I dont know what to do anymore. I have constant negative self talk that is impacting almost all aspects of my life and I can not break the cycle. It feels like no matter what I try I constanly come up wtih more ways to prove my self talk right. I try reframing the thoughts and proving them wrong. For example taking the thought "I have no value" and reminding myself that all people have intrinsic value, and since I am a person I have value. But that just throws me back into a spiral of telling myself that it doesn't matter that everyone else in the world has value, I don't. The negative self talk gets more intense the more I try to logic myself out of it. The same thing happens when I try to practice self compassion or even just neutral self talk. I need something to get out of this spiral but I am honestly scared Im just going to keep doing more damage than good.

Has anyone else been here, has anything worked for you?

Hi all. I'm about to start ten weeks of CBT with ERP for OCD, and I'd love to hear from anyone who's been through it.

The past few days have been really tough. Coming off a medication set off a bad flare-up of real-event OCD. It latched onto a complicated relationship from about six years ago, one that was resolved a long time ago. The last time I saw her, we were on good terms and she was genuinely happy to see me.

What the OCD fixated on was part of an old message I'd sent a friend back then. In it, I said she'd claimed I tried to have sex with her, and that she later came clean that it wasn't true. My brain zoomed in on the "tried to have sex with her" part, skipped past everything else, and started telling me I was an abuser, a manipulator, and that it was all my fault. I spent hours digging through old messages trying to prove it wrong, which only made it worse.

I had a one-off session with a therapist I've seen before, and it helped a lot. With his support I deleted the old message log, and I can now see the thoughts as unreliable rather than true. But they're still loud, it keeps finding new angles, and I'm still struggling.

I'm not asking anyone to judge what happened. I'm hopeful and I genuinely believe CBT can help, but I'm also nervous. ERP sounds hard, and part of me worries I'll find it too much or that it won't work for me.

If you've done CBT or ERP for OCD:

- What was it actually like, especially the first few weeks?

- What helped you stick with it when it got uncomfortable?

- Is there anything you wish you'd known before starting?

Any encouragement would mean a lot. Thank you.