>>29270185
It's ACT. Exposure therapy on its own didn't work for me. If you just exposure yourself to the panic, it could drive someone with OCD to take their life, depending on the trauma.
For me, I spent the first 28 years of my life untreated. So once I began getting better, relapsing into that traumatic state was dreadful. I was afraid of losing my progress, relationships, work, skills, house. I knew how my thought process was then, very defeatist, and I knew how easily I could go back to that, so I would rather count to 10 a few times a day than do that.
If I had done ERP without ACT, I could've very well lost my "progress" and relapsed to that depression. Key insight with ACT is that both the "depression" and the "progress" was OCD, and you wouldn't have convinced me the progress was OCD too in a million years had I not gone through what I did with that woman. This is why they say the hardest part about treating OCD is informing the person that they have it.
ACT cured me. ERP is the last step in ACT.
