I read an article that was super triggering to my theme. I’m trying to use it as an exposure and just sit with the anxiety and say maybe, maybe not. I’m hoping I don’t hold on to this later ... that’s when my rumination kicks in :/

Guys for the past couple of hours ive been spiraling! I wad researching and came across this harm ocd article question that has been worrying me. The title was "im scared of hurting someone when I'm mad. Can i trust myself?" And I was thinking "hey that's what ive been worried about for the past several months!" I even AVOID being angry. Im scared of it bc I get a lot of thoughts and I'm hyperaware of my hands and feel them tingly! Last time i tensed so hard to stay still as possible bc I was so so nervous from my thoughts and my hand twitched which made me SPIRAL. I never want to cause harm! And i always start crying after an argument bc the thoughts are so so scary! Anyway I got afraid bc the article said "research has shown that people with ocd don't struggle with impulse control- so if you find yourself intensely worried you could do harm based on the intrusive thoughts or urges you have, it's likely something else is going on." THAT SENTENCE HAS LEFT ME WITH A TON OF ANXIETY! Its so bad, my appetite is gone! I'm scared does this mean I don't have ocd and should be seriously concerned?!

I hope everyone is holding up okay! I’ve been seeing a lot of scared posts and whatnot lately, so I just wanted to make this post to remind ourselves to practice our uncertainty! I want to share a few response prevention lines that help me calm down! My thoughts do not define who I am. Maybe I’m a bad person, maybe I’m not, but I have a lot of things I need to do now. I’m going to practice not knowing for sure. I don’t have to solve this problem. I am choosing to sit with this uncomfortableness!

I sometimes see posts on here of people saying their OCD fears becoming true and it’s so so triggering for me. It makes me question if I ever had OCD and if I’m just faking it. I’ve tried to accept that my fear was real. Okay? Before I knew this was OCD, I really TRIED to accept it as a part of myself because I figured if I was even having those thoughts, it must be true. But in reality it just made me feel worse in the end. It wasn’t until several hours/few days after accepting the thoughts as true did I realize they were not and how uncomfortable it made me identifying with them that way, so eventually I went back into the rumination cycle. And I’ve done this multiple times. No matter how much I’ve accepted it as real, I never come to a conclusion in the end and I just get 10x more miserable. And I am still so scared of my fear coming true as those peoples did. But I know that’s what we all fear, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. And with a new fear I just developed, (all in the realm of the same theme) I’ve also tried to accept it as real when I felt SUPER convinced and even though it felt excruciatingly real, there was a part of me that couldn’t fully believe it, because I just know viscerally that it’s not. But the feeling of it being real is just too powerful and it overmastered any ounce of insight I had left. It wasn’t until my OCD spike calmed down when I was able to see through the viel. I hate this. I have no desire to do anything that my thoughts tell me. I know what I want to be, want to do, and it’s the opposite of those OCD thoughts. But these triggering posts won’t leave. (Not really the publishers fault, it’s my ritual that I engage in). They make me come all back to square one (if I wasn’t there already) and question if I’m using this as an excuse. I don’t want to do what my OCD tells me to do, but my brain just spits, “you’re just convincing yourself you don’t want this!” as it so often now does. I’m so tired. Please give me my old self back. Please give me 100% certainty that none of this is real and my fears are not at all based in reality. My brain cannot accept uncertainty and will not leave me alone. My brain is raged and powerless without knowing why, and spiels that anger back on me to get a reaction, and when it gets what it wants, the cycle continues. And goes way longer than I had bargained for :(