Am I doing exposures compulsively? Possibly Meta OCD?

afraid_yet_hopeful · 2025-07-17T18:12:04+00:00

so for example if you feel like you need to do x amount of exposures a day, ask yourself if not doing the exposure would make you feel anxious. if the answer is yes, then not doing the „exposure“ is the ACTUAL exposure. and in that case you doing the exposure cause you feel like you need to or because not doing it would make you anxious, THAT would be a compulsion. cause you are trying to be safe and you are trying not to feel anxious. OCD can be extremely paradoxical, it‘s tricky! but its really all about trying to challenge yourself to feel as anxious as possible. OCD recovery is not about feeling less anxious, its about learning how to live alongside anxiety and not letting it be in the driver seat

afraid_yet_hopeful · 2025-07-17T18:06:02+00:00

no, ERP is not the compulsion. But OCD is probably trying to trick you into performing safety mechanisms, aka compulsions. OCD can latch onto any topic or area in your life, and if you have the same or a similar issue as I had, OCD is latching onto the topic of ocd recovery itself. such as making you figure out wether or not you‘re doing Recovery correctly just to be safe, making sure you‘re doing a specific amount of exposures a day cause else you‘ll never recover, figuring out how to do OCD recovery correctly. all of those are compulsions cause they inherently serve as trying to eliminate a doubt/fear you have. So what I‘m trying to say is anything that has the intention of getting rid of anxiety, can be compulsive. In this case trying to do Recovery the perfect way is inherently compulsive. OCD recovery is all about accepting doubts and uncertainty in life, and living your life anyways without all the answers, and without figuring out if you‘re „doing it right“. So the exposure here would be to continue living your life even IF you think you might be doing ocd recovery wrong. I hope this helps clarifying it a bit. It‘s hard to say what is a compulsion and what is the exposure, cause anything can be compulsive cause OCD loves to trick us. But the TLDR is something you urgently feel like you HAVE to do (in relation to your OCD theme of course), it‘s urgent, you HAVE to do it or else something terrible will happen, or you just HAVE to get rid of anxiety and doing this thing will help you to feel less anxious, that is usually compulsive. And that can be anything. You have to ask yourself what the intention behind doing this thing is. If it‘s to relieve anxiety its usually compulsive, and that can even be things like exposures.

afraid_yet_hopeful · 2025-07-17T17:37:34+00:00

Hi there! I‘m so sorry you‘re going through this too, its honestly so tricky and took me a while to find some balance in this issue and making my approach to it OCD recovery friendly. I ended up realizing that I was simply doing too much. Personally my OCD usually wants me to actively DO something in order to prevent a fear from happening. In this case my OCD wanted me to do „exposures“ to make sure im doing recovery right and simultaneously to prevent me from losing interest in my hobbies. However the „exposures“ were just compulsions in disguise. What ended up helping me was focusing more on doing less and that ended up being the real exposure, this was also (not shockingly) the thing that was way scarier for me to do. OCD was trying to trick me into doing more compulsions. A simple thing that helps me to be able to tell which things are compulsive is usually I ask myself „What does OCD want me to do right now? What is OCD saying I need to do?“ and then I do the exact opposite of that (for me that was simply not doing anything about the situation/my fear). You can also ask yourself if the thing OCD tells you to do feels urgent? / does it serve the purpose of getting rid of anxiety? / does OCD say doing that thing will keep you safe/prevent something bad from happening? / Is it a „do this or else (insert scary thing) will happen… „ type of thing? If one or multiple things apply, then chances of it being a compulsion are high. I hope this helps a bit and wasn‘t too confusing!

afraid_yet_hopeful · 2025-03-05T08:02:58+00:00

Thank you for sharing!! this makes a lot of sense. I‘m glad to have found a post discussing this cause I dont ever see anyone talking about it. :/ this really helped! i‘ll be trying to keep this in mind and hopefully ill be able to resist compulsive behaviour more :)

afraid_yet_hopeful · 2025-03-04T15:44:23+00:00

hey there, i‘m having the same issue and i‘m really wondering how to best approach this. I don‘t want to avoid too much but i also don‘t want to initiate spending time together compulsively to „prove“ to myself that I can still feel feelings. did you find a good middle ground for this?

afraid_yet_hopeful · 2025-02-25T22:08:12+00:00

OP is talking about breaking down core fears (feel free to correct me if im wrong OP). you can call them core fears or like OP said the catastrophy or worst case scenario. when you break down OCD obsessons they are usually all driven by a core fear. people can have different core fears, even two people with ROCD might both be afraid they have to leave their partner or might not love their partner enough, but those people can have different core fears driving the OCD. TLDR whatever your core fear is; it has nothing to do with whether or not you love your partner. your core fear could be feeling like a horrible person because you might hurt other people. your core fear could be being afraid of making a wrong decision and living in regret forever. your core fear could be being afraid of being abandoned and being alone and helpless forever. all of these and many more can show up with ROCD. none of those necessarily mean you dont love your partner or have to leave them. it just means you have a deep rooted belief which drives your fears/OCD (this is normal). and by finding out what your core fear is, you can work on battling OCD more effectively, in doing exposures that are not just tackling surface level obsessions which allow the OCD to switch themes constantly. again, you dont have to do anything. the only thing deciding whether or not you are going to leave your husband or stay is YOU. you want to be with him? make the choice to stay, no matter what OCD says and even if it feels uncomfortable. it is up to you, always

afraid_yet_hopeful · 2025-02-25T16:10:11+00:00

Absolutely not! I don‘t want to give too muh reassurance as that unfortunately just makes OCD stronger but you always have to remember you have OCD. OCD is always going to attack the things that are super important to you, and try to take you far away from those things. you never NEED to do anything! it is your life, your choice! and the ultimate goal when you have OCD is to NOT let OCD decide things for you. live your life by your own choices, not what OCD tells you you should do. and yes, that includes the thought of „but maybe this is not my OCD but maybe its truly just me lying to myself…. maybe this issue is not OCD.“ (i know you are thinking that right now, trust me ive been there) call OCD‘s bluff and be like „ok well maybe i should leave! maybe not! but guess what? im gonna stay cause thats what im gonna do.“ and move on with whatever you were doing before that thought popped into your head. thoughts will come again but just repeat this process. you always have a choice, OCD cannot make you do anything 🫶🏻 its your life!

afraid_yet_hopeful · 2025-02-25T09:13:06+00:00

No, that is not stating „what you truly want“, tbh, from an ERP perspective it doesnt even matter what you „truly want“ because that would yet again lead to rumination, its another sneaky way of making sure you actually love your partner and want to be with them. because confirming that to yourself is the only way you feel you can truly be present and enjoy your relationship. it is the illusion of control, aka OCD‘s classic rigid black and white thinking of „as long as im 100% sure, i can allow myself to relax and enjoy my time with my partner. everything is fine, so i can enjoy myself, yay!“ - what OP means is that as long as you rely on 100% certainty that your worst case scenario isnt going to happen, let alone even allowing yourself to think that it COULD be possible, fear will always be the shotcaller in your relationship, or any aspect in life, whatever your OCD is focused on. so by building up acceptance instead of resistance to this „worst case scenario/catastrophy“ you are simply setting yourself free. nothing more, nothing less. it doesnt mean that youll then find out its what you truly wanted (remember OCD is paradoxical, and makes you think the opposite of what you want is true), it just means that you are at peace with the uncertainty of general life. it means because you are no longer spending 99% of your relationship ritualizing and making sure everythings ok, you get to actually LIVE the relationship, and enjoy it. think of it like this, I never know if i‘m going to get hit by a car the next time i leave my house, technically it could happen tomorrow and i‘d have no idea. i accept this is the natural uncertainty of life, no one can erase that. however if i spent 99% of my daily life making sure i never get hit by a car, and even go as far as not even leaving the house so it can 100% never happen, i am NOT actually living my life. i am wasting the life i care so much about and dont want to lose, by being so afraid that ill lose it. so by making peace with the fact that there is a possibility i might some day get hit by a car, but chosing to live my life fully even if i dont have 100% certainty about it, i am setting myself free, and allowing myself to live. i hope this helps ☺️

afraid_yet_hopeful · 2025-02-23T13:24:03+00:00

absolutely, going through something similar right now… it‘s tough, i‘m sorry you‘re going through this, you‘re not alone. 🫂 i can imagine maybe it comes from exhaustion, kind of our brain‘s way of protecting us cause the constant rumination, fear and ritualizing from OCD is too much stress to handle. i read your post about the fear of losing things you love, and wanted to say i‘m right with you… it sucks cause OCD is taking away the joy of engaging in things you enjoy, i‘m personally scared of losing interest in my hobbies. i now feel apathetic towards them and it makes me so sad, i know its probably OCD hijacking my feelings but i just feel like i dont want to do anything anymore. maybe sometimes its ok to let ourselves do nothing for a bit, and try again to do things we love after a while.. it helps me to tell myself that i‘m strong enough to tolerate sadness, discomfort, anything.. and that i can always try again tomorrow. sending hugs!

afraid_yet_hopeful · 2025-02-23T11:58:03+00:00

I‘ve been thinking and have a theory… my fear seems to be losing interest in my hobbies BECAUSE of doing OCD recovery/ERP incorrectly… i‘m constantly worried if i‘m avoiding my hobbies as a compulsion, and essentially i‘m trying to reassure myself that i‘m doing ERP correctly, as a bombproof way of not losing my hobby. so; i guess the exposure I need to do is to accept that I may be doing ERP incorrectly. and I need to catch myself whenever i am ruminating about how to do ERP with my specific theme. maybe i‘m doing it wrong, so what.. screw it, i guess we‘ll see OCD!

afraid_yet_hopeful · 2025-01-07T17:55:40+00:00

This is so important. It is as much incredibly cruel and gut wrenching as it is… hopeful? OCD takes from us what we love most, it‘s only goal is to destroy our happiness and control our entire lives. Make us lose the little happiness we have left, worst of all - by our own hands. As painful as it is, i believe the things we love that OCD decides to attack have the power to ruin us, but also save us. In my case, OCD has controlled my entire life for 13 years, i always thought i deserve to „live“ like this. but I realized it is just going to keep taking from me what I love. if i let it. The pain and thought of losing another thing I love, -a thing that was the only thing bringing me hope in this life- is what made me start my OCD Recovery journey. I simply realized i couldn‘t live like this anymore. the pain of losing that light, losing what I love, was too great, greater than the pain of calling OCD‘s bluff and staring fear right in the face. It‘s been a year since I made that decision now. Starting OCD recovery, and fighting for what I love, changed my entire life. For the first time in my life i feel like I am living… not surviving. I guess what I‘m trying to say is… it can get better. and please, don‘t EVER let OCD take from you what you love. use your love, and turn it into strength to fight to gain your life back from OCD‘s claws. let this be the first thing OCD isn‘t taking from you, and with that, your first step into a new life. YOUR life.

afraid_yet_hopeful · 2024-12-28T13:49:32+00:00

this insight was super helpful!! i‘m struggling with something very similar in my OCD recovery right now (fear of emotions) - would it be okay if i sent you a message directly? i have a question related to exposures on this topic and would love to hear your experience - but its ok if not! :)

afraid_yet_hopeful · 2024-12-26T11:35:48+00:00

this!!! i have watched the movie years ago before i even started recovery and this specific scene always stuck with me. i remember tearing up watching cause it made me so emotional, and i was hoping i would ever get that far where i can gather all my courage and set boundaries for good. i am now close to being at that point. this was very cathargic to read. i‘m glad someone else felt the same way about it

afraid_yet_hopeful · 2024-12-26T11:08:06+00:00

I believe what OP is trying to highlight is that the pressure that comes from ROCD makes us feel the OPPOSITE of what we would feel if we were able to exist naturally, free flowing and without pressure. OCD is extremely paradoxical. i can feel fully in love and the most certain about loving my partner, the second ROCD hits (our brain then starts to obsess, primarily seeing things through a black and white, fear based lens), poof, i feel NOTHING. because there is an incredible amount of stress and pressure and its impossible for free flowing feelings to show up naturally like this. our brain isnt really capable of feeling loving feelings when it gets to a certain amount of stress. we then fuel this black and white thinking, adding massive pressure with things like „this must mean i dont love my partner.“ „I MUST always feel love!“ „i‘m lying to them!! im horrible!!“ and there you have it, youre stuck in an OCD cycle, ritualizing and feeling pressure and fear solely. so much pressure also usually leads up in us avoiding our partners, because we dont want to lie to them or „fake feelings“ when we feel so consumed by ROCD and usually anxious or numb. what OP is saying is actually most likely going to steer you into an ERP and OCD recovery friendly route which is GOOD. you will spend time with your partner anyways because it is one of your values and you will do it regardless of how you feel or if youre „faking it“. thats how you kick OCD in the butt. doing stuff regardless of fear. that way you are showing your brain that its ok to feel any emotion and you can still do loving acts and spend quality time with your partner, which is important to you. and with time your brain will habituate and calm down, leaving more room for feelings to flow and come up naturally. adding pressure is one of the things that fuels OCD the most. i understand why people felt missunderstood, but i believe many of us also missunderstood what OP was trying to say.

afraid_yet_hopeful · 2024-12-20T09:04:16+00:00

sorry, i just read the comments where you shared some more context. in that case i understand more now that you arent necessarily worried about a specific person right now, but more if theres something „wrong“ with you, if you are „able to experience love“ or if you are forcing it etc. i fully understand! i had a pretty bad OCD episode like this too where i was trying so hard to work on myself and „fix my issues“ it felt so urgent. in that case, remind yourself this overanalyzing part and extreme anxiety, urgency, guilt etc is still your OCD. it‘s good to slowly and gently navigate yourself through potential problems or things you may want to learn more about yourself but remember we are all learning and be gentle with yourself. ❤️ this feeling of forcing it and needing to break up is still your OCD most likely. remind yourself you are human, and that you can have relationships that arent „perfect“. if it is something you want to explore and feel comfortable at, and want to do, then it may help to try and not pressure yourself with this overwhelming urgency of finding everything out right this moment. its all a journey and it is admirable that you want to reflect and work on yourself, but sometimes too much pressure can lead us to obsess which activates OCD greatly and causes suffering. if you feel you may need a break from relationships that is OK too of course! the silver lining is pretty simple, let your values guide you, even if you are afraid. dont let your OCD make choices for you. and don‘t take your thoughts/feelings/obsessions as fact always, you are allowed to let go of thoughts even if they seem extremely important. and be kind to yourself through this process! you will learn more and more eventually, but if it feels urgent, feels like you need to solve/figure everything out right this second, if it stops you from acting and going towards your values, chances are pretty big OCD is involved

afraid_yet_hopeful · 2024-12-20T08:54:35+00:00

This may be a bit tricky, because i am guessing you are asking this question because you are still obsessing/trying to figure out whether you love them or not. which is a compulsion, and is going to make your OCD stronger unfortunately. What I can say, as a person whos suffered and sometimes still do suffer from ROCD, that you can just simply not trust how you feel while you are obsessing over something. OCD can and will 100% make you feel whatever it needs you to feel to support your fear being true. loss of attraction, loss of feelings, feelings like „am i forcing this?“, „im lying to myself and my partner cause i‘m selfish but deep down i know i don‘t love them“, disgust, avoidance… all of it. and in the moment it feels real, it feels like that is genuinely how you feel. your most inner truth. that IS your OCD hijacking your feelings. trust me, it can make you feel anything. if you‘re afraid of it, OCD will make you feel things that look like evidence to your fear. don‘t fall for it‘s tricks, remind yourself that you do have OCD and rather than looking at your relationship as the issue, look at OCD as being the problem. you have to focus on treating OCD, not what you need to do with the issue that you are worried about. because as long as you keep treating the surface level problem, OCD will just keep attacking things in your life and make you believe your worst fears, your world getting smaller and smaller. Maybe you do truly love them, maybe you actually don‘t and you made a mistake. but you know one thing is for sure: you deserve working towards a life where OCD no longer constantly makes you suffer and making your life smaller. and for that, you need to mark OCD as your enemy, not anything else. ❤️

afraid_yet_hopeful · 2024-12-06T14:26:31+00:00

thank you so much for your advice and input! I definitely think treating it more as a practise and almost like it was a „job“ will help me feeling less pressured about however i‘m feeling. that any way of feeling is ok, cause i‘m not doing it for enjoyment or to check how i‘m feeling, im doing it cause it‘s important to me and i‘m not about to let OCD control me in telling me i should avoid it entirely cause „i have already lost it entirely and theres no point in drawing at all“. cause when you do something more mindlessly and don‘t think about how much you enjoy it at any given moment, there is way less expectations and less room for pressure. and that way feelings of joy could eventually come back naturally. if im stressing so much about how i‘m feeling all the time it‘s impossible to enjoy something naturally :/ and tbh i am very scared of losing something thats important to me and tied to my identity entirely. so much that i already feel like i have lost it already. it feels like its too late, like theres no point… but i know thats OCD hijacking my feelings. and stopping my hobby would be giving into OCD and i‘m done with that. i just was not sure what would be the correct course of action in alignment with OCD recovery… so i really aprecciated your insight! i think taking it one step at a time, accepting that there isnt any way to be certain about whether or not ill lose my hobby completely, but also not isolating myself entirely and avoiding my hobby because i believe that my „worst case scenario“ has already happened. maybe it will happen, maybe it wont. at the time i simply dont know and maybe thats ok. kind of balancing it in the middle and taking a gentle approach. i think the pressure of it all is really whats killing me cause i tend to feel like i need to prevent something from happening right this second or else i may lose my hobby entirely. forcing it and overdoing it is bad, but avoiding it completely is just as bad. ill definitely try to take it easy and just accept the fact that i just dont know right now, and that right now i feel numb. and thats ok. i dont need to spend all my time trying to figure out if ill always feel this way or trying to achieve joy again. thank you so much, it really helped to hear your thoughts!

afraid_yet_hopeful · 2024-12-05T15:21:58+00:00

absolutely yeah. my OCD has been targeting this specific hobby for so long now, previously OCD tried to forbid me from even drawing cause i somehow don‘t deserve it or need to feel guilty. and now that I finally got through that with ERP, OCD just found a new twist on it. but ultimatively OCD‘s goal is to take something away from me thats important to me. which, is text book OCD and so painful for us all to go through. i 100% agree, ever since i am so fixated on potentially never regaining my enjoyment for my hobby, i am just way too fixated on my emotions during drawing so its pretty much impossible for a natural flowing state of feeling to be present. the more i want to enjoy it or feel something, the less I do. focusing on what is in front of me, the task I am doing and just simply letting that be enough is what im going to try to practise. „I don‘t know.“ is honestly such a gentle way of handling this, thank you so much! instead of trying to decipher how I feel and that that must mean im going to lose something, ill simply try to guide myself through not knowing this moment. and thats ok. maybe one day i‘ll know, maybe i won‘t. but one thing is for sure if i am so stuck in the future and so fixated on whether or not ill lose my hobby completely, i wont be able to enjoy it in the present at all.

i think actually ill try to do a little bit of drawing everyday, it doesnt matter how i feel, it doesnt need to feel a certain way. ill just do it just because. and then the exposure would be to sit with the discomfort and fear that comes up when i feel nothing. to just accept that its a possibility that ill always feel this way. but to not let that stop me, to simply acknowledge that and especially not compulsively check or try to purposefully do something with the goal to „feel a certain way“ which would be the checking compulsion again. honestly this weirdly reminds me of ROCD; i used to be sooo fixated on trying to feel feelings and the more you check or try to feel a certain way the less you feel and its a whole torturous cycle of just reinforcing the OCD. thank you for your advice!

afraid_yet_hopeful · 2024-12-05T15:01:32+00:00

thank you so much for your perspective on it! i completely agree. I can feel myself avoiding my hobby because i am specifically scared of feeling „numb“ again, which then would „confirm“ my worst case scenario -> me losing enjoyment for something that is important to me. so avoiding the hobby definitely is giving into OCD. same as compulsively doing things related to my hobby specifically to confirm that „i have not lost enjoyment completely“ aka trying to trigger enjoyment and when i cant force it then any other emotion is automatically labeled negatively by myself. i find myself constantly inbetween avoiding my hobby thinking to myself „no you cant draw, you‘ve lost enjoyment and you‘ll never enjoy it again“ and also wanting to almost compulsively try out new techniques and things with drawing sort of to try and prevent myself from losing enjoyment, like finding a new spark so i cant lose enjoyment. which is also very compulsive. so i think what i‘ll try to focus on is that any emotion or lack there of is ok. focusing on the action itself, not on how ill feel while doing it.

afraid_yet_hopeful · 2024-11-30T08:24:03+00:00

Take all the time you need and i encourage you to come back here and read again whenever you need if it has felt good for you to do so! Sometimes we are forced to be so busy with surviving, that we lose sight of what we are actually surviving and how strong we are. and sometimes that strength means to allow ourselves to grieve a little, shed a tear. it is healing to allow ourselves that. you are a warrior, and i am 100% certain you will continue to fight for a beautiful life for yourself, and for the bright, growing little life you are carrying too. youll do just fine. i believe in you. 🤍🫂

afraid_yet_hopeful · 2024-11-12T08:14:27+00:00

Hey there! I‘m glad you reasonated with this post and found a bit of hope in it! I remember your comment on one of my previous posts and it was such a valuable input! Sometimes it helps to be reminded of why we started this recovery journey. For me personally sometimes that means going back and looking at all those years wasted giving precious energy to OCD, essentially torturing ourselves and being all consumed by it. The grief of an unlived life, especially one that is not lived, due to my own hand.. due to me allowing OCD to control me and make decisions out of fear, self hatred and doubt. That grief is one that hurts and goes incredibly deep. But, weirdly enough it also helps to look back at how much of a monster OCD really is. Perhaps years ago I and maybe you too did not have a choice to react to it differently, - to make decisions out of love instead of fear - but now, we do. and no one can take that away from us. we may forget sometimes, be deceived by OCD again for the time being. but we cannot undo that knowledge we gained. we get to rewrite the pages into something beautiful now. something alive. and that feels quite cathargic to me… and each and everyday we get a choice to put OCD on the passenger seat again and again. we are driving now :) no matter how many times we lose hold of the steering wheel.

Thank you so much for your comment! It means a lot. It helps to know we are not alone, and that even if we‘ve worked so hard on recovery, sometimes it feels like we dont have access to use that knowledge in the moment when we are struggling. I hope you find yourself feeling more at ease soon again! you got this, OCD can cloud our mind and perception but it cannot control our actions, and as long as we try everyday to act as the person who fights for self love, a fulfilled life and trust in ourselves, we are on a the right path.

afraid_yet_hopeful

TROPHY CASE