the fact that reassurance feeds the ocd and is also what we desperately need more than anything is literally sadistic. like what kind of overkill is that.

Ruminating is such a sneaky compulsion. It feels like the only “reasonable” thing to do in the moment because your brain is screaming at you that something is urgent, important, and absolutely essential. It’s like your mind is sounding sirens, telling you that you have to think it through right now because everything looks so black and white in the moment. The trap is, if I don’t ruminate, it feels like I’m just ignoring reality and living in some magical fantasy world. But the truth is, even when things feel the most logical and crystal clear to me with OCD, they are almost always totally irrational to everyone else. Someone said something on here that stuck with me: “nobody ever ruminated their way to certainty.” And that’s it. Rumination is just an attempt to feel certain, but with OCD there is no such thing as enough certainty. The more you chase it, the longer you stay stuck. The work, as uncomfortable as it is, is learning to sit in the uncertainty and stop feeding the cycle…even when everything in you is screaming to figure it out. That’s the way forward.

I’m just realizing I have OCD. I have been diagnosed with adhd, autism and CPTSD but OCD never occurred to me until recently. My OCD manifests internally (pure O) then I seek reassurance for whatever topic I’m fixating on so of course I chalked it up to anxiety but it’s so much more than that. And I’ve been like this for as long as I can remember. Now it’s really messing with my life. Lately, it’s been ROCD that’s been ruining me. I had a couple deep wounds created by my husband a few years ago and I’m constantly fixating on if he’s lying, really loves me, and or he wants to leave me. I’m constantly asking for reassurance and I think he’s getting tired of it. He’s an otherwise great partner but the OCD has really kicked in after I found out he was hiding a porn addiction, he hid it twice and it really ruined my self esteem and trust in him. Now I get triggered by every pretty girl I see, every social media post about relationships, I fixate on how unattractive he might find me or what’s wrong with me. I’m also aging in my thirties so I obsess over if he is getting less attracted as I age . I feel pathetic. Of course he always tells me I’m beautiful and he loves me but I’m always suspicious that he’s not being honest. I’ve always had OCD but this is the worst I’ve been with my relationship. I’m melting down and doubting us often and especially at night. It’s been a few years now and I feel like it’s gotten so hard. When I was younger it was health OCD, then it was existential, and I definitely fixate on if I’m “good” morally too. I’ll confess and overshare to people all my mistakes. And on top of the ROCD, I have pure OCD and get the worst images and intrusive thoughts at work/ random places and it’s horrible because I work with vulnerable people. My biggest nightmare and fear is pedophilia or assault, and I care deeply about my kids and vulnerable people so it’s like my mind hates me and these horrible images and thoughts fly at me l. I would never ever harm my kids or vulnerable people so this is especially disturbing and mortifying. I learned that OCD is ego dystonic and that’s helped but the images still make me feel awful. I also have been the scapegoat and black sheep in my narcissistic abusive family so I will my OCD will fixate on if I AM the narcissist! It’s exhausting. It got worse after I encountered my abuser in my family earlier this year and he brought up a lot of trauma. He is actually a narcissist but my brain will try to convince me that I am, and I will give in to the compulsion then do quizzes and tests and of course they tell me I’m not a narcissist, but then my OCD will make me think I am. I’m very empathetic and terrified of hurting people yet my brain tries to convince me I’m horrible, then the reassurance seeking and anxiety that manifests from my OCD and trauma makes me feel so self absorbed and sick of myself, convincing me I’m narcissistic for thinking of myself so much. I’m so exhausted by this. My brain tortures me. The overthinking is hard to combat. I really try hard to accept these thoughts as just thoughts but there’s always that voice creeping in that maybe the intrusive thoughts are right. Maybe I’m terrible and unlovable. I hate it.

Yesterday I was really worried about something that happened about 10 years ago and it was causing me anxiety to the point I was struggling at work. So I texted my mom and asked if I could come talk to her after work but it got to the point it was consuming me to where I just texted her about it because I couldn’t move on with my day. She is usually very good about helping me understand the situation so that I can calm down. However, yesterday once I told her about my worry all she said was ‘Oh well? I’m not judging you’ to which I completely lost it and felt like she was confirming that what I did was bad. She said she doesn’t want to feed the obsession. I know that she is trying not to reassure me but I feel like it’s sent me into a deeper spiral. I have had some bad experiences in the past where I’ve trusted some people with my OCD themes and they back stabbed me and even spread rumors about me. I’ve been able to trust my mom up until this point, but now I can’t even get myself to text her. I don’t want to see her and I have this extreme feeling of anger towards her. I feel like this is finally the thing she’s gonna hate me for. I once heard that on earth we see sin on a spectrum or a scale that some sin is worse then others. However, to God who is looking down, where we see a stack, He can only see the top of the stack so it just looks like red dots to him so all sin is the same to Him. I really struggle with the idea of God, but I feel like I see it the same way, bad is bad regardless of how bad. At least that’s how I see it within myself, not others. So when I do something I perceive as bad it is just bad and makes me bad and to me that is logical. For example, when someone commits murder they are labeled as a bad, awful person, regardless of if they have done 1000 amazing things in their life. Even if they aren’t convicted for 30 years and they completely turn their life around and do amazing things, it does not matter. They still did something bad and people will hunt them down so they can be punished. So why is any other bad thing any different? People say it’s real event OCD and that these things I worry that I’ve done are not a big deal. But, if I’m worried about something that really happened then how can it be irrational? I have never murdered anyone but I feel like I have given that’s they way I feel about any potentially bad thing I’ve done. So when I can’t get reassurance sometimes I feel like it confirms that feeling of bad and makes me spiral more because then I think not only do I see myself this way, but now so does this other person. I know that this is a long post, but can anyone relate? Is reassurance sometimes okay?