So I know I have “just right ocd” and the need to even things out and do things “correctly” including body movements and stuff.... does anyone experience it worse at night? Like before they go to bed? This might sound weird but it always comes at me the worst when I’m trying to go to sleep. I’ll lie down and my ocd will tell me that I “didn’t lie down correctly” and I’ll have to sit up and lie down again. Then it’ll tell me I did it too fast and that if I don’t sit up and do it again then I’ll die. Then I do it again but it tells me some other excuse like that I had a pain in my chest or head and it was because I lied down wrong so I have to re do it, and so on. The cycle goes on forever. Sometimes I even feel like I got into bed wrong completely, and I’ll have to get up and walk around my room for a second and re enter my bed until it feels right. But I have a lot of back, chest, head, and neck soreness/pain (I’m only 18 I don’t even know why :( and it happens a lot when I lie down, and for some reason when I feel a pain or sensation, my ocd makes me get up and re lie down or else “whatever sensation I felt will kill me” I literally don’t understand any of this, but it would make me feel so much less overwhelmed if I knew this was normal for ocd. I told my therapist about this stuff and she acted all shocked that this was ocd

You’ve gotten to the extreme of OCD by letting it take over, but it’s definitely still OCD.

Hi emmaann, I've experienced some OCD symptoms similar to this. They didn't necessarily get worse at night for me, but I've definitely had time/situation specific obsessions (I had one just now, feeling I had to swap positions because as soon as I lay down and got settled to type, my body felt "wrong".) It also makes sense that body-focused obsessions like these could be more noticeable when going to sleep, because there's less distractions between you and your thoughts than there would be during the day. It's good that you're recognising that OCD is giving you excuses to give in to compulsions. Reason-giving is a really sneaky OCD trick, and it's easier to combat if you know that's what's happening. A physical sensation like pain is a really hard OCD excuse to not give in to, but as someone who's had OCD latch on to chronic pain in a really major way, I think it's worth resisting, because honestly, pain is enough to deal with on its own without OCD on top. And treating my OCD also helped me better manage my chronic pain. If you can, I'd encourage you to try exposures where you resist these urges to move until OCD says it's just right, or even deliberately lie down "wrong" and practice sitting with the anxiety that brings up. You could also try imaginal exposures (https://ocdla.com/imaginal-exposure-ocd-anxiety-4847) around the same things. Lastly, if your therapist isn't an ERP specialist (and it sounds like she's not), I'd suggest maybe looking into getting some dedicated ERP therapy for your OCD. That's a helpful step for anyone with OCD, but I think it can be especially helpful when you're dealing with less common forms of it like these. I hope this all helps--best of luck! And I hope your pain eases soon. <3