Does anyone else have this - having to do things a certain number of times. Touch things, but other more difficult things. Mine started as 2 and then became a multiple of 2. Then OCD made it a multiple of 4 and I had to do things 16 times. I thought that was bad and then years and years ago OCD made that a multiple of 4, so 16 times 4 and now sometimes I have to do things 64 times. I have called people, including an HR person for a job I was interviewing for, changed the channel on the tv, had to stop and look at something and a host of other things. Does anyone else have this type of OCD? I also have combined with that an OCD of ‘if I do this then I will ruin the rest of my life’ - and that can be anything like if I see this person again, or call this person again, or walk down this path again and more keeps getting added to it. Does anyone else suffer from these two types of OCD? I don’t even know what to call the second one. And if anyone does, what will ERP look like if I want to do that? What exposure should I be doing. This is making me very isolated and tired, I am so tired all the time, it makes me so tired and exhausted all the time. Any help, advice will be highly appreciated.

@Tqh That is so interesting. I didn’t know it had a name. I’ll have to do more research on it. Do you have any suggestions. Thank you for the information.

@Tqh I completely get that, the constant fight against the OCD. I have two questions. Do you find after the anxiety maybe goes down in the moment, you think of it again and feel the need to do the compulsion. I am asking because I have ‘carried’ compulsions for a very long time, when I was not able to do them. So, I wasn’t fighting the OCD, just some of my compulsions get very involved like having to go back to a place or see or talk to someone again. And sometimes circumstances don’t allow for it. As you can imagine. So, as I was saying I have ‘carried’ a compulsion for months and some for years and then eventually done the thing I ‘needed’ to. Have you had that experience? The second question if you don’t mind me asking, are you able to work and do you get so exhausted by this fight that you are exhausted but have not ‘done’ much. I had so much OCD when I was working and also I get so exhausted some days and I realize all I did was fill my day with OCD stuff. Even if I go out and do things, it’s all within OCD, like having to go the OCD way or at the times OCD allows. I like what you tell yourself in the moment, thanks for giving me that information. I am going to try and use it. Thank you so much for this.

The second one is magical thinking ocd, we just have to accept the fact that the “bad things” may or may not happen and stop compulsions or rituals

I didn’t know it had a name either, until I started using this app, I know it’s hard and I can’t do it sometimes, but the only thing that works is accepting the uncertainty. Like if I have a thought about me dying if I don’t do things certain way, or if i don’t do my compulsions, I just say to myself “oh well, I guess I’ll die then”. I will get very anxious, but eventually the anxiety goes away. it is a constant fight against my ocd thoughts.

Sometimes I am able to let it go. Also, sometimes after a big anxiety attack, I have a few hours or even a couple of days compulsion free, I think that my brain sees that nothing bad happened, even if I didn’t do my compulsions or rituals, and I am able to “ignore” the ocd thoughts for a while. But other times, I postpone my compulsions and I end up doing them anyways. You say that you’ve carried compulsions for months, so you know that nothing bad happened even though you waited a lot of time to go back and do it, so next time you can try to think about that whenever you are trying to go back and do the thing you “needed” to do. I get what you say about feeling exhausted, ocd makes it so hard to get trough the day sometimes. When I’m starting a new job or some new activity, I’m always “ocd free”, I think it is because my mind is busy and it doesn’t have time for my obsessions, but then it hits me again, the good thing is that I never do my compulsions in public, so I’m not able to do them and like I said before, the anxiety eventually goes away. I have some good days, when I even laugh at my thoughts and my compulsions, and some days when the same thoughts make me want to cry. We have to keep fighting each and every day, and don’t let this monster win. We’re here to help each other ?