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Ali. I'm Ali Graymond. I'm an expert in OCD recovery because for the last 19 years, I've been helping people fully recover from OCD. If you would like to do personal coaching with me, all the information is on younhubocd.com you can sign up from there. Let's talk about what level of exposure is too high. So just to give you some an overview, OCD works like this. Rumination plus compulsions plus avoidances equals your current level of anxiety. And that's why in the app we track rumination, compulsions and avoidances, because without them, you have no ocd. So the goal is to get them down to zero. Okay, so now going from that, whenever you face an exposure, whether it's on purpose exposures or accidental life exposures, if you have puro, your whole day is an exposure. And as with most people with compulsions as well, there's people who only have exposures in certain situations. But for most people, it's all day. And this is why traditional OCD recovery can only manage ocd. When people. You hear this online a lot, People are like, well, OCD can only be managed, of course, if you're doing incorrect behaviors all day, such as rumination, compulsions, avoidances. But you're only doing on purpose exposures for an hour. Yes, you're only managing it. The rumors are true. But if you're tracking all day and reducing all day behaviors, meaning I would have done a compulsion, but I'm tracking, so I'm not going to let myself do that. I would have ruminated when on Google, but I'm not going to do that because I'm tracking rumination. You start to pull back, and as you pull back, the anxiety starts to drop because you're not feeding it right. So going back to the question, what level of exposure is too high? It's too high. If you cannot do response prevention, if you cannot disregard afterwards. Because that's the whole point. If you had an exposure, again, whether it's on purpose or not doesn't matter. And then you reacted instead of choosing to disregard. So instead of doing response prevention, you actually did response a lot. Well, that's not good. Now you fed it, now it grew. That's bad, right? So you want to make sure that you are actually choosing to disregard at whatever level that is for most people, I would say with my clients, if possible. I mean, again, with puro, you cannot help with the exposures. Right? They just happen. But generally speaking, I would not go above level maybe like 7 exposure 8 maybe, but, but 7 is probably the max. You know, you don't want to take it that far because again, the higher the exposure, the scarier it's going to be for you and the harder it's going to be for you to react correctly. And the whole point is for you to react correctly. And it's like a muscle, the more you do it, the better you get at it, the more of a push you'll be able to withstand. So those eights and nines eventually will feel like sevens and sixes and then will feel like twos eventually. And then you just be like, don't care about anything, OCD stuff, you know. But right now, where you are in the recovery, if, if an exposure can be controlled, right, if you can control it, and it's let's say over level seven anxiety, or let's say over level eight anxiety, maybe hold off on it until you are mentally stronger to be able to do response prevention. Because again, the key is response prevention. Don't feed the disorder. That's, that's your bottom line. That's why we're tracking, that's why we're reducing. That's why we're doing. That's why again, even with the management of ocd, right, the management mod, they're doing controlled exposures for an hour. Again, doesn't matter what you do the rest of the day. Right, but that's, that's why it's ineffective. But, but the idea that response prevention, meaning not feeding it, is really, really important, still stands. So no matter how people come to recovery, it's. Everybody agrees on that. So that needs to be your focal point of the day. That doesn't matter what comes up. As long as, as much as I can, I'm going to do response prevention. But again, if you can control some of the exposures, like let's say going to this place will give you a level 10 exposure, don't do it because you're gonna crash and burn. But if it gives you level seven, then try. And when you do an exposure that you can control, it's not surprising you also try to go into it like a champion, that you are prepared for the level of anxiety it's going to give you. And you're already making a decision to disregard before you even put yourself in that situation. Thank you for listening. If you have not subscribed, please subscribe. If you would like to do private coaching with me, please sign up through youhave OCD.com I'll see you tomorrow.