I need help. Does anyone else with mental compulsions get confused about which thoughts are obsessions and which are compulsions? Sometimes thoughts I’d considered compulsive start to feel intrusive. Then I don’t know which thoughts I’m supposed to try to stop (mental compulsions) and which I’m supposed to allow (intrusive thoughts/obsessions). I get so confused and overwhelmed about what I’m supposed to do when this happens and it feels horrible. The confused feeling gets so strong my head feels like it’s buzzing and spinning. Does anyone have any advice?

Does anyone have any advice for how to know the difference between ocd and real feelings/thoughts? Sometimes an intrusive thought will come in and I immediately know it’s ridiculous and I can just leave it alone and it won’t bother me but other times I really really don’t know. It’s when ocd hijacks and twists my real feelings and thoughts and tries to manipulate me into believing they’re something they’re not or something that doesn’t align with my true morals or intentions. But since it’s twisting and mixing with real feelings I get so confused and scared. Everything gets jumbled and I feel like I can’t trust myself or my own mind. Yet other times and other topics I can laugh off and push away just fine. Make it make sense. And then I start to think well maybe I don’t have ocd at all and I’m just in denial because I don’t want to accept that these scary/concerning things are true about myself. Or maybe that’s just the ocd talking.

I think when people are saying OCD is egodystonic is really triggering me and I was just wondering if this has happened to anyone else? I’m going through a really bad relapse and right now I’m trying to figure out if my thoughts are truly egodystonic, like I how do I know I won’t act on them, how can I trust my emotions and everything. I feel really confused and I feel like I don’t know who I am anymore or how I carry on with life because it’s so long and I’m so unsure of everything that’s going on in my head. Like how do I know that this is OCD and true desires/urges. I’m so confused.

Does anyone else find that their compulsions actually make their OCD/obsession worse? I don’t mean in the obvious way, like that it strengthens the OCD cycle, I mean in the way that when I perform my compulsions, they make my anxiety so much worse in the moment. My main compulsions are ruminating, arguing with my thoughts, and memory reviewing, but they all just end up giving me more intrusive thoughts/questions, making my anxiety more intense, and making me think my intrusive thoughts are real. I’ve always read that you perform compulsions because they bring you relief, and I suppose for me, they more make me feel like I’m working towards “solving the issue” or “answering my question”, so then is that my version of “relief”? In reality, it just makes my anxiety worse because the more I ruminate/memory review, the more jumbled together and foggy my thoughts/memories become, which in turn makes me think that if I ruminate/memory review just a little more, I’ll be able to “push through that fog” and find my answer, which then also causes me anxiety because my brain feels foggy and hence makes completing my compulsions/figuring out my obsession impossible (which I guess is good because I’m not supposed to complete my compulsions). All of this is making me believe that I don’t have OCD and that my intrusive thoughts are true and that’s why I can’t shake them and that’s why I feel the need to figure them out and why I feel so foggy… Or is this just meta OCD playing it’s devious tricks on me? Has anyone else experienced this or is this not OCD and I should be concerned that my obsession is true?