I found an article that is very helpful. It is called "The Anatomy of ERP for OCD." It is on a blog called *Reclaim Your Life.* The person who runs it has OCD and is a therapist. She discusses what proactive and reactive ERP are. One thing that she mentions that really resonated with me is this part: "Acting joyful, like all OCD content is irrelevant. This is the essence of good ERP. And because if I don't, I'll be doing the subtle compulsion of acting depressed, like all this is true, and sabotaging everything I just did." This part makes me emotional..

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 !!!!!!

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.

Just stumbled across this app/community. I've been struggling with just right or perfectionist OCD for several years. Im 47 and I've had a pretty successful life, ironically because of some of my OCD traits; attention to detail, organization, perseverance, etc. But about 4-5 years ago, without any specific trigger, I started noticing more... let's call them errors. Errors in just about everything. These errors led to compulsive behaviors to "fix" them. Place the can down again, "right" this time. That piece of trash didn't land "right" in my trash bin, take it out and do it again. But really it started happening because of me physically touching or manipulating things, or really anything that involved fine motor control. Picking things up/placing down, turning switches, knobs on/off, opening/closing doors, cupboards, cabinets, using a mouse, putting on and taking off clothes, brushing teeth/hair, drying my body after a shower, pressing buttons on my phone, buttons on my shirt, pants zippers, etc. I mean, you name it. I've never had the type of classical OCD where I obsessively washed bc I was worried about germs or intrusive thoughts about my family dying. I had anxiety about the compulsing itself, or specifically avoiding certain actions so I wouldn't start compulsing. So I was kind of lost for awhile. Then I'll never forget reading this article about just right OCD and getting tears in my eyes. It was a point of some validation that others had similar symptom clusters or patterns. Not that I'd wish these compulsions on anyone! I've started seeing a therapist and taking an SSRI. Don't really like the therapist and I don't really feel like the medication works. Plus I don't like the side effects. Night sweats and sexual side effects. But, I have had some moderate success with different types of mental tricks. Essentially some self taught ERP. Little mantras I use like "not down, but forward" as in stop slowing down and laser focusing on every step, every detail and move forward, physically and mentally. Remembering that compulsions come with the idea that they provide comfort or a good feeling, when in reality, moving through a chore or task without compulsions or repetitive behavior is f**king amazing. Remember and chase that feeling. Watching the uncomfortable feeling float away or specifically identifing that feeling where my mind wants to stop and restart a motion of or an action and ignoring it to "rewire" my thinking. And distraction. Distraction is a big one too. Those are a couple of things that have worked for me. Im by no means better... I still struggle every day. And it's exhausting. This disease makes me feel so stupid and it's embarrassing and frustrating. But I've had some glimmers of hope lately and i KNOW that i can overcome it. Get back to the ass kicker in life, and with my family, and in the gym, and at work, that i know is inside of me still. Anyway, I think typing some of my journey out has been helpful so thanks for reading.