How to go about doing ERP stuff

[tripletiger1200]

So I feel like I'm ready to start taking back my mind, but I'm unsure how to do it. I feel like purposely thinking out my intrusive thoughts would be sinful, so do I just try not to resist any of the thoughts at all? Will these thoughts take over my mind if I do that?

 

[fealty77]

No, they won't. I hav been in therapy for over a month now, without taking medication (I just started prozac last night for depression but it will take a while to work), and my therapist has me doing crazy stuff. My thoughts have been focused on ,"what if God is not real, what if the bible and Jesus are all made up, what if God is really evil, etc..."

So far it is working well. I hate doing some of the "homework", but I have not had anxiety as bad and the thoughts aren't constant all day and they aren't as prominent. I feel like I can pray to God and read my bible without thinking it's all imaginary now and my life is getting back to normal.

 

[tripletiger1200]

So what type of things do they ask you to in your homework?

 

[dabro]

Yes your going to do alot of Homework. SIGH! But, it's worth it. You know when you get the jolt to want to obsesse and then you start answering yourself all these ?'s start to pop up. Thats a no no. We can't change the spike but we can change the way we respond to it. It's hard work trust me. But I'll be praying for ya.

 

[Mr. Runningfish]

So what type of things do they ask you to in your homework?

For me it was a type of journaling. You would take the thought and and start writing. Then you would analyze it. Depending on how many thoughts you had, depends on how much homework you have. I can do it automatically now for the most part in my head. But yes, it is worth it.

I'm going to recommend Dr. Burns book, Feel Good- which my doctor had me
read. I believe it was strictly CBT. I guess this is something you can try on your own, it's really simple, but I'd recommend doing it with a doctor so that they can make sure you are following it properly.

Some things I would use lots of exposure, to help lessen the anxiety I get from them, and other things I would need a distraction because the thought was just too much of a poison for my mind.

 

[fealty77]

I think exposure is different with everyone depending on what you can handle.
My therapist has me watching videos/reading articles on atheism 3 nights a week for 1 hour each night (b/c I was scared God and all that goes with it wasn't real). But I couldn't handle it and had to stop earlier than 1hr because my anxiety got so high I would get panic attacks. So he told me to do it every night for only 20 minutes to start with then add 2 extra minutes every night until I got to 1 hour then go back to 3 nights per week.
He also has me not going online (google, christian sights, etc) looking for reassurance to my questions. That was hard for me also. I couldn't do it for the first week very well, but each day I started to taper off from looking for reassurance more and more and ever since then I rarely go online for it, and my anxiety has gone down.
He also told me I can only ask actual people for reassurance to my questions, but I can only ask 3 times per week and it has to be a different question and a different person each time.
And the last things he has me doing is to make up extremely exaggerated scenarios in my mind about my thoughts, like, "There is no God so I am going to barge into church on Sunday and take everyone hostage and tell them if they don't believe me they will all die and go to hell", which pretty much makes no sense b/c if there is no God then there is no hell, and of course b/c I would never really do those things, Lol. I told him that the thoughts make me feel like I'm doing something so wrong, but I do them anyways and they work. He told me to do them every hour, but I forget, so he said at least do them every time I have thoughts and get anxious.
Anyways, I also journal everything and write down my anxiety (especially before and after my homework), and tell the therapist everything when I see him again.
I have to tell you though, I have not had much anxiety (unless I'm doing my homework, but it goes away very quickly now and doesn't get as bad) since I've been facing these things.
It sounds like a lot, and on days where I don't have anxiety anymore I sometimes forget to do the homework, but I try to keep up with it. It is pretty much me facing my fears of no God and becoming an atheist.
I also have thoughts that I'm not doing the "right" thing for God or He's not happy with me and stuff like that, but my therapist said we will deal with all that later. One thing at a time. I am actually loving my life again, (at least most of the time).

 

[fealty77]

Oh yeah, and I don't know if you have read it, but he told me to read "The Imp of the Mind" by Lee Baer. It was a good book for people with OCD. I actually read it before I even started seeing him b/c I knew I had OCD, I just thought I could handle it myself. Come to find out I couldn't.

 

[gracealone]

Hi Fealty,
This is just so encouraging to hear!
You have a very good therapist and I'm so glad that you've been willing to do the exposure exercises even though they make the anxiety spike up. That just means you're doing it correctly.
The first kind of therapy that was recommended to me was that I write down the fears and then write down logical counter statements to them as to the likelihood of them actually being true of me. That just made matters worse as it kept me ruminating about them in an effort to prove to myself that they weren't true. This just made the doubts seem even more valid to me.
It was only when I was willing to do the kind of exposure to them that you are doing that I started to improve. I also made up seem really exaggerated scenarios about my being an athiest. I wrote them down read them out loud into a tape recorder and listened to them. It does feel scary and wrong but the point is to habituate the brain to the thoughts. If you're willing to sit with the anxiety and consider the worst case scenario rather than battling against it your brain will eventually quit over reacting to the thoughts.
Keep up the good work.
I'm praying for you.
Mitzi

I think exposure is different with everyone depending on what you can handle.
My therapist has me watching videos/reading articles on atheism 3 nights a week for 1 hour each night (b/c I was scared God and all that goes with it wasn't real). But I couldn't handle it and had to stop earlier than 1hr because my anxiety got so high I would get panic attacks. So he told me to do it every night for only 20 minutes to start with then add 2 extra minutes every night until I got to 1 hour then go back to 3 nights per week.
He also has me not going online (google, christian sights, etc) looking for reassurance to my questions. That was hard for me also. I couldn't do it for the first week very well, but each day I started to taper off from looking for reassurance more and more and ever since then I rarely go online for it, and my anxiety has gone down.
He also told me I can only ask actual people for reassurance to my questions, but I can only ask 3 times per week and it has to be a different question and a different person each time.
And the last things he has me doing is to make up extremely exaggerated scenarios in my mind about my thoughts, like, "There is no God so I am going to barge into church on Sunday and take everyone hostage and tell them if they don't believe me they will all die and go to hell", which pretty much makes no sense b/c if there is no God then there is no hell, and of course b/c I would never really do those things, Lol. I told him that the thoughts make me feel like I'm doing something so wrong, but I do them anyways and they work. He told me to do them every hour, but I forget, so he said at least do them every time I have thoughts and get anxious.
Anyways, I also journal everything and write down my anxiety (especially before and after my homework), and tell the therapist everything when I see him again.
I have to tell you though, I have not had much anxiety (unless I'm doing my homework, but it goes away very quickly now and doesn't get as bad) since I've been facing these things.
It sounds like a lot, and on days where I don't have anxiety anymore I sometimes forget to do the homework, but I try to keep up with it. It is pretty much me facing my fears of no God and becoming an atheist.
I also have thoughts that I'm not doing the "right" thing for God or He's not happy with me and stuff like that, but my therapist said we will deal with all that later. One thing at a time. I am actually loving my life again, (at least most of the time).

 

[tripletiger1200]

So what would an example be for someone who suffers from intrusive thoughts? Do I just purposely repeat the thoughts out loud until they lose their oomph? Or do I just let them flow freely and try to ignore them?

 

[gracealone]

Hi Tripletiger,
Yes, I let those kind of thoughts just flow freely like you mentioned without attending to them. Sometimes I would just picture me putting them aside in my mind, like I was fully aware of their presence but didn't give them attention. Kind of like making them sit in a waiting room. That's one part of ERP. The other thing that I did with an intrusive thought,which is the "exposure" part of ERP, didn't involve repeating the thought out loud but instead it was doing a kind of visualization by picturing what the very worse case scenario would be for me because I had that thought, then writing it out in all it's ugly details and reading it outloud to myself. This is like "one upping" the thought. No matter what kind of fear or doubt it suggests you come right back at it with a worse idea. This can be compared to lighting a back burn in order to extinguish a wild fire. You use up all the OCD's fuel. This sort of thing is done at a set time when you choose to purposely expose yourself to the fearful outcome that the thought creates. I also like to think of my intrusive thoughts/doubts as ghosts that are doing their level best to scare me. Instead of flinching when they say boo, I say boo right back at them only louder and scarier. I know that sounds weird but it helps me to understand how to do it. When you do this sort of thing your anxiety will peak but if you stick with it then it eventually comes down.
If you are willing to entertain the thoughts without fighting them or attending to them you will be retraining your brain to stop overreacting to them. Hope that helps a little.
Praying for you,
Mitzi

So what would an example be for someone who suffers from intrusive thoughts? Do I just purposely repeat the thoughts out loud until they lose their oomph? Or do I just let them flow freely and try to ignore them?

 

[OCD=Owie]

So I feel like I'm ready to start taking back my mind, but I'm unsure how to do it. I feel like purposely thinking out my intrusive thoughts would be sinful, so do I just try not to resist any of the thoughts at all? Will these thoughts take over my mind if I do that?

Applying ERP-type treatment methods on yourself is a tricky thing to get a handle on. As others have already mentioned, it's essentially ignoring the thoughts, refusing to debate in your head whether they are realistic concerns or not. Once you give an obsessive thought attnetion and start thinking, "what if that's true?" then you'll get more afraid that it is true. If you continue to go through endless reasoning processes, then you will eventually get really stuck in your OCD thought cycle.