ReImagine Therapy

ReImagine Therapy I'm Jessics Hayes and my company is ReImagine Therapy, where I provide Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

Free 15 minute phone consultation before any assessment appointment to make sure I can help with what you're looking for support with.

02/08/2026

Exposure and Response Prevention, or ERP, has been known as the gold standard in OCD therapy for a while.

And i am a CBT therapist who has specialised in OCD for a number of years and do believe in the approaches within it (including ERP) to treat OCD.

But, despite agreeing that ERP can be a really helpful approach, I do think it can lack a few things if done exactly as the usual protocols state.

And this is why.

30/07/2026

This may be controversial but I think it is important to talk about because this shows up in my therapy room with men with OCD in particular (but any gender can fixate on this).

Social media and society is getting loud about some really important topics, and cancel culture is strong.

I believe these topics are really important to discuss and raise awareness around- because they help people a lot and are aimed at making us safer.

But they can be really difficult for people with OCD that has moral themes, OCD where someone fears being a bad person.

I have said it before, that people with OCD, and this theme in particular- are really good people who would never want to hurt someone.

The messages in society are aimed at people who are not as caring as you, not as mindful as you, and those who are not fearing being a bad person.

They are not signs that you need to monitor and analyse your own behaviour more. And you are also not a bad person if you feel the urge to avoid these conversations- you are just trying to cope with your anxiety.

Just like the messages around health and needing to check your body more are not aimed at people with health anxiety that always check too much anyway.

People with OCD see these conversations and stories and use it as a sign that they need to do more to check they are behaving ethically. This is a message to say that you do not need to increase your behaviours. In fact, if your OCD is already fixated on this, you likely need to reduce them.

So please don't shame yourself if you find these topics difficult to hear about. You just want to be a good person and are terrified of hurting others.

28/07/2026

Strange analogy but one I use for a lot of my OCD clients.

We are never aiming for something to feel AS GOOD as a compulsion or avoiding the scary thing.

But by doing a little bit of work before challenging the compulsions, it should 'take the edge off' of the OCD enough that you can then challenge it.

Because you may crave that lovely dopamine hit really intensely on top of wanting to get certainty or feel like you are preventing the scary thing- alternatives aren't going to hit the spot.

So by; looking after yourself and your sensory needs, being compassionate to yourself, engaging your brain in interests to positively obsess over, building a tolerance for uncertainty etc...these together woll be your ni****ne patch equivalent to then make it a little easier to challenge your OCD and not fall into compulsions.

It still takes hard work and motivation, just less than it could.

Big Caveat here is that I am not referring to specific strategies that can turn into compulsions- this is all about that work that we do to build general wellbeing and emotion regulation because OCD often replaces these.

27/07/2026

OCD makes you feel like you need to control your fear and control the scary outcome by doing compulsions.

BUT this is actually OCD controlling YOU- you don't have the control.

True control is when you choose how to live your life around the OCD.

Sitting with uncertainty, re-engaging with life, and making logical risk-assessments to keep yourself safe help with your control. As does choosing to prioritise self-care and learning to ride out uncomfortable emotions instead of trying to escape them.

This means choosing how to behave based on your values, not your fears, and choosing which compulsions to challenge too.

Having control is when you choose how you want to live your life and say f£ck you to the OCD.

Save this if you need the reminder of where the true control is.

25/07/2026

Contamination OCD exposures can feel really uncomfortable.

They can cause anxiety and disgust- 2 emotions that can be really difficult to sit with.

With anxiety, we aim to do the exposure over and over until the feelings eases.

With disgust, we aim more for learning to tolerate it more over time instead of expecting a big reduction.

Disgust tends to take lomger to challenge.

So, which emotions did this bring up for you?

I do not have contamination OCD and so this was more of a disgust and ick feeling for me.

I embraced it by touching all over my kindle and then sat with this feeling for a while.

I eventually went back and cleaned the kindle properly, along with the case- but only after I had done a lot to challenge it. More for my 3 year old, who keeps eating his hands after touching all of my stuff!

Can you keep watching this video until the feelings ease?

What would you do if your go-to self-care item fell into the toilet?

21/07/2026

Doing exposure therapy, or behavioural experiments, to challenge your OCD can be scary.

Because your brain has been telling you to do things in this way and so it won't be happy if you go against it at first.

This is why i advocate strongly for working on general emotion regulation, attention training, and building a tolerance for uncertainty before challenging OCD.

By the time you do exposure work, you should feel more confident in your ability to cope and have some space for your anxiety to temporarily increase a little to do the work.

Sometimes, you are likely to get more intrusions, or false memories sometimes in response to the experiments or exposures. Just because your OCD doesn't like you changing things up.

But you will be going into them expecting this to happen and planning with your therapist how to respond to them.

And something that really helps is reminding yourself going into these challenges that your OCD is going to kick off and so you aren't going to pay attention to it, no matter what it tries to convince you- you are highlighting how unreliable your thoughts are going into them.

And visualising the thoughts coming from an external image that you don't trust or respect can help with this too- imagine if a ridiculous cartoon character is the one saying these things to you instead of your own head, for instance- it feels less believable by default.

What do you think of these tips?

Do you have any other things that help you to cope when doing exposures or when challenging your OCD temporarily gives you scary thoughts too?

18/07/2026

Harm OCD can be terrifying enough, especially when someone is a parent and it focuses on their baby or child.

Harm OCD can sound like;
-Urges or images of you harming your child
-Doubt and false memories thinking you may have previously harmed them
-Thoughts of harming coming to them in general
-Magical thinking, believing you have to do random tasks or thought processes to prevent harm coming to them
-Fears that a loved one will/has harmed them

If you have listened to my OCD podcast, , you'll know that i don't have OCD but I do talk about harming thiughts about my children fairly regularly in the Brain Spam feature- where we share intrusive thoughts of the week.

You'll also know that I have accidentally bitten down on my 3 year old's fingers before in the past- and the mum guilt is real.

So, what better way to challenge those harm thoughts by embracing and leaning into something that feels like a real possibility when those thoughts get loud?

As you know, OCD therapy often focuses on exposures- doing the scary thing without any compulsions, repeatedly until your brain learns it is safe.

And if you follow me, you will also know thay I make videos of exposures to show you ideas for challenging OCD-and people save the videos too, because just watching them can be an exposure for some people.

My 3 year old is a sensory seeker, his hands are constantly stroking my face and mouth- especially at bedtime to soothe himself.

This is just a small clip, I did this a fair few times (until I annoyed him). I got the urge to bite hard, I imagined myself doing it. I continued to lightly press my teeth (covered with my lips) together to pretend to eat his hands until the feelings eased.

What do you think about this exposure? Could you do it?

If you do, let me know! And comment below if you have any questions about harm OCD, exposure therapy, perinatal OCD, or anything OCD-related đŸ˜€



17/07/2026

Contamination OCD exposure.

As an OCD therapist, i do a lot of these things to show my clients that they are doable and safe.

Normally, I am a clean and hygienic person. I have specialised in OCD for years now and have done a lot of exposures for all subtypes of OCD.

During ERP, we work up to quite extreme things. We want to do really scary things that we wouldn't do in day to day life to prove that they can be safe and to habituate to the fear.

When we have done them, we can then choose how to live life day to day in a way that isn't dictated by the OCD. So, we don't expect you to be licking shoes and touching toilets in your general life when you have finished ERP, we just do these things to crack the OCD before making your own rules for cleaning and living. Just like if we watch scary movies for harm OCD and then you may not want to watch them in general after therapy finishes if you aren't a fan of them.

And for reasurrance, I have done A LOT of exposures like this over the years and haven't once caught an illness from any of them.

Do you have any ERP questions? Drop them here!

13/07/2026

I am up for an OCD exposure challenge.

If you want some exposures in France then let me know. Get as scary as you want.

If you need inspiration, I will let you know that safety rules are lax at this site for the kids and the toilet is in a separate room to any sinks...

05/07/2026

Fear of breast cancer is really common in health anxiety.

There can be a belief that you will get cancer, or that you have it and need to find it. The scariest part may be of dying, of leaving children, or of the diagnosis process itself.

Compulsions can include researching, avoiding health news, avoiding doctors, excessive doctor visits, excessive checking, avoiding baths and being without clothes.

This exposure is to avoid the flip flop effect of excessive checking and avoidance.

The idea is to treat your body as a neutral thing and to show your brain that you can be vigilant about your health by just being aware of it and noticing it- that you don't need to be hypervigilent or avoid it completely.

It rebuilds a trust in your body and stops your brain from thinking that you are unwell or about to find a threat.

The idea is to not hone in on your body when you do this- just glancing and soft, casual touch. Then ensure you don't fall into other compulsions like ruminating, researching or checking.

Even watching this video and reading the caption can be a first step, and you can do some attention training ready to help you to not fall into rumination.

What do you think? Is this something you can try?

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