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Uncertain about how to be uncertain & recovery is becoming confusing


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Unfortunately, this thread has now become a platform for rumination, seeking-certainty, engagement with the obsession etc.  The same content has been repeated over and over again, as have the explanations.  It's becoming counter-productive.

The important thing now is that you now work on your current obsession, which as has been pointed out, is about therapy itself.

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1 minute ago, Caramoole said:

The important thing now is that you now work on your current obsession, which as has been pointed out, is about therapy itself.

How do I work on that? By not doing the therapy?

Edited by saddaniels
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1 minute ago, saddaniels said:

When you tell someone with OCD that ERP is the gold standard to getting better from their illness, they're going to hold on to that. 

CBT rather than ERP is the Gold Standard.

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I am holding onto it for dear life.

That's a decision you must make having considered the range of opinions that have been offered

3 minutes ago, saddaniels said:

How do I work on that? By not doing the therapy?

This has already been explained in considerable detail.  Forget the perfection issues regarding TV settings, grammar etc (these single issues are only part of the problem) for now and try to get your head around the fact that your main issue is about conducting therapy "perfectly"  You have to first recognise the obsession and then sit with the anxiety of not having the certainty your OCD is demanding......but as I've said, it's all been said, been explained and this thread is now supporting and perpetuating the problem :(

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9 hours ago, snowbear said:

Accept that no response to the thoughts, no action at all, is the correct response and it is all you have to do - nothing more.

My therapists didn't want this. They actually had me respond to the thoughts by doing an exposure where something was actually off & then habituate to it. What you say sounds like the right way to do it, but it's not what my therapists taught me to do.

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My therapists didn't want this. They actually had me respond to the thoughts by doing an exposure where something was actually off & then habituate to it. What you say sounds like the right way to do it, but it's not what my therapists taught me to do

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So basically, my therapists were enabling the OCD.

Who knows, maybe.  Therapists still make mistakes treating OCD by using traditional Anxiety/Phobia methods which need subtle differences/changes/tweeks for OCD.

You're clearly a bright guy.....look at the information & opinions that have been offered.  Weigh up the information and make the most sensible/useful/viable bits to improve your situation.  You are able to do this without a therapist.

What isn't going to help you is to keep re-ittering opinions, going over it, looking for the perfect solution....your OCD will always find another "Yes but......?????" question.

Time to draw a line, use an amalgum of information and apply it.  This current debate is harmful to your progress,  The perfect answer will not satisfy your craving.  Time for a change of approach :)

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It feels way too risky to not do therapy the way the medical professionals suggested. I guess I can start trying to do it the way I think is best. However, OCD quickly throws the thought that I'm in denial for not attempting to do my therapy the right way.

My problem with exposures alone is that it can sometimes interfere with what makes us human. Because really, who knows where to draw the line on exposures when all of us have different values, interests, etc.? I think the best thing to do is to not give so much meaning to your thoughts & go on with your day. I guess this would fall under CBT & ACT. And I'll be honest, I am mad at myself for ever taking part in exposure therapy. It may work for some people, but it's too over my head.

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  • 2 weeks later...

This is still eating away at me. I can't seem to shake the ruminations. The thoughts around doing therapy right mean too much to me. The more I tell myself they mean nothing, the harder OCD grasps. I'm afraid this will never stop. I want to go back to just letting things be & when I get an intrusive thought, to resist that compulsions.

Now, I'm stuck in exposure land trying to figure out if i'm supposed to be habituating to thoughts or actions. I can watch my TV without perfect settings. I've accomplished that.  However, how far am I supposed to go with non-perfect settings until they become ridiculous to habituate to? My OCD right now is telling me that I must get comfortable with the act of of only having 70% or 80% of my TV screen showing. I could get comfortable with 90& showing, but not 70% or 80%, that is too much to me. However, the uncertainty of whether or not someone could watch television this way without a problem is eating me up.

If I get an intrusive thought that my settings aren't perfect and engage in that thought, I can see habituating to the action/thought of setting my TV off so things aren't 100% perfect. However, if I get an intrusive thought that only 70% or 80% of my TV screen is showing, am I supposed to only habituate to this thought or am I supposed to be comfortable in the real world (differentiating from exposure world) that my TV is actually only displaying 70% or 80% of the picture.

When do you stop habituating from an act & just let it turn into a thought that you get comfortable with?

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As usual, you are going way, way too far. So if you habituate to 70% of your screen showing, what's next? What if OCD tells you that you need to get used to 50%? Or 40%? Or 25%? How far are you going to go with this?

TVs are supposed to be watched with 100% of the screen showing. Set it at that and leave it. That's it. It's over and done with. Nothing else to do. No exposures necessary or required. End of statement.

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I agree, but my OCD doesn't. I'm still spending time ruminating over what exposures mean & if I'm supposed to actually be habituating to exposure acts outside of exposure time. Like in the past, when I was asked to put my settings off/wrong for exposures, was I supposed to be habituating to the thought or act of that exposure to apply to my life. My brain is making this too confusing & I just want it to stop. I want the ruminating to stop but its not slowing down. This whole therapy theme is the roughest to shake because therapy means a lot to me, actually right now, it means the world. And OCD knows this.

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7 minutes ago, PolarBear said:

You've been doing it all along, continually thinking that you should be doing exposures when you shouldn't.

Yes, and it scares me that the OCD still hasn't let up even though I recognize this. I appreciate your help on all of the forums & deep down, in my roots, I know what I need to do. I tell myself every day that I'm going to fight to get better & I slip & I slip & the anxiety punches back. Giving up isn't an option though. I have to keep pushing on & begin to let go of the idea that I need to be perfect because perfect doesn't exist. 

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I'm still not understanding ERP clearly enough apparently, due to exposures my therapists had me perform in the past. They would tell me to set something off & then habituate to that. They would tell me things like "I can set my TV a bit off & not have a problem". I think its unethical in CBT to tell patients whats right & whats wrong. How much to like something & how much not to like something. What they should be working on is stopping the compulsions & accepting uncertainty. Not telling patients to go toward the anxious choice/demonize us for having an attention to detail. I hate the exposure part because it seems to be entirely based on whats "normal" when no such thing exists in our world. I understand stopping compulsions & accepting the uncertainty that something may be off, but I do not understand having to give up interests/preferences for the sake of going toward what causes you discomfort. Makes zero sense. I understand habituating to a thought that something may/may not be off, but to actually set it off goes against the whole idea of uncertainty, does it not??

For example, I've recently been ruminating over where rational tv settings/irrational tv settings meet in the middle. I'm able to watch my television with settings not so perfect, but there is only so far I can go until I believe it starts to get silly to have the settings set off. But my fear is, what if my limit is not my therapist's limit? What if my therapist can go further with the settings being off & so I need to push my limit even further? Which brings me back to too much focus on exposures. Why on earth would it matter if my limit for settings being off differed from my therapist's limit? It shouldn't be a contest to see whose settings being off are more rational/irrational. The only thing that should matter is stopping compulsions.

So when I get an intrusive thought, for example "My TV is off about 30% from how I like it exactly lined up", my response should be "maybe it is, maybe it isn't." That should be the end of it.

But, it doesn't end there. I start to think "Would this be too much for my therapist to habituate to? Or, what if my therapist could habituate to this?" So then I start to panic because 30% is too much for me, but what if it isn't too much for my therapist? By the way, with 30% off, I mean this could be anything on the TV, the color setting, the tint setting, the brightness setting, etc.

Then, this leads me to obsess over if I should be habituating to the thought or act. Obviously, the fear that the TV would be completely blurry would be habituating to a thought.And the fear that the TV is only a smudge off would be habituating to an act. But what about 30%, should that be habituating to the act or thought?

 

Or what about this, instead of comparing myself to what others could/couldn't habituate to in life, why don't I just start accepting uncertainty for every intrusive thought, no matter what it is. 

I hate the exposure part of ERP because its based on what people think is "normal". I understand response prevention. It makes sense, because its not based on what physical act is considered "normal". Its based on stopping checking. Response prevention doesn't ask you to habituate to whats normal/isn't normal based on other people's standards.

This is really bothering me because I'm scared to start therapy back for this reason. 
 

Edited by saddaniels
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If I was a therapist, this is how I would approach treating OCD:

I'd tell my patient "Look, its okay to like having things just right & its okay to be different from other people. Lets work on your compulsions though & try to limit them, because there is only so much you can control with your behavior."

I would never, EVER, tell a patient he should like this/that, not have a problem with having something this way/that way. That isn't my place. We are all human and our likes/dislikes/loves/fears are VALID. What isn't valid is doing compulsions day in/day out because we only have so much control over our likes/dislikes/loves/fears.

I don't know. Maybe I'm talking nonsense. In conclusion, response prevention should be the focus of treating OCD, not exposures. And maybe I'm crazy for thinking this. I don't know. This is how I'd like to go forward in my recovery, but of course OCD shouts back "But what if your therapist...." or "What about an exposure first? You have to do those first in order to do response prevention next."

 

Edited by saddaniels
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You're just ruminating over this. Again. Still. Your two most recent posts are just written diwn ruminations.

I have told you multiple times what to do but you just keep going back to the same old twisted arguments. You're not going to get better until you change your ways and stop the compulsions.

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Yes, but ERP consists of Exposures + Response Prevention. And my biggest problem is figuring out what exposure to do so I can then practice response prevention. Response prevention by itself doesn't make sense. So I figure I'm doing something wrong.

If I'm not doing therapy correctly then I need to figure out where I'm not doing it correctly so I can get better. I just want to get better.

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Sigh. You could start by listening to us, trying to understand and doing the work necessary. I have told you umpteen times that you must work on your ruminating on this subject. Sadly, it just falls on deaf ears. You just go back to talking about exposures. That's what needs to stop.

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Its not falling on deaf ears. I hear you. I need to work on not ruminating over therapy & to stop feeling like I need to do exposures.

The problem is that without exposures, it would just be response prevention. The therapy itself is exposure response prevention, so if I'm not doing exposures, I'm missing a critical aspect of the therapy itself.

Are the intrusive thoughts themselves exposures, maybe? For example: "What if I'm not doing the therapy right?" or "What if my TV isn't lined up exactly?" or "What if I'm supposed to habituate to settings exactly how my therapist would?"

And then the response prevention is to do nothing? It sounds simple. You get a thought, whatever that thought is (exposure) & then don't respond to it (response prevention). 

My OCD keeps telling me it needs to be more complicated than this.

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With things like exposures need to be physical acts & then you're supposed to habituate to those physical acts until they don't bother you anymore. But the thing is, if I got an intrusive thought that my TV was 30% off on the settings, I don't think I could habituate to that physical act and be okay with it.

I could be okay with getting the thought that settings were 30% off & then saying to myself "Maybe they are 30% off, maybe they aren't. I set the TV how I wanted once and I'm not in control if this intrusive thought happens to come true."

But then I just feel like I'm in denial & in reality, I need to habituate physically to every intrusive thought that pops into my mind.

Because my exposures in therapy consisted primarily of physical acts.

Edited by saddaniels
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On 1/18/2017 at 22:46, AttemptingToHeal said:

If someone had a fear that things coloured red were contaminated, then they accidentally touched something red, they would be supposed to not clean their hands and ignore the discomfort. Chances are though that wouldn't happen very often, especially if they were used to avoiding red things.

By this statement, I take it that I'm avoiding putting the TV on a setting I don't like. So then technically, I should expose myself to wrong settings. But when does it stop, when can I put the TV back on settings that I actually like. And, how wrong am I supposed to set the settings off? Right now, I can set them off from being perfect & it doesn't cause much anxiety, but there is only so far I can go until wrong settings are affecting my TV viewing experience. How far do I go?  What if I haven't gone far enough setting them off/what if I've gone too far?

This is ridiculous, its like every move I make I could be doing therapy incorrectly. 

Something is obviously wrong with me. All I want to do is set my TV how I like, leave it & let it be. But then my mind says NO, you could be avoiding, you need to do exposures to make sure you still aren't obsessing over your TV, you need to habituate as far as your therapist can to wrong settings.

I'm so tired. I don't know whats rational therapy or irrational therapy anymore. I feel doomed.

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