OCD: “You’re going to be canceled on Twitter any day now.” Me: “Yeah, probably. But if they really want me to know I’m canceled, they’ll have to find my personal email because I’m not getting back on Twitter.” OCD: -surprised Pikachu face-

like the title says, i also suffer from cancel culture OCD, even more these last two months in which i have noticed that several people have been deleting me from social media, in fact two days ago i had a spiral as someone recently blocked me. i won't go into it to avoid the compulsion to confess but basically i had issues before with my ex and some of his friends that he himself ended up involving, even though we are on good terms he made sure to make me look like i was the problem and several mutual friends have been detaching themselves from me. the thing is, i see many people say that to fight their cancel culture OCD they delete their social media and then just. disappear. but i don't want to do this - i don't want to hide, i want to stay in the public eye and create things, in fact, i am an artist. but since the last year now i live in constant fear and also somewhat sensitive to what others think of me thanks to the rumors about me and i'm afraid that one day i might be "exposed" or something like that; and i also feel like i'm "pretending" to be a good person all the time. so, with what i already said, how do i deal with this without having to resort to deleting my social media? i think that exposing myself every day and continuing to post things on social medias despite the constant fear and guilt i feel would count as ERP, right? thanks.

I feel like I’ve had a lot of different categories of ocd. Some categories stick with me more and are repetitive. I’ve been doing well with mental health - not having anxiety stick around. When the physical feeling of anxiety sticks around, every thought is horrible, but when the feeling of anxiety is gone the obsessions don’t really impact me. If I can keep anxiety at bay, my life is good. I’ve been doing well lately, although this week I was scrolling through tictok and watched a video about someone in a coma and wondered if I was in a coma right now and didn’t know it. I had a panic attack for about 15 minutes. Anxiety, sweating, etc. It didn’t take ahold of me and it quickly lost its impact on me. It still shook me and I was just like “wow” where did that come from. Now I am staying away from social media. Is that avoidance? Should I make myself keep watching social media? Many ocd problems have come from social media or watching a movie or show that triggers something and then spirals. I am limiting what I watch, which I believe is good because I shouldn’t be watching that stuff anyway. What do you think?

In 2023, as I was finally getting sober from harder substances, I found myself in one of the scariest mental spaces I'd ever known. I was still smoking daily, my relationship was rocky, and one night—it all hit me. It felt like I had slipped into a video game. Nothing felt real… or maybe everything felt too real. The world around me was distorted. I had always dealt with anxiety, but this? This was something else. I was spiraling—drenched in guilt over everything I'd ever done, every person I thought I hurt, every wrong I tried to make right all at once. It was suffocating. At 23, I tried checking myself into a mental hospital—something I hadn’t done since I was 17. I was desperate to understand what was happening. My relationship took a hit as I spilled every ounce of guilt I carried to my partner, unable to stop the cycle. It wasn’t just anxiety. It was OCD. And while the diagnosis was terrifying at first, it was also reassuring. I finally had a name for the storm inside me. I wasn’t alone. People I admire—like Jenna Ortega—deal with this too. It’s not just me. It’s real, it’s hard, but it’s also something I can face. Since then, I’ve made big changes. I stopped smoking—realizing it only made the noise in my head louder. I started therapy. My partner didn’t understand at first, but as we both learned more about OCD together, we grew stronger. We’re now engaged, and I’m happier than I’ve ever been. But now it’s time to reconnect—with myself. I want to find the me before everything. The creative, passionate, connected me. I want to start streaming games again and hopefully rebuild the following I lost. I want to connect with people again—I don’t have many friends left, but I’m determined to find my people again. I’m also diving back into my art. Journaling. Sketching—even when I don’t like it. Because it’s the act of creating that heals, not just the end result. I won’t let OCD run my life. I will prevail.