Dealing with Anxiety When Leaving the House

Thank you so, so much for the thoughtful response. I really appreciate it 🥺 I did ERP with my fears of death/car accidents/hospitals and it saved my life. So thank you for the exposure suggestions with this 🤍 I also love the saying and I’m going to remind myself of that when I’m anxious about it. Take care 🤍

I definitely have that and ugh it's THE WORST. If I remember right, this stuff falls under the harm subtype of OCD. I used to spend so much longer getting ready because I kept having to go back and double check again, and then do the same stuff with my car once I got somewhere too. One thing I've learned about this is that by constantly second guessing whether or not I did something and going back to check, I'm essentially telling my brain that my memory can't be trusted, and then that becomes a vicious cycle and bleeds into other parts of my life. So I've been working a lot on stopping that cycle. What's helped me make some progress is doing ERP with an OCD specialized therapist. Like with any other type of OCD, doing the compulsions makes the OCD stronger because you're validating the obsession as a real concern and that means you have to keep doing it. Another vicious cycle. One of the things I've done in ERP is just not interacting with the thoughts. Like my OCD will say "are you sure the oven was turned off and won't burn down the building?" And instead of going back and checking, I just say "maybe I did, maybe I didn't. Maybe that'll happen, maybe it won't. I don't know, and neither do you." And then just ignoring the OCD kicking and screaming until eventually it either stops, or I give in and do the compulsion anyway. Some days I do really well, other days not so much. But my therapist said that even waiting a bit longer than I usually do helps take power away from the OCD, and then we can continue to build on that. It's hard, but I couldn't recommend it more. ERP has completely changed my life.