Hi Jordan,

Not quite but not far off. You shouldn’t tell your brain “you are safe”. I found out about how to use ERP for RJ from this reddit post. It’s worth a read:

https://www.reddit.com/r/OCD/comments/3oyh06/beat_retroactive_jealousy_top_tips_and_resources/?rdt=58585

As you’ll see from the post, It’s more about allowing yourself to feel the anxiety from triggers without doing anything about them. It’s not suppressing, but you do “prevent” yourself from responding I.e. ruminating / analysing / playing out scenes in your head.

For full disclosure though, as you may guessed from the article, ERP didn’t fix my RJ. What I found was it was useful for exposing myself to the anxiety that came from the thoughts, which in turn made me feel less anxious when I had them, but it didn’t stop me from obsessing. From my experience, ERP is a useful tool but I think it’s more of an adjunct treatment. The reason being is that it can help with compulsions, but it doesn’t completely eliminate obsessions (this is all just my opinion based on my own experience). Perhaps it can, but it didn’t for me.

If you’re curious about ERP though, you may wish to speak to a psychologist who practices it for pure-o OCD (my preference would be for an ACT-based psychologist). ACT was the framework that kept me from relapsing. I didn’t have to “use” ERP after shrooms but I did use ACT.

ATB with your recovery
Michael