Hey!
I go by Kai, I'm from Sydney, Australia and I've had OCD for 17 years.
OCD and anxiety is debilitating. I remember when it was at its peak during my adolescence I would have given you 1 million dollars just to have a day without it.
It got to the point that it started manifesting into other mental health disorders such as BFRB (Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviours) and I would pick and bite at my lips and my skin.
Then I started obsessing about health and realised I had health anxiety (hypochondriacism).
It's been quite the journey!
But as I grew up, I grew to live with it.
Then I took it upon myself to try ERP and that has helped immensely! ERP, or Exposure and Response Prevention, trains your brain that there is nothing to fear if you don’t do the rituals. ERP encourages you to face your fears and let obsessive thoughts occur without ‘putting them right’ or ‘neutralising’ them with compulsions.
I will always have OCD, but ERP has definitely helped with the rituals and day to day living. Sometimes when I’m super stressed I succumb to them but nowhere near as much as I used to pre ERP. Listening to podcasts about ERP has helped so much, also following OCD specialists on social media.
I then discovered the rings. I wish I had these rings during the peak of my ERP therapy. To use them when my anxiety peaked during my exposures, they would of helped immensely. So now it is my mission to not only educate and help others along their recovery journey, but to also bring these rings to their attention as a way to centre them, be there for them and help them through the hard times.
- Kai x