Coping Strategies?

Pollyanna1234

Hello and welcome!

Depending on your knowledge of exposure therapy and what your OCD focuses on, you can try doing some exposure therapy on yourself. I'm not super well versed in it, but I assume you are referring to graded exposure? So for example if your OCD centres around germs, you can expose yourself gradually to things that are upsetting for you. So maybe you touch a door handle in your bathroom at home without washing your hands afterwards for 5 minutes, then increase the time. Then after you've mastered that, you can touch a handle in a public bathroom, etc.

Also, relaxation techniques, meditation, and guided meditations for OCD can be helpful. I'm not really sure what to do about the obsessions only - you have obsessions without the compulsion component? Relaxation methods may help for just obsessions.

phillyOCD75

No sadly there are compulsions as well like checking, reassurance etc. Thanks for your suggestions though. Do you ever feel alone with feeling like all of this?

Pollyanna1234

Yeah the graded exposure can help for the checking and reassurance. You could try getting some books like the OCD Workbook that can teach you some strategies. Sorry you have to wait for therapy; waiting is so hard. I would like to give you more concrete suggestions but I struggle too! Right now my therapist is having me schedule my compulsions. So I only am supposed to engage in the compulsions three times daily for 30 minutes each time. This is extremely hard and I haven't been able to do it yet. I also have a baby so that makes it even harder as I can't exactly schedule things ever!

I definitely feel alone with this, all the time! But message boards like these do help. I do know somebody in real life who has some OCD struggles as well, but they differ from mine enough that I still feel alone.