I realized something tonight while doing an erp exercise that I wanted to share in case anyone else resonates with it. This might be geared more towards pure ocd but as I was doing my may/may not statements for my erp exercise I started thinking about what is really causing the spike in discomfort. I think for a lot of people, including me, the fear of the statement being true is definitely a huge contributor. However, I began to realize that my guilt for PURPOSEFULLY thinking and saying the thoughts to turn them into may/may not statements produced an equivalent amount of discomfort. I suppose my thought process is that if it is an intrusive thought in the moment, then that is bad and I worry that it might mean it’s true. However, purposely thinking about this bad thing really seems to be a trigger in itself. I already feel like a terrible person when I get an intrusive thought but when I purposely bring the thought back for erp I become full of doubt that it could possibly be the right thing to do. This is especially true for me when the statement is very specific and about a person I know and/or care about. This causes me to get stuck on thoughts such as “how can it possibly be ok to think something so horrible about someone?” and “why would I want to habituate myself to something so horrifying ?”. I suppose I put this up here because I believe (this is just my opinion) that it’s important to understand your personal erp process in order to improve upon it and because (again in my opinion) gaining as much knowledge about your ocd treatment (what is working and what isn’t) is a huge step towards success. Finally, sometimes sharing this kind of information might spark a conversation and even a possible solution to the problem. 🙂🤷🏼‍♀️

I read about ERP and have seen information about it on here. One of the goals is to say, "maybe I am this or that...ect." That terrified me. The thoughts and images that go in my head are disturbing and upsetting. I don't want to even think about saying, "maybe this or that." It's devasting to have these thoughts and question why you're having these thoughts. Doesn't the "maybe" make it worse? The one thing that helps me is that is to remind myself that these are just thoughts and I know I'm not a monster, even if I feel like one. Is ERP not for everyone? Has anyone else had a problem with the techniques used in this kind of therapy? I had cognitive therapy for years with an OCD specialist and that seemed to help a lot. Writing out the worst case scenarios would make me suicidal. Im having a difficult time not obsessing over the "maybe" after intrusive thoughts now. It doesn't make it better.

Just noticed something that helped me today. I was having the realization a lot of my issues stem from me not taking responsibility for my own life, and also not recognizing my own self-limiting beliefs (SLBs) and automatic negative thoughts (ANTs.) In doing this, I learned that the only way forward is confronting my deepest darkest fears head on and associated irrational/self limiting beliefs- and that for years and years, I have simply retreated and run away. One of my deepest darkest fears (one of my obsessions) is rooted in the understandable fear of the worst of humanity, and the 'what if' I was that (like many of us.) I actually can have compassion for myself because it is perfectly okay to be scared of the worst of people, and if something like that is perpetuated throughout pop culture-media- it would make sense to have associated thoughts about it. The fear is that I am a serial killer or have motives of one. And the OCD has caused me to constantly question my motives and actions to no end (how OCD latches on- makes you look for evidence where there is none.) For the longest time, I have been convinced I am one, and need to hide myself from the world, avoid people more than just because of social anxiety, what my main anxiety was back then. I look for signs everywhere- and the OCD latches on to any perceived (not real) evidence that I am one, that people think I am one. When I decided to confront this fear rather than run away like I have for years, it made me realize it is just a fear- it has nothing to do about who I am as a person, despite how strong the OCD tries to convince you otherwise. It is so sad how strong OCD can be, to make so many of us good intending people be convinced that they are something horrible. Anyway, I hope this can help people realize the best way forward is to confront it head on. It's akin to shining a light on the monster and seeing it for what it is - a goofy thing with fake prosthetics for a movie that isn't a monster after all- a sheep in wolfs clothing. It's just you have been running from it so long, your imagination has gotten so detailed about how horrible it is, hearing its fake growls, instead of turning around and blasting it with a spotlight. This is I guess what ERP is about. For me, one of the struggles with ERP and a specific exposure is that the OCD will jump to a different obsession , which then tells me ERP is a waste because Im not confronting the 'most recent' fear. This is faulty thinking though- because the solution is to confront the fear, not the specific thought. By doing that, you learn to not run away and do all the compulsions in your mind. Tl;dr- long winded post about me realizing how I have actually been avoiding the solutions (ERP) and making up reasons to not confront my fears this whole time. I have been running instead of shining a light on the sheep in wolfs clothing.

I write a long summary of ERP therapy recently. I'm going to copy and paste it here if anyone wants to read it. Love to you all 💙💙💕💕🩵🩵 If you put ERP in a nutshell, there's a couple main tenants that are REALLY important to understand. Here they are... 1.) You have to treat the thoughts as though they don't mean anything (because, in real life, they actually don't mean anything!) 2.). You have to deny yourself any safety behaviors that you do because of the thoughts (because these are all compulsions) 3.). When you deny the safety behaviors (i.e., the compulsions), it will cause your brain and even your body to go into anxiety mode. (In other words, your brain freaks out because you feel like you did something that was NOT SAFE.) 4.). But you have to "ride out" the anxiety feelings until they subside on their own. The more you practice doing this, the easier it gets. The anxiety spikes will get smaller and smaller. Eventually, you will be able to prevent yourself from doing compulsions without feeling anxiety. ----------------------//////-------///////------- Okay, so let's talk about each of these things, one at at time. ERP can be done on your own, but it's easier with someone else's help. First things first, a therapist will sit down with you and make you write a list of all the things you are scared to do, from the least scary to the most scary. And then you will go out and practice doing those things, starting with the easiest things. Okay, let's start with #1. You have to treat the thoughts as though they don't mean anything. There's a few things that are important to understand here. Remember that I said that you have to TREAT the thoughts as though they don't mean anything. I said this because you are always going to have doubts and fears. You are always, at some level, going to half-way believe that that your thoughts actually have meaning. But that's okay! You don't have to believe this fully. You only have to ACT as though they don't mean anything. OCD is called the "doubting disease" for a reason. For every decision you make, you will always have doubts. And that's why recovery from OCD means that you have to learn how to "take the leap" and go forward EVEN THOUGH the doubts are still there. I can assure you that the thoughts don't mean anything. And you can mostly believe it. But even if you don't believe it fully, you have to make the decision that you are going to ACT as though they don't mean anything. In order to recover from OCD, everyone has to change their relationship with their thoughts. Everyone starts out afraid of their thoughts. They believe that their thoughts are DANGEROUS and that there is some connection with their thoughts to the outside world. This is the big trap of OCD. But we all have to learn that the thoughts mean nothing. However, we also have to learn that WE CANT STOP the thoughts. And we should not try. We have to stop fighting off the thoughts. We have to learn to ALLOW the thoughts while at the same time doing nothing about them. I'm going to copy and paste something that I wrote previously: -------////////--------------////////-----------//// The key is to STOP fighting off the thoughts. You need to just accept that they are in your head, and that they are MEANINGLESS—and it doesn’t matter if they are there or not. This is very important for OCD recovery. ERP therapy trains us to never fight the thoughts. If you try to fight them off, they’re just going to get worse. My therapist explained it like this: Imagine a tree planted by river. The leaves from the tree fall off and float down the river. You watch the leaves fall, but you don’t try to stop them. You just let them float down the river. This is the same with ALL intrusive thoughts. It doesn’t matter if these are bad thoughts about God, violence, sex, attractions, etc. All intrusive thoughts are the SAME. You just let them fall off the tree and float down the river. Here’s another analogy: Imagine a swarm of angry bees around someone’s head. The bees can’t really bite or sting, but they are very annoying as they swarm around the person’s head. They’re not really harmful to the person, but they are disturbing just because they are there. This is the same thing as the intrusive thoughts. They can’t really harm anything, and they don’t have any real power. But they are distracting and disturbing because they are there. If you take a stick and try to fight them off, they’re just going to swarm around even worse and get even stronger. It doesn’t work to try to fight them off with a stick. They will always keep swarming. In the same way, we can’t fight off the intrusive thoughts. It’s impossible. Besides, the thoughts are meaningless, and they can’t hurt us anyway. So don’t try to fight them off. Here’s one more analogy: Imagine your little brother is always saying mean things to you. Sometimes he shout means things; sometimes he whispers mean things; sometimes he shows you ugly pictures that he has drawn. He’s always trying to tease you and always trying to get you upset, and he’s always saying horrible things to you. If you shout at him to stop doing it, he’s just going to do it more. You have to accept that you can’t stop what he says. But if you ignore him and don’t give him any response and don’t get upset , he will eventually get bored and stop trying so hard. It’s the same with the intrusive thoughts. You can’t stop them. But if you get upset every time they come into your head, you are giving them power. You OCD (like a little brother) is going to feed you more of the things that “rile you up.” But if you don’t get upset and don’t care if these things are coming into your brain, then you can go about your life as normal. In this way, you are showing that these thoughts really have no power over you. Your OCD will try to trick you into giving “meaning” to the thoughts by saying maybe you will like them or maybe you will accept them, blah, blah, blah, blah blah blah. Don’t listen to the OCD. Practice strict ERP no matter how you feel and no matter how the OCD tries to tell you the danger you’re in if you start ignoring the thoughts. The truth is the thoughts don’t mean anything, so you can ignore them. You can’t make them go away (like the bees), but you can give them no power by acknowledging that they are meaningless. -----///////--------///////---------//////-------///- Okay, let's talk about #2. You have to deny the compulsions. When you boil them down, all compulsions are SAFETY BEHAVIORS. They are designed to negate the thoughts and keep you safe. It's important to remember that AVOIDANCE can be a safety behavior. For example, if you avoid saying certain words because you don't know the intentions behind it, then you are actually doing a compulsion. In ERP therapy, you have to practice denying the compulsions. However, you don't do this all at once. That is way too scary, and no one can handle that. Instead, you start with the very easiest compulsions. It's also important to know that many compulsions can be inside our heads. In my case, I had all these terrible sentences in my head toward God. And I thought I had to put a "not" next to every sentence in my head in order to "negate" the sentence. And I was exhausting myself trying to remember every sentence and make sure I put a "not" next to them in my head. I was doing these compulsions all day, every day, hundreds of times a day. I remember the day that I first stopped doing this compulsion. I stopped fighting the sentences in my head, and just let them "run" freely. It was a huge step for me. Now, I am no longer a slave to these sentences at all. Remember to not get discouraged if the treatment takes longer than you expect. The OCD journey tends to take a long time, with baby steps, and lots of circling back and starting over, lol. Just remember that this is part of the process. -------///////--------////////--------///////-----// Okay, let's talk about #3: The Anxiety Episodes When you deny compulsions, it feels unsafe. It feels like you are going to die or that someone you love is going to die. It feels like the consequences are huge, like the end of the world or some terrible disaster. Let me give you an example. When I feel like I did something "unsafe," I can usually pass over it and realize that I am okay. I have had years of practice doing this. But every once in a while, when I deny a compulsion, it feels so UNSAFE that I spiral into an anxiety pit. It can take hours, days, or weeks before I feel better. What you have to understand is that this is a NORMAL part of the recovery process. It seems strange to say this, because the episodes feel so awful. But in order to defeat OCD, we actually have to practice putting ourselves though the terrible anxiety that always accompanies "breaking the OCD rules." ---------///////---------//////-------------///--- And lastly, let's talk about #4: You have to "ride out" the anxiety episodes. There's no way to defeat OCD without pain. It takes a lot of work. But if you put the work in, you can get to the other side and start living the life you have wanted to live! So, it's important to understand this going in to journey. It's going to take a lot of work. It's going to take "pain" in the sense that you are going to make yourself experience these awful anxiety episodes. However, this is the only way to recover. But you have to take it slowly. Start with the simple things. And then take baby steps. If you don't, you will be overwhelmed and it won't work. Let's put this into an example. Let's say Jake has OCD, and he is afraid of crossing bridges. First, the therapist will ask him to just THINK about a bridge. If that causes anxiety, then Jake can practice thinking about bridges and then accept the anxiety that comes. The next session, the therapist might ask Jake to sit next to a bridge. This might cause even more anxiety. Jake has to practice sitting next to the bridge and "riding out" the anxiety that comes. The next time the therapist might ask Jake to put one foot on the bridge--and so on. The point is that at each step, Jake is successful at the required task, and he allows himself to experience the waves of anxiety that come. Yes, anxiety is like a wave. It has a peak, and then it slides downward after that. No one can stay in full anxiety mode forever. So we have to train ourselves to allow the anxiety to run its course. Eventually, it will get better. And the more we practice, the anxiety peaks will get smaller and smaller. And eventually, we won't have anxiety at all when we deny our compulsions. Okay, feel free to write back and talk to me about what you think. :):) I aways enjoy talking to people on this app.