My grandmother just patted me on the head, which I realize is a sign of affection, but I HATE when people touch my head. I feel like I will gain all the “bad” from them and that my head will lose intelligence. Now I can’t stop compulsing.

Every night when I get home from work, I have this habit of touching the tree at the end of my street. Tonight I had an intrusive thought/ image of myself laughing at someone getting a serious health diagnosis. It caused my anxiety to increase as that’s so unlike me and I work in a hospital so I’m dealing with health problems on the daily and it’s not funny. My brain basically was telling me I had to go and touch all these trees again to rectify the situation or I can no longer buy items I was wanting to buy (had my eye on a few things to get). I just keep going doing I circles, I know it’s not logical but I can’t help it :(

Wait. Is this a compulsion? Like I didn't realize compulsions can be something like this? Not looking for reassurance but just wondering if that sounds accurate? Thanks guys! I know I'll never get the certainty I want, but I want to feel safe to be around my nephew again. I was holding my nephew, he's a newborn, and he was getting hungry so he started squirming around and grazed my chest (yes I was fully clothed). Of course, that caused very intense groinals.. It didn't feel bad in the moment but just anxious, and without thinking, I was holding his head still right there and I was moving it closer in that spot (at least felt that way) to make the feeling continue I guess. It was such an anxious all over my body feeling. I was so anxious and triggered by that feeling. It's like my groinals were so intense I automatically leaned into them without thinking a second thought? So I ended up having another groinal. After that I put the baby down and realized what had happened then panicked so much.

hi yall im new here but not new to ocd. for as long as i remember ive had tendencies and ive had compulsions. when i was like 6 i remember counting my steps and that started this life long thing. i get looks in public because ive been touching each side of my face for the past 10 minutes because it “didn’t feel right”. about every one in my life knows i have severe ocd and that’s fine but my grandmother told my mom behind my back one night that i was ‘manipulating’ her and that my ocd could be fake. this is because i can’t take the trash out of the track can because i can’t risk getting sick from old food, i cant use cleaning products on my hands to clean them. i have no probably taking the trash out it’s just removing it from the bin. i can’t do the dishes because its not clean and ill have an anxiety attack because its just simply too overwhelming for my ocd. those aren’t the only things but the list is just too long to write out. but we don’t live with my grandmother anymore. when we did my ocd wasn’t as progressed as it is now and i was able to hide most of my compulsions and “rituals” (what i call them) in private, therefore she doesn’t see how much it can affect my every move. this happened a while ago but i keep thinking about it and i get in my head. when im really struggling it’s hard to not convince myself that i’ve been lying to myself and so many others for 18 years. all my compulsions and intrusive thoughts and the goddamn hallucinations i’ve had from ocd are in fact real but how can my own grandmother call me manipulative like i don’t get it truthfully. i cannot imagine a situation in which someone would go through the trouble of washing their hands 4 times, of blinking 16 times before shutting their phone off. rewriting a whole text to their boyfriend because i misspelt a word and so now the whole text is wrong or any other of these things i and SO MANY people who have ocd or ocd tendencies would go through the trouble because it is SO paralyzing. clearly i’m not going to explain myself to her because i don’t have that energy esspecially if she is going to ‘mhm’ me and then go again behind my back and tell my mom (who fully understands and has tendencies herself and knows i don’t make this stuff up) that im a manipulator.