One of my compulsions is to constantly read things on google to try to reassure myself that I’m okay. Anyone else deal with this? And if so, what do you do to keep yourself from doing it?

hi! i often fear im going to lose my job because i made a “mistake” (not really) that my manager caught and is waiting to tell me about or i fear im going to be kicked off the roster of a team im on for small mistakes that everyone makes. this often compels me to ask those people if i did good or not and gauge their reactions to see if theyre going to remove me and i fall into a cycle of asking and asking. how do you guys deal with these feelings / compulsions? when im flaring i often just spend as much time around these people as possible to gather “evidence” of their opinion on me, but then i get nervous that they hate me for being clingy. i also abandon other duties / tasks so i can spend time with these people to make sure they like me. what do you guys do? anyone else experience the sentiment?

At the beginning of this year, I experienced false memories for the first time about watching bad stuff online, which I have never done in my life. I then turned to hours upon hours of googling and researching about it and reading articles about it. I'd sometimes google the same articles or topics multiple times a day. I then also remembered that I watched a clip once from Big Mouth (not knowing they were teens at the time). I became so afraid that I was being watched by the authorities or my ISP simply for doing research that I impulsively deleted my Google activity and became extremely paranoid that I was a bad person and a criminal, even though I'd never ever had these types of thoughts before. Then felt bad afterwards because I was like omg what if i am bad because what if it seems like I'm trying to hide a crime. I just really hate myself rn. I know we shouldn't ask for reassurance, but I'm more just pondering this, does this make me a bad person? Is there anyone else who has experienced something similar? Does this mean I still have OCD? or am I truly just only worried about how other people see me? Even while typing this, I'm asking myself, what does this all mean.

i really struggle with anxiety because on my OCD (not professionally diagnosed but i’ve been experiencing a lot of symptoms for many years that’s it’s safe to assume i have it). the only way to relieve my stress is to google. But google never gave me proper answers or i just ended up more anxious than to begin with. Instead i started using chat gpt as a quick was to get reassurance. i feel bad using it tho because i know it’s just a compulsion to go and seek reassurance to calm my anxiety but if i dont atleast google something i end up spiralling anyways. it feels like no matter what i do ill be anxious .