Anyone else have real event OCD? I always worry that someone will find out something stupid I did as a kid and share it around. I also analyse the whole event over and over. It sucks because sometimes my real event OCD goes away but it switches to false memory OCD instead.

Yes, I have recovered, even though I still remember sometimes, but not as close as it did before :) The main thing that helped me recover from it is to stop seeing things in black and white. Black and white is a very common cognitive distortion people with OCD have especially if they have some kind of moral scrupulosity OCD. It's very important to accept and to see that 99% of the things that happen in life are in grey area. What would you think about a mother who stole a medicine for her sick child? That is a grey area. The problem is that we think if something isn't 100% perfect than it is 100% bad, and that just isn't true. OCD sufferers are very often perfectionists, they give themselves such high moral standards that no human alive can live like that, only Jesus was that perfect ? don't get me wrong, I love Jesus, so I doubt any human will ever reach that level of sinless perfectionsm. So if we (people with OCD) made a mistake we will automatically put ourself in "bad person" category. Also, what is very important is to know that OCD blows things out of proportion. A lot of times people with OCD think their mistake is something horrible when in reality nobody thinks it's that bad. The ERP for real event OCD is the thought itself. Everytime you get it, try not to take it seriously and see it as OCD, and if you have asked for reassurance (I know I did?) and people told you it isn't that bad, believe them, cause your brain is hijacked by OCD and you just can't see things rationally.

And I had te same problem, thinking people will gossip about it and ruin my life. That is called paranoia. What helped me here is also realization that my way of thinking is not how other people see things in life. People would need to have the same cognitive distortion as you to see your mistake as something so horrible as you see it, but usually people without OCD have no problem seeing grey areas. Even if you did a bigger mistake, trust me, people just don't care. Everybody are concetrated on their own life problems. And don't get me wrong please, but you're probably not that important to people, like a celebrity or something, that would make them talk about you so much. You are important to people who love you, like your family and friends, but other ones are mainly concentrated on themselves and they don't care about your mistakes.

And I forgot to say something extremely important: DON'T RUMINATE, DON'T TRY TO "SOLVE IT" TO SEE IF IT HAPPEN OR HOW BAD IT IS, AND DON'T ANALYZE!! YOU WON'T DISCOVER ANYTHING, IT WILL JUST PULL YOU DEEPER IN OCD HELL! Ruminating is also a compulsion called self-reassurance! Don't do it!

Yep, that's how it started for me, 1 single "real event". You know how many it became at the end? About 8 "real events". That's what happens when you feed the obsession with so many compulsions such as reassurance seeking, confessing, ruminating, mental checking, etc.

Thank you that was so helpful ?

Brilliant comments, thanks guys.

Hey @smallbird thanks for your advice <3. I did things in my early teen things (12-13) with my sister sexually. Im scared that im a child molester and that shes going to report me to the police. What ERT can i do for it? Like people say itd normal but of course OCD says "well youve done something different and worse".

Great insights all of you guys. People like us, as one of us said, have extremely high standards. The truth us that we are humans and make mistakes, mist of which we are not proud of and wish we hadn't done - especially when we were so young and naive. As I mentioned earlier, since I did lot's of compulsions my main event turned into many and they all haunt me once in a while, even though some are really stupid and decades ago when I was a child. I still struggle but what helps me is to allow myself to live my humanity and actually make mistakes and learn from them - meaning that I won't repeat them again. Real event OCD is really vicious and for many ends up tragically. Give yourself lots of self compassion, especially to that inner child of yours, don't punish them anymore - treat that child with the same love you would treat your own child. It is hard, I know, that kind of unconditional love was never modeled to us. We need to learn it. Remember that love heals everything.

Can I ask does it feed into a pocd theme? Cause that's what mine does saying that because I did that with other kids I'm capable of doing it again.

Hey @smallbird :) you said you had as in have u recovered from it? If so please share:)

A lot of the time we blow things way out of proportion "I DID X Y Z AS A CHILD AND THEREFORE I AM D" "if im D therefore Q might happen" "If Q happened my life would be destroyed and J will happen" Goddamit catastrophic thinking. Also i tend to find that someone may choose a very obscure path about what you did that will make you end up doing or in Y

@OcdDemons Yeah exactly. OCD blows things way out of proportion and it makes us spiral out of control due to the fear. It's really horrid but we can beat it. :)

Yes, absolutely the hardest type of OCD I had :(

You're welcome :) I'm glad ?