Hi Rachel, you can download and listen to the recordings here:
http://www.controllinganxiety.com/dsp_downloads.php
They are so very helpful. For me it was like the last piece of the puzzle listening to these and understanding what acceptance truly means. I still have my days but they are few and far between!
You asked how can a relationship flourish while this is going on. Well, it's hard. I hate when I'm "in my head" as opposed to being focused and present when I'm around my husband. Even now as I worry about work and my final exams coming up, I feel I'm "in my head" and I hate it!
I guess the first step would be to make conscious choices. Have you read "The Love Dare?" It is a 40-day devotional based on doing one loving thing for your spouse each day. I've only just started, but it's a great book. For instance, the first dare is to not saying anything negative to your spouse during the day. I thought, oh, this will be easy, we get along so well. Well wouldn't you know the day that I took that dare, my husband was really testing me! It was difficult! But rewarding. You can find the book on amazon.co.uk. It is just one way to stir the embers and allow the relationship to grow and flourish during this time. It is hard, no doubt. But not impossible. Pray for God to show you new ways to demonstrate your love for your husband.
At one point I had to accept that OCD may always be with me. I still get all the same spikes that I did before, they just don't bug me now. It is like living with diabetes or a bad knee - you learn ways to recognize your symptoms and cope accordingly. We live in a sinful world with broken bodies and unfortunately our brokenness sometimes means we have a chronic disorder that can be VERY well managed, but sometimes we just still have those symptoms of it. Since I am under a lot of stress right now with studying for exams, I notice feeling more anxious in general, and definitely having more spikes pop up than normal. I expect it, so it doesn't surprise me or upset me.
As long as you try to fight this thing with feelings, you will fail. I know how it feels to be so desperate to feel something good, positive, just to reassure you that it's all ok and that those feelings do exist. But, that's not going to happen when you're in the throws of OCD. This is going to be a miserable time, and hard to cope with! But it has very great rewards.
I have some saved links of some advice from others who have done ERP, that I hope will help. I'll just paste them here in case anyone else can benefit from them.
Exactly! It does go against everything you know in life! That is the hard part about exposure therapy. You have to go against the bodies natural reaction to run, to find safety. It is natural to act this way, don't be so hard on yourself. Everything is laid out in front of you. Don't expect those feelings to return, they will return naturally. For so long I was like this. I would sit around, do the exposures half heartedly, and just wait for the day that this thing would just disappear. Here's the thing: it will never disappear for long on it's own. Every morning, after OCD giving me a week off, it would return and I would develop the same self pitying attitude that I had had the last time it struck. That is what needs to change. Don't expect to feel better, don't expect the thoughts to go away. Stay with your CBT, do everything despite how you feel and it will get better.
1) Auto thought: "Am I saved? Am I just faking this? Am I saved?" Healthy response: "Nope, not saved. I am a raging athiest." Endure the anxiety without looking for relief mentally or physically and move on.
2) Don't try and answer the unsolvable questions. "Am I in love?" "Does God exist?" Either answer these with exposures like above, or say to yourself that you CHOOSE not to engage in these questions at this time. Realize when you are better the answers to these questions will be there.
3) Feelings. Accept every feeling and realize that a feeling does not have to affect your mood. If you wake up in the morniing feeling depressed, don't try and figure out the puzzle, accept it and move on. Don't entertain the feelings. In fact it is beneficial, once you get the hang of this to see if you can make the anxiety/depression/whatever worse by doing an exposure.
