Do you have OCD? Tell me about it.
02 Nov 2019, 10:50 am
I have quite bad OCD. I think it falls under "pure O" or "pure obsessional", which apparently just means it's mostly mental compulsions instead of, for example, flicking a light switch on and off 18 times.
I struggle mostly with "what if?" thoughts nowadays. Worrying whether my actions have hurt someone at some point in time, constantly analysing what I've said and done in the past and trying to figure out if anything bad happened because of me. It also means i'm prone to "false memory OCD" which means I feel as though I have done something bad and struggle to distinguish "what if?" thoughts from actual memories, which is really scary actually.
I also obsess over things that have actually happened and blow them way out of proportion until they're ridiculous and aren't even close to reality. It's different to delusions in that delusions are something you truly believe despite evidence to contrary, where as I know that my scenarios are ridiculous and most likely untrue yet I just can't stop obsessing so I end up doing mental compulsions like rumination, researching, checking on people, checking my own feelings, analysing memories etc.
I did have a a time where I had physical compulsions where I had to tap a wooden object X number of times in a certain way to neutralise the thought so that it wouldn't come true.
OCD themes I've had in the past are as follows:
Contamination OCD (worried i'd become or had become contaminated by pathogens)
Health OCD (worried i'd got a different cancer every week)
Existential OCD (saw no point in doing anything cuz I'm "gonna die anyway")
Harm OCD (worried i'd sleep walk and hurt someone, worried I HAD sleep walked and killed someone)
HIV OCD (worried i'd caught HIV from ridiculous scenarios. I had 3 HIV tests, all negative but the tests only helped for a little while)
Anyone else suffer with OCD of any kind?
