The General Mental Health Forum is now a Read Only Forum. As we had two large areas making it difficult for many to find, we decided to combine the Mental Health & the Recovery sections of the forum into Mental Health & Recovery as a whole. Physical Health still remains as it's own area within the entire Recovery area.
If you are having struggles, need support in a particular area that you aren't finding a specific recovery area forum, you may find the General Struggles forum a great place to post. Any any that is related to emotions, self-esteem, insomnia, anger, relationship dynamics due to mental health and recovery and other issues that don't fit better in another forum would be examples of topics that might go there.
If you have spiritual issues related to a mental health and recovery issue, please use the Recovery Related Spiritual Advice forum. This forum is designed to be like Christian Advice, only for recovery type of issues. Recovery being like a family in many ways, allows us to support one another together. May you be blessed today and each day.
Kristen.NewCreation and FreeinChrist
CBT is cognitive-behavioral therapy, learning to replace untruthful thoughts with truthful ones. ERP is exposure and response prevention, which means exposing yourself to what scares you and not performing your safety behavior (compulsion). ERP is considered to be highly effective for treating OCD. I like to simplify it this way: Accept the anxious thoughts, resist compulsions. Accepting the thought doesn't mean that we agree with it, just that we choose to ignore it as a meaningless signal from my brain. For example, if I have an obsession about making unwanted vows to God, I will accept the anxious thought that tells me that I AM making those vows, and I will refuse to do compulsions, which in this case might be hyper-analyzing my thoughts to see if I did make a vow, and praying to cancel out what I perceive to be thoughts that are vows (but which are actually just the OCD trying to make me think I vowed something). Not sure if this is clear so if not just ask me to clarify! I'll also post links to a couple of my favorite resources:
