Setting realistic expectations for your anxiety or OCD treatment is a crucial part of building your foundation for treatment.

In this blog post, we explore five realistic expectations that you can hearken back to whenever you find yourself feeling discouraged and needing a confidence boost.

Each of these expectations aims to foster resilience and empower individuals on their path toward living their bravest, boldest lives.

1. Anxiety recovery does not mean you have to eventually *like* all of the things that you are working on in treatment.

Someone with flight anxiety may never love flying. That is not the goal! The goal is to reduce your avoidance of things that interfere with your values. If you can increase your confidence in your ability to handle those situations and your tolerance for discomfort to the extent that you can get on the plane without impairing distress – that’s success!

2. You do not have to expose yourself to every single thing that you fear.

If you dislike horror movies and they don’t bring value to your life – you don’t need to watch them. If you are scared of spiders but you rarely encounter them or think about them, you don’t need to focus your treatment on spiders. The exposures that you should work on are the things that bring value and meaning to your life. If you are avoiding things that you want/need to do – that’s where we want to focus treatment.

3. You are not going to do treatment or recovery *perfect* 100% of the time.

Anxiety will come and go. Engaging in rumination, mental review, checking, or other compulsions may happen sometimes – even when you no longer meet diagnostic criteria for anxiety or OCD. The goal is not to recover perfectly, but rather to learn to create a lifestyle where you learn to respond to your thoughts in more flexible, diverse ways instead of the same fixed patterns. Anxiety can’t win if you change up the patterns and keep it guessing.

4. You are still going to experience discomfort, even when you’re an anxiety and OCD recovery pro.

Life will throw you curve balls. Your brain will have “sticky” days where it’s a lot harder to let go of intrusive thoughts. You will experience challenges, loss, grief, and stressful periods that test you. This is life – there’s no way to bypass that. Successful treatment means that you can experience discomfort with a less extreme reaction to it or resistance to it (this is when anxiety spirals tend to start). Mindfulness skills and DBT skills like radical acceptance can be really helpful.

In conclusion, setting realistic expectations for anxiety and OCD treatment is not about achieving perfection or eliminating discomfort entirely. Rather, it’s about building resilience and empowering yourself to navigate life’s challenges with greater flexibility and confidence. You don’t have to love every situation you encounter, nor face every fear all at once—success lies in reducing avoidance over time and living in accordance with your values. Even as a seasoned recovery pro, setbacks and tough days will occur, but the goal remains steadfast: to respond to these moments with mindfulness and adaptive strategies. Embracing this journey means embracing life in its entirety, with all its complexities and uncertainties, armed with the tools to face them bravely and boldly.

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This content is a not substitute for therapy. This blog is for educational purposes only. I cannot provide tailored therapeutic advice unless you are a therapy client. Reading this blog or listening to audio content does not constitute a therapeutic relationship. If you are seeking therapy, visit psychologytoday.com. If you are in crisis, dial 911 or visit your local emergency room.