Question

OCD is smart as hell. I liken it to playing whack a mole - when you knock it out in one place, it readjusts and tries to pop up somewhere else. As long as we are aware of it, we can be ready for it and know that the new thought is just ocd trying to get at us from any angle it can. The good news is, the more we knock it down, it will eventually start to get slower at popping back up.

Then try not to look it up - if it’s too hard to stop completely, try to delay it to start. Tell yourself that you can look it up, but you have to wait 20 minutes before you can. Gradually increase the length of time you wait, until it’s “I can look it up tomorrow” and eventually “I can look it up next week” - ultimately culminating in not looking it up at all.

I like to picture it in my head as a video game I really like where there is me, the player fighting off the enemy, the OCD popping up. An example I could give is like going into a Minecraft cave and fighting the mobs off while you're looking for diamonds. Picture finding the diamonds as the end result of "fighting off" the intrusive thoughts. I think some people might not find is as helpful since I'm on the younger side. Another thing you could do it is draw something or find an image you think suits the "attitude" of your OCD and give it a name. I think of it like how in The Conjuring 2 they can't beat the evil thing without controlling it through its name. You could name your OCD and when you feel it coming up call it by that name. I like to tell it "You are in MY head, so I have control in here" or something like "You are a part of me, but you do not have control over me" These are things I find helpful, and from what I can tell you look like an adult so my examples may not work but you can edit them in so many ways to fit you better or take parts of each and combine them. I hope these help you with your OCD and I hope you have a good rest of your day. Good luck friend <3

Exactly. By knocking it down, I mean by fighting the compulsions. The more you fight the compulsions, and resist the ocd behavior, the more it trains your brain to stop asking you to do the behavior. So yes- the more you resist the compulsions that come up, the easier it becomes, and the less ocd will pop up each time.