"Sometimes I feel the fear of Uncertainty stinging clear And I, can't help but ask myself how much I'll let the fear Take the wheel and steer It's driven me before and seems to have a vague Haunting mass appeal But lately I'm beginning to find that I Should be the one behind the wheel Whatever tomorrow brings I'll be there With open arms and open eyes yeah Whatever tomorrow brings I'll be there, I'll be there..." -Incubus, "Drive" OCD lies! Always!

Does anyone else relate to the above being the go-to mantra when OCD wants to manipulate you? It's a hard one to shake for me personally, if you have any tips for overcoming this particular thought, it'd be much appreciated! The current example: There is a sticky fly trap that hangs from the ceiling above our drying rack. I removed a strainer to strain my pasta and worried it hit the fly trap (even though I have no reason to believe it actually did). At first the voice was saying "better safe than sorry" and I was able to "overcome" it to drain my pasta but now that I have a bowl of pasta sitting in front of me, I can't get myself to eat it. Update: I asked my mom for reassurance and she gave it to me so, now that I'm eating the pasta, I'm worried, what if she was wrong. This is a pretty common version of a spiral for me when it comes to contamination and consumption, it's just very hard to shake the "better safe than sorry" mantra. No reassurance please, just tiprs to get over the "better safe than sorry thought." Thanks in advance for your insight and support!

I haven't been officially diagnosed with OCD but when I learned more about it, I never related to anything more. A little back story: when I was younger, there were a couple of youth suicides in my area and the schools felt the need to have someone come in and talk about suicide. Well the person they had come in did a horrible job teaching it and basically made it seem like the smallest negative emotion or feeling or change in behavior made you suicidal. This ended up scaring me so much that I got horrid anxiety. Fast forward to now, Everytime I feel anxiety and panic, I fear I'm going to kill myself. Everytime I feel down and depressed, I fear I'll end it all. I'm scared to be around anything sharp because the "What if" I hurt myself comes into my mind. There are always intrusive thoughts at almost every point of the day. And it's not only for me. Everytime I hear someone being negative, I fear they will be suicidal. I know in my heart that none of this is true but it's terrifying me that it's stuck around so much that it makes me scared that maybe it is true. I've had a lot of death in my family in the past year and a half and a lot of other family drama that I'd never had before that is now also bringing up existential intrusive thoughts. And I'd never questioned anything about life before but now I get the "why is life like this?" and "does anything we do matter?" and I hate it. I don't want to think like that. I just want to go through life being able to handle things normally again. It terrifies me even right now going "what if you give up?"

Looking back, I realize I’ve had OCD since I was 7. though I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 30. As a kid, I was consumed by fears I couldn’t explain: "What if God isn’t real? What happens when we die? How do I know I’m real?" These existential thoughts terrified me, and while everyone has them from time to time, I felt like they were consuming my life. By 12, I was having daily panic attacks about death and war, feeling untethered from reality as depersonalization and derealization set in. At 15, I turned to drinking, spending the next 15 years drunk, trying to escape my mind. I hated myself, struggled with my body, and my intrusive thoughts. Sobriety forced me to face it all head-on. In May 2022, I finally learned I had OCD. I remember the exact date: May 10th. Reading about it, I thought, "Oh my God, this is it. This explains everything." My main themes were existential OCD and self-harm intrusive thoughts. The self-harm fears were the hardest: "What if I kill myself? What if I lose control?" These thoughts terrified me because I didn’t want to die. ERP changed everything. At first, I thought, "You want me to confront my worst fears? Are you kidding me?" But ERP is gradual and done at your pace. My therapist taught me to lean into uncertainty instead of fighting it. She’d say, "Maybe you’ll kill yourself—who knows?" At first, it felt scary, but for OCD, it was freeing. Slowly, I realized my thoughts were just thoughts. ERP gave me my life back. I’m working again, I’m sober, and for the first time, I can imagine a future. If you’re scared to try ERP, I get it. But if you’re already living in fear, why not try a set of tools that can give you hope?