I read this in a NOCD article emailed to me a few days ago about reassurance and I liked this quote: “Recovery from OCD requires habituation to the distress caused by uncertainty. And habituation cannot occur when reassurance keeps the person from getting exposure to uncertainty.”

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 !!!!!!

I’ve heard it’s not good to seek reassurance or give it because it lowers your tolerance to uncertainty. But how do I avoid seeking reassurance when my thoughts and doubts are so bad, I genuinely just don’t know anymore if I’m a bad person or if it’s just OCD? I know I’m supposed to sit with the uncertainty, but how can I do that when the uncertainty has me unable to trust my own brain? Especially when the OCD is real event and POCD? How can I not seek reassurance when I feel so alone and so abnormal and just don’t wanna feel that way anymore? In turn, I see so many people on here struggling so bad and my heart breaks for them. How can I give advice to towers without giving them reassurance and hurting them in the long run?

I see a lot of posts and comments here along the lines of... "the thoughts/urges aren't you -- they're just OCD." Though this is often true and comforting, isn't this just a form of reassurance? The way to beat OCD is by accepting that the distressing thoughts MAY be true/real, a.k.a. "from you" or "not just OCD." By brushing distressing things off as "just OCD," you excuse the thoughts and therefore feel reassured. Obviously it is good to be aware of what OCD does to you and know when you're experiencing a spiral, but crediting all distressing thoughts to OCD is a way of finding certainty about them. What do you guys think of this? Am I right or wrong? This is just the way I think about it, but I see the "this is just OCD" thing so much on here and I often wonder if that is a form of reassurance.