I’ve been really struggling with OCD at work the last few months. I’ve tried my best to hide it, but my coworkers have definitely started to notice the anxiety and lack of confidence I have in my ability to do my job. I work in healthcare and my OCD thoughts are focused towards making a mistake or missing something that can cause someone harm. I’m great at my job, but my brain keeps trying to convince me I’m not. I had a coworker kind of nicely lecture me this morning on “relaxing a little” and told me “you know what you know, stop second guessing yourself all the time”. And how she knows I’ve been going to the gym every day but I need to find “other ways to relax more. Like meditating.” I just smiled and agreed with her. If she only knew the extent of the crippling anxiety I’ve been dealing with for months now. And how I go to therapy every week, meditate multiple times a day, swim at the gym every day, and take medication to deal with it. And how three months ago I couldn’t eat, sleep, or function at all. Anyway, now I’m paranoid that my coworkers are going to start bringing it to my supervisors attention and it’s going to effect my career. This is awful and exhausting and I’m really trying my best to be better.

I’m a healthcare worker with the same exact OCD. I’ve never met anyone with my exact obsessions before. I actually did share with my colleagues and supervisior my diagnosis and everyone has been incredibly supportive.

It's possible that opening up about your OCD rather than hiding it will put some of your fears to rest. OCD loves to attach consequences to things all the time, so telling your supervisor about it yourself might be a good plan to nip that worry in the bud and even allow you to get more support for it. Remember, a big component in OCD is inappropriate feelings of responsibility. Bad things are guaranteed to happen in life and even healthcare workers make mistakes, your coworkers are right that allowing yourself to relax more will make you better at your job in fact. OCD always tries to convince us that obsessing is the best way to prevent our fears from happening. In reality, as I can see you know, it's actually making you anxious and distracted and undermining your confidence in your ability to do your job even more. Allowing yourself to take short breaks through resisting the compulsions and rumination is going to make you more well rested, less on edge and more confident. Don't feel that the OCD is a permanent condition which you can't do anything about- it's actually extremely treatable. You just need to keep doing what you're doing and do some intensive ERP. Instead of "what if I do this procedure wrong and awful things happen", you need to work to the point of being able to say "maybe I will do this procedure wrong and maybe I won't, uncertainty is a fact of life and I am just going to do my best", and then firmly leaving it at that instead of responding to any of the mental questions and doubts about your competence or ability. And then just doing the procedure anyway. The more times that you're able to accept that the possibility of failure is there, do the thing, and there is no bad outcome, the more confidence you will get back. You can teach your brain that the worst just doesn't happen. I know it's the roughest concept ever because you feel so responsible for the outcome. But you can't get everything right and it's not reasonable to expect to get everything right. The world won't end if you get something wrong. Your worst list of consequences is spectacularly unlikely to come to fruition, and ruminating over them does nothing to prevent them or keep everyone safe. It just makes you suffer. You don't deserve to suffer.

I definitely feel you. Having thoughts of suddenly going crazy and hurting someone gives me major anxiety and leaves me not been able to perform at work. I hate it