Tips for dealing with morality/decisions? I recently found something out about a friend from another friend. It distresses me, but I don’t know where to go from here. My OCD is making it hard to make a choice because it’s saying “this should be an easy, black and white choice. You are bad for not instantly getting rid of this person”. I need help figuring out how *I* feel, not how the OCD feels. Does anyone have advice? I feel like utter trash, I won’t lie.

I’ve been gone for about a month, mostly because I kept seeing messages on here that felt super anxiety-inducing and not understanding of OCD at all. Honestly, it got to the point where I started getting nervous to even open the app. Lately, I’ve been stuck in this OCD loop that I think might be moral scrupulosity or something like that. I’ve been dealing with this thing where I feel like I have to “challenge” stuff mentally or verbally, like if I don’t say something out loud, it feels super uncomfortable. And the thoughts are about heavy stuff, like assault or deportation or just really morally loaded topics. My brain starts picking everything apart. It’s like I have to look at things fairly, and then I get trapped in all these little technicalities. For example, if someone gets assaulted, my brain fixates on stuff like “what was she wearing”even though I know how harmful that line of thinking is. That is exactly the kind of thing my mind zooms in on. It happens with a bunch of topics too, not just that. I feel like I have to give the benefit of the doubt to the aggressor or see “both sides,” and then I end up doubting the victim. And the worst part is, it feels like I truly believe these devil’s advocate thoughts. It feels so real. It’s like I become convinced that the victim might be lying or that there’s some justification for the harm, and I don’t like it. This even happens with my boyfriend and especially his family. I’ll catch my brain flipping narratives or making me question people I trust. this has been a “habit”for as long as I can remember but now it’s happening so much more. I cannot stop doubting. It feels like I’m siding with people who I should have no doubts to be against. I don’t know what to do or what kind of ERP would work for this. I don’t know how to change this. It’s been apart of me so long, it simply feels like me.

(18 and over please) I find that sometimes it's hard for me to tell whether something is an OCD fear or a genuine fear, mostly because OCD deals in taboos and I've never heard the morality of some things even being discussed. I've been stuck for about a month now because I realized that when I was younger, there was a period of time when I had thoughts (they were sexual in nature) that I now know were unethical about a book series I really enjoy. I didn't think that these thoughts were wrong at the time, as I was only an adolescent, but I certainly do now, and I can't help but feel that my interest in this series has been contaminated or tainted in a way I can't recover from. As such, I've been worried that I have to give up the series and everything associated with it (including the music and shows that I found through it) because I can't separate my normal enjoyment of it from the past. It scares me because a huge part of who I am and enjoy came directly from this series, so not only would it suck to give it up, but I'd also have to find all new interests that haven't been tainted. I've never heard of anything like this so there's not really anything to orient the morality of it. I'm pretty sure that this is just rumination and it's okay to move on from something that I did as a kid that I can't change, but every time I try to enjoy it again I can't help but think that it's unethical to continue to enjoy when I had so-and-so thoughts about so-and-so character. I get especially worried about sharing in my interest with friends or family, because how would they react if they found out, for example, that this song I'm showing them is related to this series that I had these terrible thoughts about? Even worse, what if I continue to enjoy it, recommend it to someone, and they start to enjoy it too? Now their lives have been impacted by this book series through me, who used to have these thoughts about it. At the same time, of course, it's hard for me to shun such a large part of myself. The music I love has helped me through so much, including a really rough period with OCD a few years ago. The interests that I've accumulated through the series are things that I'm really passionate about and was considering possibly going into a field for someday. Most of all, the series meant so much to me and basically defined my childhood. I hope that this isn't too similar to reassurance seeking, which I don't recommend or condone, but I just genuinely don't know what's moral for me to do. Has anyone gone through something similar?

I’ve been getting through my POCD fears but now I’m having intense moral / responsibility OCD that is severely affecting my mental health to the point where I’m having immense trouble functioning at work. Mine stems from the fact that I feel the need to seek out weird stuff I remember seeing on the internet and reporting it. This is especially prevalent with porn that I find suspicious online and it causes me to make reports to the cybertip line a lot. My mind is just in constant alert mode due to my sexual abuse as a child and other factors I’ve experienced Now my OCD is latching onto a super hazy memory of when a co-worker was telling me about this guy in his town he knew who he told me everyone suspected he was involved in a hit and run that had occurred. I barely remember the conversation but I remember him telling me that somehow his old vehicle went to someone or was transferred over to some guy and when he looked at the engine there was what he assumed was dried blood inside it or something like that. I remember the conversation started because we were talking about people who we knew were probably guilty that we had heard stories of or knew of but there was never appropriate evidence found My OCD has latched onto the idea that my co worker told me this information which police may or may not have known of or heard of. I don’t remember if he told me how he knew of this story or who he heard it from or if the police knew about it or anything like that. It happened a year ago during a shift at work in a McDonald’s and it’s so hazy that I can’t even remember the specifics of anything. I know the idea that I was given secret information that the police didn’t know about during a shift at McDonald’s is incredibly unlikely. But the constant “what if?” just spirals into my brain constantly and makes me develop the feeling like I HAVE to reach out to someone about it, even though I know there’s nothing for them to investigate and my co-worker was basically telling me gossip. I know I’m really overthinking the memory and my mind is putting false memories in my brain, but I wanted to ask what you guys tell yourselves to get rid of the intrusive thoughts or the compulsions? I try to tell myself that it’s “just my OCD” but that rarely ever works.