For anyone who struggles with “just right” obsessions and a lot of compulsions are mental ruminations, how do you practice exposures? So far I’ve mostly talked to myself for exposures but it hasn’t felt strong enough, so I’m also considering recording myself and listening back to it (as much as I don’t want to listen to my own voice!) what do you guys do?

Imagining that you're doing a compulsion still sounds like a compulsion. It's going to make the OCD worse because you're agreeing that you need to read the paper in order to get the reassurance you usually get from the first compulsion. Instead of learning to cope with the anxiety caused by not reassuring yourself...

A lot of my OCD has to do with things appearing “just right” to me. So right now my mind has been fixating on my tattoo, that it doesn’t look “right” or it isn’t shaped right. Sometimes I will try to take pictures of it to look at it from my phone screen to see if it looks more correct not just from my eyes. In the past these “just right” ocd thoughts usually don’t go away until I reassure myself long enough that it is right, but then within a few days my mind finds something else to attack. I’m really trying to break this cycle.

@kitten Taking photos sounds like a compulsion to me

@NOCD Advocate - Katie I would agree

@kitten Exactly same with me,once one compulsion is satisfied another loop comes in... As I wrote above,I was trying to say that I perform compulsion one time with full awareness ,as in my case it's related to direction numbers nd orientation,so for a particular thing I perform compulsion direction wise ,number wise and orientation wise ,as prefect as I can,then I write it on a paper that," things are constant they are not going to change,so I don't need to check them again",then I write description about direction , orientation,or a particular number,so as I did compulsion with full of awareness facing it,then after that I give a concrete thought to my mind that things are constant and they are not going to affect u. Now with this I hold my compulsions for 4 ,5 days or for a week. It's simply making ur self belive that u performed compulsion in very well awared manner now u will try to hold your compulsions as much hours ,days or months as u can...