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?

Same here I used to get confused about the same things. Obsessions are your intrusive thoughts, urges, images, fantasies etc. Compulsions are what your ocd tells you to do, when your intrusive thoughts come. We should never do compulsions, because they are the thing your ocd tells you to do when you get the thoughts. You don’t have to stop the thoughts, just ignore the intrusive thoughts. What are your thoughts like?

We shouldn’t let compulsions or obsessions in our mind, I ignore both of them because both are apart of the ocd cycle, and they make ocd stronger if we do them or focus on the obsessions

The intrusive thoughts are the ones that you don’t like, that hurt you in a way, that you think are not good and etc. Those are the thoughts, when you get any of those thoughts I think they are ocd thoughts because they are intrusive. So dont worry, try to not think about any of those intrusive thoughts. Try to remove your focus from them. If it’s possible, you can write some thoughts on a paper and come up with a positive line for example : Thought :She hurt me Positive thought: I can’t keep on crying about it now, time has passed by. If she hurt me, I shouldn’t care cause she probably didn’t deserve a great person like me

I'm not the one to say someone is wrong and I am not a mental health professional but in my research what your saying is detrimental and will not work. Blocking the intrusive thoughts or distracting yourself from then will only make them come in stronger and leave you less equipt to deal with the anxiety when it comes. As I researched you should do a recovery therapy called ERP, look it up it will help you.

The obsessions are the spontaneous thoughts that cause distress. For example "ohhh you looked at his crotch. You just be gay!" The compulsions are the thoughts you use to try to decrease the distress. These might be reassurance "no, I'm not gay, I love women", reviewing memories for evidence for or against the fear "remember how tingly I felt when I first met my wife" or "there was that time in elementary school when I kissed my best friend tommy on a dare, maybe I really am gay", checking thoughts "I'll look at gay/straight porn and see whether I get aroused", pushing thoughts away "no! I won't think that!", etc. In general, thought stopping (ex the stop sign technique) and thought replacing (replacing negative thoughts with positive ones) is a slippery slope in OCD. Those behaviors quickly turn into compulsions

The only thing you need to stop doing is the compulsion but in term of figuring out which is which I'm not sure in your case