THE TRUTH ABOUT OCD and the world in general: Something i noticed with ocd is that it relies excessively in black and white thinking when it comes to the specific obsession you have (for example: If i touch this I'll get germs,only if i don't touch it I won't or if i have this thought I'm a pedophile, you can't have this thought pass through your mind and not be or if i fail I'm a failure for life e.t.c) People get attached to specific labels and causes of things and that's self destructive. Main reason why when you get an intrusive thought you should let it pass, you shouldn't disagree but you also SHOULDN'T AGREE with it unlike the popular belief that "agreeing" will help you let it go. This thought is desperately trying to LABEL you as "bad" which in turn makes you desperately try to label yourself as the opposite of it. Do not add commentary to the thought, do not search your brain for answers about whether it's true or not, do not check whether you did something or not. Let it go, no matter how painful, DO NOT force yourself to stop thinking about it or to forget about it. Just let it appear without touching the subject. After all, there is only one absolute truth in this word and that is that existence is constantly shapeshifting, it's not stable, it's neither black nor white. It's gray.

So, I know my capacity to get fixated on things. And it's normally something that's relatively remote but, my latest issue is really getting to me and I was wondering if people have any advice. I'm avoiding getting too into specifics, as I don't want this to get reassurance-y but, in essence.. I came to the realisation recently that people who I'd been "friends" (feels like the wrong term now) when I was younger were not very nice people, and normalized a lot of very unpleasant behaviour towards other members of the group. They really normalized it, sold themselves as figures of authority, as older and more responsible and grown-up than others, and looking back, they acted horribly. And coming to this realisation, that I'd been manipulated into just accepting their behaviour has just... broken me. My OCD has latched onto it and I can't stop feeling irreversibly tainted by it. I've talked to others about it, and they've reassured me, told me it's not a big deal and that I hold myself to too high a standard, but none of that sticks. I feel better for a bit, then think 'Maybe when you told them you were skewing it to make yourself look better' or 'Did you leave out a crucial detail'. I keep ruminating over and over, trying to remember exactly how everything played out, trying to figure out if I fed into the behaviour, if I did something bad myself (because y'know, I feel like I was accepting of it at the time, so what does it say about my own values?). I know I need to stop doing all this if I want to improve, but then some part of me keeps saying 'So, you're just going to let yourself off the hook then?' Normally, I can rationalize my own fears to some degree, assure myself something won't happen, but the realness of the situation, and the fact I only came to understand the reality of it because the thought had been bothering me means it feels so much more all-encompassing. I know confessing in itself is a compulsion, but I keep feeling that if I'm not I'm somehow concealing what I 'really am' from others around me, and any positive interactions are me deceiving them in some way. I feel like I can't enjoy anything in life right now, and a good part of me feels I should not enjoy it ever again. If anybody has any advice on it, I'm all ears. Or even hearing if you relate to these feelings, I might appreciate the solidarity at least.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how OCD changes the way we see ourselves, but I recently realized that I am not my thoughts. Just because a thought pops up doesn’t mean it’s true or that it defines me. I’ve started learning how to see OCD for what it is—just a disorder trying to trick me—and I’ve become stronger in dealing with it. Has anyone else here had a similar realization? How do you handle these thoughts when they show up?

Does anyone have any advice for how to know the difference between ocd and real feelings/thoughts? Sometimes an intrusive thought will come in and I immediately know it’s ridiculous and I can just leave it alone and it won’t bother me but other times I really really don’t know. It’s when ocd hijacks and twists my real feelings and thoughts and tries to manipulate me into believing they’re something they’re not or something that doesn’t align with my true morals or intentions. But since it’s twisting and mixing with real feelings I get so confused and scared. Everything gets jumbled and I feel like I can’t trust myself or my own mind. Yet other times and other topics I can laugh off and push away just fine. Make it make sense. And then I start to think well maybe I don’t have ocd at all and I’m just in denial because I don’t want to accept that these scary/concerning things are true about myself. Or maybe that’s just the ocd talking.