Genuine question

I am autistic and have had periods of extreme OCD. When I was younger I had mild obsessive-compulsive traits, but as an autistic person, obsessing over topics, being an anxious perfectionist, and needing very specific routines were normal—so these other traits seemed like they could easily fall into my family of autistic behaviors. As a teenager my obsessive-compulsive habits worsened. Specific worries ate at my brain and I was constantly writing lists and refusing to throw trash in my room away “in case I’d need it someday”. When I was 15, extremely disturbing and taboo thoughts abruptly entered my mind and made life very strange and scary. My self-esteem wasn’t that great to begin with, since I often struggled to fit in, and was accused of being a jerk/rude/insensitive as a kid (while I had good intentions but just struggled to behave with nuance). Autism has at times caused me to think in a more black-and-white way, and this combined with a strong sense of justice (also typical of autism) made me believe that if I didn’t conduct myself in a super specific way, or if I thought certain kinds of thoughts, I was evil and disgusting and deserved nothing good. I became hyper aware of the fact that my natural body language (looking away from people, staring, darting eyes/rapidly looking around, avoiding bodily contact with others, stimming, fidgeting, clutching objects) might make me look unfriendly, stuck-up or suspicious. I was paranoid about having terrible body language intuition and “looking like a bad person”. My OCD aggressively represses the things my body does to calm my nervous system, to try and look like I am not a bad person having bad thoughts. But repressing coping mechanisms like looking away, stimming, and needing extra space has only made it more difficult to deal with anxiety. It’s been utterly exhausting. One thing I’m working on a lot in therapy is learning to trust my body and care less about the possibility that people are making judgements about my character, or assumptions related to my disturbing thoughts. That would be their problem since I’m really just minding my own business and taking care of my central nervous system. Anyway, I feel like my autism and ocd are definitely related, (though I’m generally cool with being autistic; ocd feels like an intrusion) and I’m not sure how many other folks feel the same. (Autism + ocd looks like accidentally writing stupidly long response posts like this one lol ^ hopefully this was somewhat helpful!)

thank you for your detailed response. i have always struggled with those similar behaviors and thought patterns, it’s nice to have a person that finally gets it. no one else in my life has been able to understand or relate to this kind of thing. living life when we are hyper aware of everything is truly exhausting. we need to learn to be kinder to ourselves and more appreciative of ourselves.