health ocd- does anyone have advice that works for them on how to deal with it? physical and mental. sometimes i’ll just sit there and evaluate every physical feeling i am having and then other times feel like i’m going to lose it mentally ugh

Evaluating every physical sensation is a form of compulsive checking. I dealt with this when I feared I had fleas. I would feel an itch, and check my body over and over. I wasn't able to stop checking cold turkey, so I would set myself limits until I could stop. You can check only once an hour, then cut back from there, or whatever limit challenges you to an appropriate degree.

I am currently dealing with this. I just hope my worst fear doesn’t come true. I hate this.

Yes! This is my main theme, although ERP has helped me tremendously. One thing I can say— exposure, exposure, exposure! Try to do one each day if you’re feeling up to it. Since you say that you focus on your bodily sensations, make yourself complete a body scan and passively observe the feelings in each part of your body. Do it over and over again until it becomes so repetitive that it’s annoying! Trust me, you’ll get bored. Also, thoughts are NOT reality. Just remember that.

I also sometimes purposely make myself feel uncomfortable and challenge myself to not take the “victim seat” and face my fears head on! For example, sometimes I will purposely watch triggering content, such as young people with cancer, to see how much I can handle. I used to do this repetitively in therapy until it caused me very little distress. It’s all about retraining your brain and disabling the faulty pathways that your OCD has instilled in it.

If you have anxiety regarding your heart, wear a heart monitor. Do exercise and get your heart going and watch it. Keep doing it until your anxiety gets to virtually 0.

If you aren’t currently able to do formal therapy, please consider reading the book “Overcoming Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts: A CBT-Based Guide to Getting Over Frightening, Obsessive, Or Disturbing Thoughts.” It helped me so much when I was really struggling. It’s available as an e-book too. It does a great job of explaining how much of a liar OCD really is.

thank you all so so much. this is honestly the biggest reason for my anxiety cause my anxiety is all physical. i’m gonna try all of these things 💙 wishing you all well!!