Ep. 290 Do I Have to Stop All My Compulsions‪?‬ Your Anxiety Toolkit - Anxiety & OCD Strategies for Everyday

In This Episode, we discuss: Is it important that you stop doing all your compulsions?
How can I practice Self-Compassion as you move through recovery?
How can you balance facing fears and also being gentle on yourself?
Links To Things I Talk About: ERP School: https://www.cbtschool.com/erp-school-lp
Episode Sponsor: This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com.  CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors.  Go to cbtschool.com to learn more.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION 
This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 290. 
Welcome back, everybody. 290, that sounds like a lot of podcast episodes. It’s funny. Sometimes I don’t think of it. If you have asked me on the street, I’d say, “Yeah, I’d have about maybe 110 in the can.” But 290, that is a lot of episodes. I do encourage you to go back and listen to them, especially the earlier ones. They’re my favorite. But no, go back, play around, check out the ones that you love. There’s probably some things there that you could probably go back and have a good giggle at.
All right. We today are talking about a question that came from a student in one of my courses. I’ve found this question to be so important. I wanted to bring it in and have it be a podcast episode because I think this is a very important question and I think it’s something we can all ponder for ourselves.
Now, before we go into it, I would like to give you the “I did a hard thing.” This is a segment where someone shares a hard thing that they’ve done. And I love the “I did a hard thing” segment probably as much as anything.
This one is from anonymous and they said:
“I have contamination OCD. And one thing I’ve avoided for a very long time is raw meat and eggs. Over the winter, I discovered that ERP is so much EASIER (and I use this term very loosely in capital letters) if my exposures are value-based.” This is so good, Anonymous. “So I decided that I wanted to be the mom that baked with her kids, anxiety be darned. I wanted my kids to have warm memories baking in the kitchen with their mom as the snow fell. So each week over the winter, we picked a new recipe, and over the weekend we made it as a family. The first time I cracked an egg, my husband took out his phone and took a picture. He was so proud. The exposure was still hard and I didn’t feel calmer at least while baking, but I tried my best to present and enjoy the time with my kiddos. Later, my son brought home A Joy Is book made at his school. Each page had something on it that brought him joy – fishing with dad, some are vacations. And there on the page.” Oh my God, Anonymous, I’m getting goosebumps. “There on a page was ‘making cookies from scratch with mom.’” Oh my God, I think I’m crying. Oh my goodness. I have goosebumps everywhere. “It is so hard to measure success with ERP sometimes, but that gets real, tangible evidence that I had accomplished something and it felt so good.”
Holy my stars, Anonymous. This is incredible. Wow. This is what it’s all about, you guys. This is what it’s all about. For those of you who are listening, I don’t read these before the episode. I literally read them as just I pull them up and I read them. This one has taken my breath away. I just need a second. Oh my goodness, that is so beautiful. So beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. Oh my gosh, that is so perfect for this week’s episode. All right, here we go.

 
This week’s episode is about a question, like I said, is it okay to keep doing some of my compulsions? Again, thi