning. I spend a while questioning if I’ve ever had ocd in the first place and then something sets me off or the questioning itself becomes a trigger and I get stuck back into the same ocd cycle with constant rumination, anxiety, and other compulsions. This lasts for a week or two before I know I need to stop and try and work hard to get back to ignoring the thoughts. And the cycle just restarts over and over again. Does anyone have any tips to stop this from happening? It’s really harming my recovery as every few weeks I dive back into the same negative place I was.

So I've been working to address my OCD for about a month now. So far, I haven't been working on it with a therapist and have instead been trying to create my own exposure exercises. The primary obsession I'm working on is the fear that I'm somehow flawed or invalid on a fundamental level. The best way I can describe it it is that its similar to the feeling you get when you have germ OCD and you feel contaminated, except my whole existence and being feels contaminated, so to speak. I've identified a list of triggers, and a list of compulsions (pretty much all mental) that I've noticed myself performing. I started out by doing imaginal exposures and scripts where I'd write out triggering fictional scenarios and read them over and over, combined with mindfulness techniques to focus on my breath and bring myself back to the present when I noticed myself performing compulsions mentally. At first it worked to some extent, but eventually I started to feel like the stories I was writing about this obsession weren't triggering any anxiety anymore or a very low level. So I stopped reading them and focused solely on improving my ability to stay present and identifying compulsions as I perform them, and disengaging. Now, I'm at the point where it seems like my general anxiety levels throughout the day are lower, and the triggers I've identified are producing noticeably less anxiety. But that makes me wonder if somehow I'm just secretly doing mental compulsions without knowing it? Is only a month of rather disorganized and unstructured ERP enough to produce this much improvement? To avoid giving me re-assurance, I'd appreciate if you guys don't directly answer those questions, maybe just provide some possibilities or your own experiences so I can get a better idea of where I'm at. Any info would be appreciated. Thanks!