How can I deal with this? So I think my pocd is starting to come at me from a new angle. A really scary one. I can’t be around my sister. Every time I’m around her I get uncomfortable and can’t look at her because my brain tells me to look at her butt and stuff like that. Well tonight I was letting the dog out and I put my phone on my couch to let the dogs out. Afterwards I picked my phone back up but I realized my sister was sitting there watching tv. Now I’m thinking what if I tried to do something to her and she just didn’t notice. I thought this as soon as I was walking away, and I repeatedly said to myself I picked up my phone I picked up my phone that’s it. How can I do ERP to fight this? Should I turn myself in?

ERP is exposure response prevention. Now I was to make it clear I’m on a therapist but for example your exposure would be the thought you touched her and your brain is probably telling you that you did (side note, that’s the ocd monster who tries to make you believe the opposite of how you truly feel) so your response was to tell yourself over and over that you just picked up your phone, but here is the hardest part, the prevention. That means you want to prevent yourself from that compulsion of telling yourself your okay and that you were just getting your phone. Because when you feed into your compulsion it’s like your feeding the ocd monster and when you feed something you’re giving it nurishment which makes it stronger. What you want to do is not give in and starve that ocd monster (aka not give into your compulsion). At first it is going to seem like the hardest and I can only speak from experience, but for me it was literally the only thing on my mind, my anxiety went through the roof and my chest would feel tight and sometimes even had chest pains. But strangely enough, when you don’t give in to your compulsion and you ride out the anxiety and intrusive thoughts and try to occupy your mind by doing something else that you enjoy doing. It will take time and truthfully it isn’t easy but if you stick with it those thoughts will becoming meaningless.

Ironically I got on here to occupy myself because I am currently trying to not give in to a compulsion and let me tell you my mind is whirling with intrusive thoughts. But I am sitting with the uncomfortableness and uncertainty. It’s hard as hell and my heart is racing and I don’t want to touch anything because I don’t want to “contaminate” anything else. But I read somewhere that with contamination ocd you should rub the “germs” all over yourself and all over everything you touch on a regular basis.