I’ve seen people mention sitting with the anxiety and not trying to solve your thoughts. What does this do/help in the long run?

Your brain learns to sooth yourself using something other than the OCD. Right now, we automatically jump to compulsions to try soothe the distressive thought/image/feeling. But by not feeding it with compulsions or 'OCD cookies' as I like to imagine it, we eventually starve out the distress and with time it will lower the overall anxiety caused by the thought image. Don't worry, this takes lots of practise and understanding. But you're already making steps 😊 Can I ask if you are getting help from a CBT therapist who uses ERP as an approach to your ocd? You're WORTH that help 😊❤️

Okay awesome! Do you have a local GP? You could book an appointment with your GP, and express that your symptoms match what seems to be obsessive compulsive disorder. If it help, you could write down a few points of how you are feeling and prehaps anything from Google which is about OCD that you feel correlates to those feelings. They should agree that you can receive counselling. 😊👍 It may be a bit of a wait, as we know with the NHS, but hopefully that will be a good start.

You teach your brain to not fear the thoughts, to not react in panic, so that in the future those thoughts can pass by, without you noticing or reacting to them at all.

I can’t find the words to describe how or why, but in general it dissipates the anxiety and retrains your brain that not doing your compulsions didn’t mean the bad things happened. (Ugh, this description does not so the process justice.). Hopefully someone else can better answer.

You learn your mind to not live in this reaction state all the time. Real threats are solveable, OCD is not.