I'm afraid of losing my progress

I'm having kind of a rough night. I've been doing ERP for about two months and my overall mood has been improving, I've been better about not doing mental compulsions throughout my day. It has been amazing. Its the least anxious I've felt in years. My anxiety is triggered by people in my life that I love, their emotional distress stresses me out and makes me feel responsible for them and their happiness and i get so overwhelmed. Whenever this happens i have a deep fear that I will be sucked back into the place i was where the emotional load was just too much and would send me into dissociation or a panic attack or apathy, I'm worried that I am not actually recovering at all or that I'm feeling better only to be pulled back under as punishment from a higher power. Or that I've somehow been faking my OCD this whole time. So I guess my fear is that I'm being brought up only so that it'll all come back worse than ever. Or that my lack of reassurance and compulsions is all adding up right now and my not doing my compulsions is getting ready to blow up my entire life or kill soemone that I love or that it's causing all of the horrible things happening in the world. Usually these thoughts only happen when other people are in distress and it feels like it's being put on me but tonight it just is coming up seemingly for no reason. I think this is probably normal? I'm just kind of spinning out and need to put it somewhere

miriamlovesJ...

Date posted: 2d

Thank you for saying this out loud!! You aren’t crazy or anything your mind wants to tell you. I don’t know if this will help - so please take with a tiny grain of salt. I’m new to all this, but what’s been helping me most lately is not running from the anxiety, but instead leaning into it. Acknowledging it, becoming aware of how it makes me feel physically, saying “maybe or maybe not this thing is true. I don’t have to figure it out right now. I’m able to handle the discomfort of being anxious and feeling physically uncomfortable. I’m going to keep living in line with my values and not let this discomfort keep me from living my life” again, this doesn’t automatically take away the anxiety, but it slowly is teaching me that I can still do what’s important to me without feeling it instantly. I’m SO glad ERP has been benefitting you. From what I’m learning, it’s many ups and downs. I believe this isn’t you falling backwards, I see it as you working through the next layer. Applying what you’ve learned to something new. Do you currently talk with an ocd therapist?

Vee92

Date posted: 2d

Oh wow this is the first time I’ve seen someone with my specific theme! My obsessions all revolve around my loved ones, keeping them from feeling distress, and “fixing it” when they do feel distress. You won’t lose your progress. I think of this video game metaphor, relapses like this don’t make you start the entire game all over again, you just reload from your last save. Some boss levels are really hard but the more times you tackle them, the more you learn about them. We got this

pureolife

Date posted: 2d

It’s called a backdoor spike and it’s incredibly common. Most people experience it at one time or another.

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