I can’t stop checking for myself on porn sites. I’ve never been blackmailed and I’ve never had proof of anyone secretly taping me, but since it does happen to people all the time, I always fear someone planted a hidden camera in the past or maybe I was black out drunk and was filmed. When I get relief from one check I’ll think of another word or combo of words with my name or a description and I feel another urge to check. Sometimes I go weeks without checking and then I’ll just remember randomly and get the urge again. When it’s really bad I go for like an hour checking. It’s horrible. I know it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack, but i always think I’m gonna find something or I need to dig deeper and on more pages to find it. Then seeing what’s actually on the porn sites makes it worse. There are so many people being taped without knowing. There are so many “hidden camera” videos. So disturbing.

It literally doesn't happen to people all the time though? As far as I'm aware? If it had happened, they certainly wouldn't be stupid enough to put it with your name or anything else which could risk identification and prosecution. Almost all of the hidden camera videos are faked, the very few which aren't, don't exactly come with identifying details. I'm not trying to do reassurance here but I do think this is bizarre. I'm also kinda not sure why it would matter if something that *did* exist of you anyway? It would be a crime against you, not something you've done wrong. People don't get judged, lose a career or anything else due to something like that so I'm just not sure why the intense need to know. I take it that the idea that this could have happened causes you anxiety which leads to the rumination and checking compulsions, but even if you can convince yourself it's likely to have happened, I don't see how it would be of consequence to your life or have any impact. Personally sometimes with my obsessions I end up wishing they would just come true already so I can get out of the headspace, actually a lot of people say they feel relieved to just have an ending to their obsession even it's cause the bad thing happens. The reality of it is much easier dealt with than having OCD about it, and this seems like the kind of thing which would fall under that category. Rather than focusing on finding out whether it's a reality and needing to make yourself safe, it might help to switch focus to how you would get through it if it did happen, in order to help you feel less driven to find out if it will/has happened. For example, you would have family and friends supporting you and telling you that whoever took the video did a horrible thing. They would redirect your attention to focusing on positive things in your life. Your career would be unaffected. It would neither have to be a shameful secret nor something that others "deserve to know" about you. Websites would remove the video, the police would also enforce that if you reported the crime. Your name wouldn't have to be linked to it for employers or anything. You would be able to sue for damages, both financial and emotional. If it's unidentifiable as you and you can't find it, it is not a threat to you. If it's unidentifiable but you still somehow found it and knew it was you, it wouldn't be a threat to you as it's only you who has linked it to you, risks of someone who knows you seeing it would be astronomically low (and also, again, wouldn't even be a disaster if they did, just an invasion of privacy which you CAN survive), and you may not even decide to bother doing something about it. Basically, knowing that if someone has done you wrong you can actually take action and be supported in that action to correct what they have done, can help to defuse the whole loop of obsession. My therapist says that when an OCD client says that it wouldn't be the end of the world if their fear came true, she knows they have turned a corner. The level of anxiety the possibility causes you has become out of proportion to the actual threat level (both the probability and the worst case scenario consequences), because of you reinforcing the sense of a need to neutralise the uncomfortable feelings caused by the scary possibility via compulsions. You're not neutralising an actual threat. You're neutralising feelings about it. You don't need to know for sure, because if it happened then you'd survive the possible fallout. You'd literally survive everything besides actually dying. Bad things happening are a part of life. Spending all the rest of your life anticipating the bad thing just makes the rest of your life so crappy that there's nothing positive left to make the bad things worth it.

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