Why is it so hard to trust myself?

Some people call OCD “the doubting disease” as it weaponizes your deepest values. Psychologically they are called ego-dystonic thoughts, or “not me” thoughts. Because these thoughts and/or impulses can clash with your identity, they become very distressing. From a Neurological point, your orbitofrontal cortex receives a thought and obsesses over it. Then your anterior cingulate cortex (error corrector) sees this thought as a threat since it lingers. So it raises the alarm of the CSTC loop, which is why you can get intense anxiety from these thoughts. With compulsions, they can quiet the ACC alarm temporarily. Once the brain recognizes that it helped, the compulsion becomes a ritual cycle to keep temporarily quieting the mind. Thus, the OCD cycle is born. Still not really sure what causes OCD other than stress/trauma. We keep constantly learning more about its connection to dopamine, glutamate, and gaba. But it’s a hard disorder to understand. But anyways 😅 sorry for the length. The point was they are distressing because they are NOT YOU. Some where you have a deep hidden value that means everything to you. Whether that’s honesty, loyalty, kindness, …etc. Anything that might challenge those believes (even if you can’t perceive the exact thought) is going to be seen as a threat. Muggles can have these thoughts, but since the alarm bells don’t go off they can just let them go as an intrusive thought that’s meaningless. Because we see them as a threat, we can’t let them go until we’ve diminished the threat.