I’m trying to do my ERP stuff by affirming that my intrusive thoughts are true or whatever but i’m worried that i’ll start thinking that they are true. i know that this anxiety is part of it but it’s so hard.

That’s totally normal you just have to sit with the anxiety and overtime you’ll become less anxious over the thoughts. I’m still recovering as well but I have made some improvement since I started.

I just say maybe, maybe not it works better for me

Yeah definitely I was like that when I started recovery work five months ago. But now that I’m more relaxed when feeling/thinking the thoughts I start to make up scenarios why they’re true. My therapist overtime told me to Do it as I got used to it

ERP is crazy hard. But affirming the OCD thought is true is a compulsion. Doing any type of compulsion during or after an exposure will render it ineffective. Just sit with your anxiety and let your anxiety do its thing. It will spike, peak, and then decline. You may have to do the exposure more than once. I usually have to do mine 3 or 4 times in a row before my anxiety gets down low enough.

@sophiesim22 That’s what I’ve been told, but of course you do this in a Sarcastic way. It shows the thoughts you don’t fear them.

A good way to respond to the thoughts no matter what they are, is to say things like - “ I choose not to figure that out” or “ I’m not going to answer that” that’s what my therapist has told me. It works because you end up not doing the compulsions It doesn’t matter if the ocd makes you think you have worked it all out or found prooof if you’re fears, keep using responses like this and not doing the compulsions is the way forward

Super helpful advice