ERP Reflections on this #WellnessWednesday

[alexandraisobsessed]

Wellness Wednesday on Thursday

Hello hello!

I hope you're doing well today and have had a lovely week so far.

Yesterday, I decided to do my longest and most difficult contamination exposure to date and I am TIRED. I also have feelings about it! So, I thought this would be a great opportunity to share it with you all.

I have been avoiding the doctor since the beginning of the pandemic. ALL of the doctors. It's partially due to contamination OCD, but also my Health Anxiety which can be crippling. To be a little vulnerable here, I used to use alcohol as a way to numb out my intrusive thoughts and deal with my CPTSD symptoms and I was scared my labs reflect damage. Thankfully, I have been sober for years now and can say I am much much better for it.

So, yesterday I decided to truly challenge myself and do a difficult exposure. I went to my Primary Care for my annual wellness visit, my optometrist, and the grocery store. I was scared, dreading it, and lost a lot of sleep in anticipation of how difficult it would be.

I did it! It was hard, but, unlike in the past, I remained present! I didn't dissociate and I was able to handle my moments of extreme distress or anxiety without feeling completely overloaded or out of control. The grocery store was the most difficult exposure by far and it's one I think I need to repeat several times a month to truly overcome, but I'm so glad I did it.

My reflections on all of this:

I can do hard things without relying on my safety behaviors.

I can learn to increase my distress tolerance and not dissociate. I can't control when I do, but I can make it less likely to happen.

ERP is hard but very empowering and it's the way to gain freedom.

I can trust myself to handle difficult and scary situations. I don't need to avoid them.

This has been an 8-9 year journey for me, but I feel that I'm finally getting better and seeing the results of my hard work. My biggest takeaway from all of this is that, as OCD sufferers, we are some resilient badasses and that is a huge strength. We struggle, some of us for long periods of time, but we have the power to take back our lives and create something beautiful and fulfilling alongside OCD.

As always, please let me know your thoughts in the comments. I love hearing from you.

Alex

[Huffling]

Hi Alex, wow, first of all i'm sending you a huge well done, that's a massive achievement! You are the first person I know who also suffers with contamination ocd like I do so I know how mammoth that exposure was to you. In just starting ERP therapy and don't know where to start or what to tell myself whilst doing an exposure, any tips? My worst trigger is getting back home and cleaning myself and my home down after being outside but with two kids in tow in finding it stressful getting out so I don't leave the house and my partner takes the kids but then the daily clean down I do when they get home is exhausting and it all started during the pandemic. Any tips there too, what do you clean or not clean? My baseline of what I should do cleaning wise since the pandemic has gone all squiffy so I know I need to learn to reset instead of panic. X

[MothFir]

Way to go! I think the sense of empowerment is one of the best things about ERP. After a lifetime of automatically doing whatever the "intrusive thoughts" tell us to, it's freeing to know that there is always another option.