Does anyone have a type of OCD where you go down a rabbit hole of researching random terms using an endless amount of sources on the internet? Not sure if there’s a name for this. The thoughts associated with it are typically, “I need to figure this out and become an expert on this.”

I have OCD around being a bad or a “weird,” person. I use to be in therapy twice a week for two hours at a time because I was in such bad shape with it. Eventually I moved to once a week at two hours at a time, and now I’m down to just once a week, an hour at a time! I was also put on Lexapro, stayed on it for a year and just weened myself off in Nov. I do feel proud of myself, but today someone said something that was pretty triggering and I’m feeling funny now. Since I was a little girl, if I find someone I liked a lot, I wanted to know everything about them. This typically only happened with older adults and always women. It was always very harmless. I just lived in my head a lot with them always on my mind. Then Facebook came out where you could find out anything about anyone. I could go on to someone’s Facebook page, scroll through their page, pictures, and if I was really interested in them, could find out who their family was through their friends list, etc. Then I’d visit their families FB pages all the time out of just interest (or I guess you could call it being nosy, I don’t really know.) If I really felt interested in them, Id google them, look up their house, just weird stuff like that. I could end up knowing everything about them or their family. It had never caused me any harm or them any harm. I never really thought about it being weird or anything. But one day I woke up and was like, “what if I’m a stalker. What if this person knew that I knew who their parents are, their siblings, etc., etc.?” I got in to an absolute downward spiral about it and felt like such a weirdo, a creep, a freak. Seriously, I’m a pretty normal person. I’m married, kids, husband, stay at home mom, have the same friends I’ve had since middle school, high school, whatever. My therapist didn’t think this was a big deal and I was always scared she was just being nice. I made her promise me to tell me if anything I told her sounded off. Anyway, I was on the phone tonight and the person I was talking to, was talking about someone else and she said, “yeah, I mean she just looks people up and needs to know everything about them. That’s why she could be so good at being a private detective, or something like that. She’s kinda stalkerish.” It hit me hard. I felt like I needed to tell her that maybe she wouldn’t like me either because I can be the same way. I didn’t though. I didn’t get off the phone or do anything with it. If this was a year ago, I’d be in the bathroom vomiting, pacing the floor, taking my anti anxiety med. Today, I just dealt with the uncertainty of her not knowing that I can be the same way. I’m doing ok, but I’m so curious, is it just me that does this kind of thing? Is there anyone else that does this kind of thing? Is this abnormal? I know that it is what it is, but my phone conversation tonight kinda opened up that stuff for me a little bit and now I’m feeling like a freak. Thank you if read this and if you respond.😊

Not sure if this is OCD or ADHD or both, but sometimes I get really stuck on a topic to the point that it's obsessive and somewhat debilitating but still fun. Does anyone else get caught up on random topics (in a slightly unhealthy way)? This part of my mental health issues is one I don't mind as it has contributed a lot of joy to me through different fandoms and groups in my life. Just curious what obsessions (positive) you guys have and if you consider it a blessing, a curse or a blerse lol

Does anyone else feel, if they know everything about a topic that you then have control over it? For example, when I first started trying to figure out what was hurting me and identifying it as OCD, I would and sometimes still do, research every detail I could find and read other people's experience obsessively. Doing this made me feel like I would be able to control my obsession and compulsions, the more I knew the more I could control. A lot of the time it just makes me more anxious and discouraged but I still do it when I think I can fix myself. I also this with other mental health disorders and topics, where I research until I feel like the learned information will equip me with more control.