I think I'm obsessively afraid of confrontation. Struggling now with rumination. Anxiety mostly starts after I've said or posted anything, and quite often I either think about it for ages, or delete it just to save the hastle of ruminating and feeling sick with unpleasant emotions. Posting this is hard... It's escalating. It's not just confrontation though, more like obsessive fear of people thinking I'm bad, or mean when I'm not trying to be. This is not my personality, I never used to be literally scared of confrontation (though I do value kindness most of the time). I have strong, polarising opinions, and I'm not ashamed of them, but I just feel sick at the thought of being challenged, even if I feel like I could easily defend my position. My core fear is that I'm somehow a bad person. This isn't QUITE that. The fears are related, but not identical. And I KNOW -- if I know I'm doing my best, other people's opinions don't matter, and I'm not responsible for what other people think of me, and even a debate or an insult or a troll aren't the end of the world. But this is OCD we're talking about, reason doesn't matter to how I feel. A while back, NOCD made an Instagram post about a theme where you're afraid of offending someone, and I related SO MUCH to that post, except the core fear for me is SLIGHTLY different. I think. It's all so fuzzy, like any OCD thought. Anyway, just venting.

I relate to your comment… I’m a confrontation-averse person to begin with because of my childhood trauma and being a Highly Sensitive Person, but OCD has made this worse in relation to my art and academic endeavors. Four and a half years ago I started working on a fanfiction about a character who happens to survive a rape, I was already somewhat passionate about sexual topics (sex positivity, anti rape activism) and did some research about male survivors to learn more, and then I started having intrusive thoughts about rape scenes (in the source material or not, and it’s not like daydreaming, these thoughts come out of nowhere), as well as unwanted arousal when attempting to write them. But this has all gotten so complicated with me being at college for three of those years and bringing similar topics up in papers, in significant part out of wanting reassurance and to clear my name, only to avoid most of those papers and the professors of those classes once the fears of thought-broadcasting, criticism, and confrontation from the professors over me having said the wrong thing about rape or “outing” myself as a rape fetishist, which I’m NOT, overshadowed my desire for reassurance. So yeah I naturally have strong opinions about sex and society, and yet I’m terrified of saying the wrong thing and triggering a survivor and / or giving someone the wrong idea about survivors, AND feeling guilty for having the thoughts and groinal response… and just for feeling excited in the creative process, like I can never feel a creative rush of satisfaction when talking about this, or else that means I’m siding with the bad guys. OCD has totally screwed with my self esteem as it relates to my creativity, and confrontation (in terms of receiving feedback) is critical to the artistic process, so this fear has been crippling.

I'm sorry that's happening to you, and that's totally the kind of thing I was talking about! It hurts especially because it feels like you're censoring yourself on possibly what you are most passionate about, just for OCD to feel safe.