I’m not an expert and I won’t claim to understand all ocd subtypes but having dealt with a few of them along with the usual suspects like anxiety, depression, addiction, for me its always come down to a feeling in some way or an other. Weather it’s reaching for an other drink or spending a whole day on compulsions, what I’m doing is trying to avoid sitting with some feeling. Whats interesting is that for me there’s a feeling that comes even before doom and honestly it’s much less unpleasant than doom but yet I still try to avoid it. It’s whatever I’m doing trying to avoid this feeling (and inevitably failing over and over) that starts to trigger more intense feelings like doom. And obviously once doom comes online, the belief that there is actually something to be afraid of begins to be reinforced. The cleverness of ocd is that it uses this doom as evidence that i was right to be avoiding the thing I was avoiding in the first place. The truth however is that it was the process of avoiding (the ocd) that got me there, but the ocd doesn’t want me to know that because then it would loose it’s power over me. Sorry for the run on but to summarize: avoidance is where the cycle starts and it’s also the fuel that keeps ocd going. If this resonates with you also keep in mind that (trigger warning) this is not something that can change in a day. You’re in the process of reconditioning years of what your brain thought was “real”. It’s not real, but it is scary. Just take it one day at a time.