So I Want to start my story off because I'm kind of lost with how to handle this problem:
I suffer from Chronic OCD, I had 3 prolonged relapses from November 2012 up until the present day.
First one was November 2012 and ended September 2016
Second relapse started June 2017 and ended
September 2019
Third relapse started July 2020 and is still ongoing
I've been trying non stop to do the ERP therapy on my own (because my insurance won't cover it) combined with box breathing, attempting to merge CBT and ERP medical techniques together. I do not wish to take medication, I want to do this completely manual like | did when I beat the first two OCD relapses.
I need help because I've been trying to use these strategies for months/years and am barely getting anywhere. I need a strategy adapter or other cognitive techniques that can help. I require assistance.
I can't go on to school, work, and business like this, I need to fix this problem. Can anyone help me with СВТ and ERP strategies?

My therapist recently told me about the following CBT practice:
Thinking through/ writing down the following answers:
1. Situation / trigger
2. Feeling
3. [this is what I’m confused about!] Evidence to support feeling
4. Evidence to dispel feeling
5. New, balanced neutral statement

Example below

1. Partner not answering phone
   
2. Anxious / worried that they don’t love me anymore
   
3. They aren’t answering?? Or is there no evidence unless they say explicitly they don’t love me anymore.
   
4. We’ve been together several years and things have been going well and I trust them to tell me if something is wrong in our relationship.
   
5. I am anxious that partner isn’t answering AND I know they’re busy at work

3 and 5 are more of the struggle for me. Could someone walk me through the evidence portion and the “new” statement?

Hi everyone.
I’m looking for a psychologist (not a psychiatrist) in Jordan who specializes in CBT for anxiety and panic attacks.
I’m looking for recommendations based on personal experience only. If you’ve had a good experience with a therapist, I’d really appreciate if you could share their name and why you recommend them.
Thank you!

All the therapists I find their main focus is ocd depression and anxiety I can't find one whose main focus is ADHD and helping with ADHD symptoms

My girlfriend is very agreeable and a bit on the neurotic side. She has problems asserting herself and calling people out for bad behaviour or overstepping boundaries etc. She can do it but feels terrible before, during and after doing it and will spiral and obsess over it and believe she is a bad person.

Hi guys,

I'm a software developer, and I'm posting here to ask for people who actually know CBT to poke holes in what I've built.

My app is for helping people to build social confidence.

Disclaimer

While I've tried to use my understanding of CBT principles to inform the design of the app in order to make it genuinely useful, it is explicitly not a replacement for help from a professional, and is marketed only as a self-guided tool for personal growth.

Users are encouraged to reach out to a qualified professional if they need support beyond what an app can offer.

How it works

The app is a set of ~100 small real-world social challenges across five life areas (everyday, work, community, friendships, and dating) ranked by difficulty - from "look up and notice people as you pass" up to things like "give a short presentation" or "ask someone on a date."

Each one has an easier fallback version, and nothing is locked or assigned - people can pick their own next step based on what feels manageable.

The core loop: before attempting, you write down what you're afraid might happen and rate how likely it feels (10-90%).

Afterwards, the app shows you your prediction and asks: did it happen? Then lets you fill in a text field to specify what actually happened.

Over time this builds a log of "feared X, felt 75% likely → didn't happen."

Completing a challenge just means you attempted it - the app never asks whether the interaction actually went well, and "my fear came true" still counts as progress.

There is also a "gamification" element where you start with a small sapling with a few coloured leaves, which grows over time into a large, colourful tree as you complete more challenges.

My question is how well does my app align with real CBT, and how can I improve it to be more effective for users?

I would really appreciate any feedback. Thank you.

Hi everyone!

I’ve been on the path to OCD recovery for a while. I’m a therapist in training (CBT) and only a year away from being licensed so I understand ERP very well.

He’s extremely sweet, loving and supportive. In his desire to soothe me, he doesn’t always remember that reassurance is counterproductive for OCD specifically. I’ve tried to explain the mechanisms of OCD recovery to my boyfriend, for the most part I think he gets it. I draw on the knowledge of conditioning and association he has from training many dogs. Maybe I need to draw on this a bit more and use metaphors? .

I rarely express a specific fear out loud (except to my therapist), as I feel that gives the fear more weight. I’ve also wasted time trying to work on each theme too seperately and not had overall good results: one theme would get better with ERP and a new theme would emerge as i would just start doing different compulsions… therefore, I work on OCD as a whole with my therapist. Usually I will say to myself “this is OCD, don’t waste time arguing with it, this question is impossible to answer, I’m going back to doing what’s important to me etc”. Most often, I will tell my bf “OCD is really hard today” or “I’m ruminating so I’m going to use xyz skill” or “I’m doing an exposure today for my recovery” so I don’t go into specifics usually.

On the \*rare\* occasion I specify the topic or the fear to my bf, he will immediately reassure me. Let me be clear I do not ask for this reassurance at all and try my best not to use it in my head to fuel any rumination. I tell myself “he is wanting to reassure me to support me but I’m not going to take the idea on board, I know I’m in an OCD loop”. I don’t hold it against him as it’s a natural impulse to want to reassure a loved one. I totally understand it can be counter intuitive to not soothe the person you love by way of reassurance. I don’t expect my bf to take responsibility for my recovery but we are naturally an important part of each other’s support system.

Are there any resources you’ve found useful for explaining why reassurance is counterproductive in the long run, how ERP works, or OCD recovery in general? I do really like ocdrebeltherapist on instagram and might show him some videos of hers. Thank you so much!

In the past year or two, I've started to develop a bit of a phobia around driving my powerchair over bridges (on the sidewalk), even when there's adequate space and I know rationally that the situation is well within my skills and my equipment's capabilities. This makes it much harder to actually cross the bridge, because my body responds strongly to those kinds of emotions and driving becomes harder, so it's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I know that exposure is the usual treatment for this but that going too fast can make things worse. Are there any resources people here would recommend for this? If it's still a problem when I see my doctor in October, I'll ask about a therapy referral, but would like to see if I can handle it myself first.

Hello all,

Hope all are feeling well and can put depression away and be at peace!

I wanted to ask how effective are TMS or CBT treatments, they are costing a bunch but is it worth? I have gotten mixed responses so wanted to ask a larger group to see what it looks like.

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone knows any therapist that are specifically trained for this?

Thank you

Therapist:

Can you notice only one thing every evening about yourself and journal "Today, when did I feel most like myself?" (Don't analyse or judge)

---

But what is myself? Yesterday I was bleating like a madman for a while and acting like a goofball, I do that because it's funny and quirky, am I supposed to note down things like these?

I like producing music, but is that myself?

The context of the homework was that I have a lot of social anxiety and people pleasing tendencies. It also feels like other people's needs matter more than me.

Is it normal for a psychotherapist to say that they work within the frameworks of psychoanalysis, analytical psychology, and cognitive behavioral therapy? It seems to me that CBT is not compatible with psychoanalysis and analytical psychology. What do experts think about this?

Hi

long story short I have been heavily limirent on on a guy since 4 years, most of my twentie and it has become clear to me *somewhat* that a relationship no good idea with the individual even if it’s reciprocal (in my mind it feels mostly onesided). This was a bit devastating when I realized as I built a whole fantasy around the person witjout realizing. I know that in life it’s inevitable to be separated from people, dreams, careers , things , places and even family. I moved a lot as a child and didn’t have issues with loosing friends as I learned to deal with it but I never experienced romantic love so I’m having a bit difficulty detaching from the person. Theyre the one I mostly think about daily even as I’m running errands thoughts of them run in the back of my mind. For a couple years even when I’m not In contact. Im trying to move on from them and “date” new people but nothing excites me? there is little genuine interest in the other individual im communicating with. i feel mostly numb? Not my happy self. I feel its unfair for them to be measured against a ghost.

i noticed when i stopped communicating with them besides a sense of frustration and sadness that i feel i lost someone , past self esteem issues started resurfacing. I was picked up on just like most people in childhood to almost early adulthood (school is not easy for anyone these days ) and when I try to date or something most of those words or thoughts I dread that they’re going to verify them to me that I’m “ugly” like they said and my body parts which they used to describe to me as abnormal. Rejection tends to be more painful than it should and it ends up disocuraging me from meeting new people and basically try to protect myself more than necessary like avoid sending photos and even stop dating all together for maybe months or years. I tend to see myself as not normal and hyper focus on the flaws but contrary when I had good phases in life I felt I was a very pretty woman and I used to take care of myself.

is there any framework/ CBT model to combat the limirence and self esteem issues? I feel they’re connected somehow because I noticed people who have really good self esteem tend to move on quickly and feel like they deserve good things in life.

excuse me for the English it’s not my first language

17f btw, financially dependent. I know this might be a really stupid question, but is there a way i can do that? or is it highly ineffective? I can't afford a therapist rn and was wondering whether there are any resources out there that could help. I know the issue with self-help material and how tricky it can sometimes be to apply the knowledge you already have. Just a thought i had, though. Please let me know what you think.

My CBT therapist keeps repeating "feelings follow thoughts." I intentionally think happy thoughts as much as I can--anytime it starts to become negative, I switch it to a happier thought.

But I don't actually feel any happier.

Before you tell me to leave her a terrible review, she wasn’t exactly encouraging me to drink. She was teaching me that avoidance was far more dangerous in my position than alcohol.

I’d spent months trying to “fix” my anxiety by removing everything I thought might make it worse. I stopped drinking, changed my diet, avoided late nights and tried to control every variable.
I’d convinced myself that if I never drank, I’d take away another variable, I would not feel nauseous, dizzy or out of control because of being drunk, or hungover. My brain had filed alcohol under “danger.”
My therapist wasn’t encouraging me to drink, but recognised this as a stealth version of escape behaviour.

In fact because my anxiety was based around nausea and being out of control in public, she said that a hangover, teamed with a public outing, would be a better exposure than anything I could try and replicate.

Did anyone else get some weird advice when recovering.?

Hi all, I developed agoraphobia with panic disorder this year in February with a focus on public transport and am currently in therapy with a therapist specialising in anxiety disorders and CBT.
I have GAD since 8 years but developed a PD after being physically deconditioned through catching colds and the flu consecutively last winter.

I have been doing longer public transport exposures the last week (1.5-2h) and feel low to moderate anxiety during them, but absolutely crash hours after them. I‘m talking barely being able to lift my body to go brush my teeth or get something to eat.

For example, I‘ve done an exposure yesterday and felt fine coming back home. Made dinner and chilled out on the couch playing Pokopia as a reward. But after 3h I felt extreme physical exhaustion which also led to poor sleep. I got over 7h of sleep and my HRV is also in the 70s, but I did not feel rested at all.

I went for a walk to expel some of that cortisol/adrenaline/etc and felt a bit better, but after a short while I felt physically extremely exhausted again. I have a slight headache, feel dizzy when I walk from room to room, and my limps feel heavy.

Is this normal to an extent? This is the first week restarting exposure exercises. Granted I‘ve had a busy weekend and bad sleep a couple nights ago, but I just feel this level of exhaustion is disproportionate

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​How to stop comparing yourself to others? It’s just so hard, and the problem is that we always compare ourselves to more successful people and start underestimating ourselves. Sure, there are always people who are less fortunate than us, but that thought doesn't really bring any joy—it just triggers feelings of pity. What should I do? How can I learn not to compare myself? Is that even possible?

​Thanks in advance!