Hi everyone, not completely sure if I have Pure OCD or not but damn everything I read is extremely accurate. My things are: - confidence and body issues - basically being a no one - toying with the idea of suicide sometimes but completely afraid of pain so never happening - scared of telling my emotions (romantically) - my sexual life in non existent - broke I've always thought of myself as an overthinker, I've been told I'm too in my head about things ( jokingly but there's always a little truth in them) and overly sensitive. I'm just an analyzer of everything around me and always doubt things cause I somehow think of a way something will fail me or the image of me failing won't get out of my head. I never knew it could possibly be OCD till this one video came into my life. If anyone has any tips on how to control my "triggers", it'd be extremely appreciated. Much love and respect to my new OCD homies!! :) (Just finished typing this and almost deleted everything cause do I really have those things? Are those things truly my triggers? Is it just cause I'm weak??) ^ My average thought process I have with literally any idea or thought. Yes those things are real, no I'm not doubting myself anymore, no I'm not weak

Hi DarianB! Gosh, it sounds like you're having a whole lot of realisations hitting you at once! Good on you for coming here and seeking out support. To answer your question, here's a bit of OCD 101: you don't control your triggers, not really. OCD thrives on you trying to control or resist it. It looooooves it. OCD tells us that uncertainty and anxiety are intolerable, and if we feel either of those things we need to do whatever we can to get rid of that feeling right away, because it's not a safe feeling to have. So when an obsession arises (let's say it's: "are these triggers really OCD?" and we feel anxiety, our brain rushes to do a compulsion (which in this case could be reassuring ourselves by telling ourselves "yes, they're OCD and I'm not doubting that") to alleviate that anxiety. And it works! ...For a bit. For a little while, our anxiety goes away. But that just reinforces the cycle and teaches our brain that any time we have that thought, we HAVE to respond with that compulsion, or our anxiety won't go away, and anxiety is intolerable. And so the anxiety gets worse over time, and the compulsions we have to do to make it go away get more and more extreme. But the fact of the matter is, anxiety is a biological process, and it physically can't last forever. If we stop ourselves doing the compulsion, if we just tell ourselves "hey, maybe those triggers are OCD and maybe they're not, but I'm going to accept that right now I don't know"--and then we sit with whatever anxiety arises, over time, that anxiety *will go away*. It's more anxiety in the short term, but it's way less anxiety in the long term. Because if we do this over and over, slowly our brain learns that it doesn't have to do the compulsion to make the anxiety go away. And so the urge to do the compulsion gets less strong, and the anxiety around the obsession goes down. And that, in a nutshell, is exposure and response prevention or ERP, which is the gold standard treatment for OCD. So in short: the way you "control your triggers" is to actually not try and control them at all, but just let them be there, and let yourself doubt, because that's how you show your brain that doubt doesn't have to be scary. So when you felt that doubt and that urge to delete everything you wrote, and you resisted it and posted anyway, you actually just did yourself an exposure. You're on the right path already! I hope this helps, and best of luck as you continue on this path of discovery. Much respect!