School anxiety/OCD

**Hi, don’t confess.** 🛑✋🏻 We have all done it at some point. It is okay, your OCD is just being annoying. Yeah, cheating is not the best, but it is really not that big of a deal. I like to call my OCD an extremist SJW. Did not finish all my food? *Wasteful, ungrateful, selfish girl.* “Stalked” someone’s Insta? *What a creepy, pathetic person. Who does that?* Lied to get out of plans? *Horrible friend. Self-centered. Lazy.* Yeah, I *guess* those could be true, but what makes the most sense is that I am human. Most of us have done those things at least a couple of times in our lives. My OCD loves to call me an undeserving disgrace. My own brain “cancels” me. I literally helped four or five people graduate high school by logging in and doing their work for them, including my sister. In college, we have traded homework assignments. Girl, you are okay. :) You probably have your own extremist SJW in your head giving you crap for anything you did that was not morally perfect. The fact that you are freaking out just shows you have really high moral standards. I used to feel the same way, but then I realized how common it was, and no one else was crying their eyes out over it like I was. That helped calm me down a little, and I hope it does for you too. 💛 I do not want to give too much reassurance, but my therapist has literally looked me straight in the eyes and said 🙂 *that’s normal* so many times because my moral OCD goes berserk. Sometimes I do not even know what normal is, and I beat myself up for not being perfect. So I just want to say: ***that’s normal*** 🫂

Oh, I really relate to these types of thoughts. They are so hard. :(

Hey not too much advice here but I just wanted to pop in and say I relate so much :(( whenever I cheat on tests I ruminate on it for hours thinking about how terrible I am. I have cheated many times in the past not because I really wanted to, but because I didn’t understand the subject and really needed to pass the class 😭 and every time I’ve felt the pressing need to confess or seek punishment I still struggle a lot with moral OCD in general but I think something that helped is noticing that so many people around me also do similar things. I think another comment here also talked about this and I just wanted to reiterate how helpful this was to me. I wanted to bring up a specific friend of mine but that’s kind of getting into seeking reassurance so I won’t haha But just based on the comments I’ve heard people make I do think most people have done what I’ve done and vice versa, they’re just less “brutally honest” (and I am not equating “honesty” to accuracy here) about themselves and don’t deal with these constant intrusive thoughts always scrutinizing their every move. That helped me a little at least