Part of my OCD is always trying to get into the bottom of things (if I freak out thinking about death or illness or losing someone or contamination, then I will roam all the internet for searching for informations on the subject even though it worsens my anxiety and never leaves me with a "clean" feeling of certainty or peace or acceptance). And recently I realized that if I have an anxious thought that arises in my mind it'll just go away if I leave it be and don't stop what I'm doing. But stupidly enough I feel guilty for doing that because I get the feeling that I should engage more with my fears and if I just ignores them and they go away I'm worsening the situation ... What is the line between ignoring the problem by distracting yourself and simply allowing your mind to move on ?

I feel like I’ve had a lot of different categories of ocd. Some categories stick with me more and are repetitive. I’ve been doing well with mental health - not having anxiety stick around. When the physical feeling of anxiety sticks around, every thought is horrible, but when the feeling of anxiety is gone the obsessions don’t really impact me. If I can keep anxiety at bay, my life is good. I’ve been doing well lately, although this week I was scrolling through tictok and watched a video about someone in a coma and wondered if I was in a coma right now and didn’t know it. I had a panic attack for about 15 minutes. Anxiety, sweating, etc. It didn’t take ahold of me and it quickly lost its impact on me. It still shook me and I was just like “wow” where did that come from. Now I am staying away from social media. Is that avoidance? Should I make myself keep watching social media? Many ocd problems have come from social media or watching a movie or show that triggers something and then spirals. I am limiting what I watch, which I believe is good because I shouldn’t be watching that stuff anyway. What do you think?

Curious.... the news has been terribly distressing for me and has stirred up OCD. Compulsive rumination and checking (news stories) are my go-to when OCD is triggered. Today, I purposely did not listen to my news podcast as I do every morning. I feel better-ish. Is this avoidance, or is this self care? Would continuing to listen to a podcast be exposure with response prevention applied to the compulsions that go with it? Thanks in advance!

Just noticed something that helped me today. I was having the realization a lot of my issues stem from me not taking responsibility for my own life, and also not recognizing my own self-limiting beliefs (SLBs) and automatic negative thoughts (ANTs.) In doing this, I learned that the only way forward is confronting my deepest darkest fears head on and associated irrational/self limiting beliefs- and that for years and years, I have simply retreated and run away. One of my deepest darkest fears (one of my obsessions) is rooted in the understandable fear of the worst of humanity, and the 'what if' I was that (like many of us.) I actually can have compassion for myself because it is perfectly okay to be scared of the worst of people, and if something like that is perpetuated throughout pop culture-media- it would make sense to have associated thoughts about it. The fear is that I am a serial killer or have motives of one. And the OCD has caused me to constantly question my motives and actions to no end (how OCD latches on- makes you look for evidence where there is none.) For the longest time, I have been convinced I am one, and need to hide myself from the world, avoid people more than just because of social anxiety, what my main anxiety was back then. I look for signs everywhere- and the OCD latches on to any perceived (not real) evidence that I am one, that people think I am one. When I decided to confront this fear rather than run away like I have for years, it made me realize it is just a fear- it has nothing to do about who I am as a person, despite how strong the OCD tries to convince you otherwise. It is so sad how strong OCD can be, to make so many of us good intending people be convinced that they are something horrible. Anyway, I hope this can help people realize the best way forward is to confront it head on. It's akin to shining a light on the monster and seeing it for what it is - a goofy thing with fake prosthetics for a movie that isn't a monster after all- a sheep in wolfs clothing. It's just you have been running from it so long, your imagination has gotten so detailed about how horrible it is, hearing its fake growls, instead of turning around and blasting it with a spotlight. This is I guess what ERP is about. For me, one of the struggles with ERP and a specific exposure is that the OCD will jump to a different obsession , which then tells me ERP is a waste because Im not confronting the 'most recent' fear. This is faulty thinking though- because the solution is to confront the fear, not the specific thought. By doing that, you learn to not run away and do all the compulsions in your mind. Tl;dr- long winded post about me realizing how I have actually been avoiding the solutions (ERP) and making up reasons to not confront my fears this whole time. I have been running instead of shining a light on the sheep in wolfs clothing.