As mentioned earlier, I am doing a lot of walking now to become fitter. To make sure that I follow it through, I have also made an accountability partner who also walks. We report our progress to one another. I walk at least 10 km five days a week. That is about 14,000 steps. Recently, my accountability partner did 8,000 steps on a day and said, ‘Just this much today.’ I said to him, ‘There was a time when 6,000 steps seemed enough. We’ve come far ahead of that’ and we laughed about it. The objective behind blowing this trumpet here is that I know that I have been able to follow this through more regularly because I have an accountability partner and I do not want to report zero progress when he is reporting his. Both of us are conscientious enough to keep this going.

This was confirmation of a thought I have had for a while that accountability partners work better than just one person reporting progress to a coach/mentor. Or even one person reporting their progress to a sponsor as in Alcoholics Anonymous programs. I initiated this in the Whatsapp group that I run and assigned accountability partners to people there for doing their exposures and reporting to one another. For example, two people with contamination OCD make good accountability partners for one another. They do their exposures, report that to their accountability partner and encourage one another. And it has worked there as well. It is better for people to feel that they are at the same level as their accountability partners and not lower. It encourages them to be the mentor sometimes and other times, the mentee.

So, if you can find someone with Harm OCD and become their accountability partner while they become yours, you may be more encouraged to do your exposures and get better. 

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