Staying in the Room in MY OWN THERAPY

What Therapy Taught Me About Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Exposure Response Prevention (ERP Therapy), and Relational Work 

I did not walk into therapy feeling ready.

I walked in tense, unsure, and already questioning the decision. My mind was busy evaluating everything. The therapist. The setting. Whether this would help or make things worse. I was trying to decide if it was safe to stay before anything had even started.

I sat in the waiting room rehearsing conversations that had not happened yet. In a word: I was totally SPOOKED!

When the therapist entered the waiting room, she did not try to settle me down. She did not explain or reassure me. She simply met me where I was and invited me in.

That mattered more than I understood at the time.

The early sessions were not clean or efficient.

I talked. I circled. I explained things carefully. I asked questions that sounded thoughtful but carried urgency underneath. I wanted clarity. I wanted to feel grounded before leaving. I wanted some sense that things were moving in the right direction.

Sometimes I left feeling steadier. Other times I left unsettled.

When I left unsettled, I assumed something had gone wrong.

What I did not yet understand was that the unsettled moments were often where the real work was happening.

Over time, a pattern became hard to miss. I would ask a question. The therapist would respond. I would feel a brief sense of relief. Then almost immediately, another doubt would surface. Another angle. Another thing that needed to be clarified.

Nothing ever stayed resolved for long.

Eventually it became clear that the issue was not the questions themselves. It was the relationship to uncertainty underneath them. The feeling that I could not move forward unless things felt settled internally. The sense that not knowing was somehow dangerous.

This is one of the most common ways Obsessive Compulsive Disorder shows up in real life.

Not necessarily through visible rituals, but through mental checking, reassurance seeking, and an ongoing pressure to resolve uncertainty before acting or deciding.

That pressure showed up clearly in the room.

I remember watching the therapist closely as she responded. Tracking her tone. Her confidence. Whether she seemed sure enough. When she finished speaking, I felt relief for a moment and then the familiar pull to ask one more question.

At some point, instead of answering again, she slowed things down.

She did not label anything. She did not interpret my childhood or explain OCD. She simply pointed out what was happening between us. How quickly the relief faded. How uncomfortable it was to let something remain unresolved. How strong the pull was to fix that discomfort.

She stayed with me while that urge was present.

That was not a behavioral exercise. It was relational work.

Yes, ERP therapy principles were there. I was being exposed to uncertainty and not neutralizing it right away. But what made it possible was the relationship. The fact that someone was with me in that moment, noticing it, naming it, and not rushing to make it go away.

The work was not about stopping questions.

It was about learning how to stay connected while uncertainty was present.

There were sessions where nothing got answered. Where the discomfort lingered. Where I wanted the therapist to resolve things for me and she did not. Those moments felt inefficient and uncomfortable.

They were also deeply corrective.

Because that is how Obsessive Compulsive Disorder actually loosens its grip. Not through perfect answers, but through learning that uncertainty can be present without needing to be solved, avoided, or handed off to someone else.

Over time, this shifted how I related to doubt more generally.

I noticed moments outside therapy where I would normally pause, review, and try to get things just right before acting. I practiced moving forward without that internal permission. I noticed the discomfort rise and fall. I noticed that life continued.

The change was not dramatic.

But it was real.

Decisions took less energy. Mental noise softened. The sense that everything had to feel settled before life could move forward began to loosen.

Now from the therapist’s chair

When someone comes to me for OCD therapy, this is the level we work on.

We do not spend sessions debating the content of thoughts or chasing certainty. We pay attention to how uncertainty is being handled in the moment. How reassurance is being sought. How discomfort enters the room and what happens next.

ERP principles matter, but they are not mechanical. They live inside the relationship. Sometimes the work is not answering a question. Sometimes it is slowing things down. Sometimes it is staying present together when everything in the system wants relief.

I am not trying to train people to tolerate discomfort for its own sake.

I am helping people build a different relationship to uncertainty so they can live, decide, and connect without Obsessive Compulsive Disorder setting the terms.

If you are looking for OCD therapy that is grounded, relational, and practical, you can learn more on my OCD Therapy page or reach out through the Contact page to schedule a consultation.