Real risk or OCD

I struggle with this too! I ask myself “what would a person without OCD do?” and kind of picture their process in my head. Usually it’s a lot quicker and easier than how I went about it 😅 I ask myself if the average person would have even thought about it and pretty much always the answer is no. That helps me realize that it’s just OCD making me doubt. On the rare occasion that I really truly have no idea, I watch what my partner does in that situation or sometimes ask him for a quick reality check. “Hey, as a normal person, would this bother you at all?” or “You probably never even think about x happening, you just live your life, right?” I feel like that’s probably borderline reassurance, but I do accept his answer the first time and use it to fight my OCD. I don’t keep asking and ruminating and trying to figure it out. I just use him as my non-OCD role model, haha. Lastly, I use “maybe, maybe not”. There’s always a possibility it could be a real risk, but I’ve done the best I can reasonably do to be responsible, and it won’t do any good to keep disrupting my life over it or thinking about it. It is what it is, what will be will be. Once I’ve done what I can and what any reasonable person would do (and no more) it’s out of my control. (For example with contamination, I’ve already washed my hands once. That’s all I can reasonably do. Continuing to wash them for 10 minutes won’t make them any cleaner. It might make me feel better momentarily, but in the process I’ve wasted time and missed out on living my life. It isn’t worth it and I might still get sick anyway from something else because that’s just life! 🤷‍♀️) This one is pretty hard but effective. Also keep in mind that you take risks in many other areas of life all the time and 99% of the time everything is fine. In reality it’s the same for your theme. The only difference is that OCD wants you to be 100% sure of that one specific thing, so it gets blown way out of proportion and seems like the risks are HUGE when really they’re no more risky than anything else in your life.

Of course take care of things that are dangerous but obsessing over them doesn’t actually DO anything to help you or keep you safe. Often, it will put you in danger. Example: Driving OCD. You think you hit someone even though NO ONE is around you. Instead of shrugging off your OCD and going home, you spend two hours checking the area and now it’s nighttime and you’re alone having a breakdown in the middle of the road. Is that safe? No, it’s not.

I do some of the things that Migratory Bird said above. I also sometimes note that if I’m “unsure” if something is a real risk vs. OCD…. It is most likely OCD! I then tell myself that I need to just ignore the OCD thought and resist the compulsion since that is best for my mental health in the long run (even though it’s currently very uncomfortable).