How do you open up to your therapist about very taboo OCD themes. I currently struggle with "Race OCD", always worrying if I'm coming across as racist to BIPOC. Racism is something that I find horrendous and awful. I consider myself to be an ally to BIPOC & to work and fight racism. So the fact that I'm worrying over interactions with people is complete opposite to my values. I act awkward around people, and I'm sure my anxiety is coming off as strange to people. I just don't know how to open up to my therapist about this without sounding like a piece of s***.

Cross post from Reddit: TW Religious ocd TW Racism This is going to confuse a lot of people but I’ll try my best. OCD could be tricking me. I don’t know. But I’ll do my best to explain. Warning: there are some extremely sensitive themes including racism. OCD has caused me to worry about making bad prayers. It is mainly an anxiety of what others would think of if I prayed for something bad. Basically, it can think of something bad, and I can think of why I want it, and say “amen” pretty easily. Not sure if that constitutes a prayer really since it is ocd driven, and might even feel more real to me than it actually is, but it gets very complicated. None of this makes any logical sense to anyone but me, but to me it makes sense and that’s the issue. My mind invented something where I can pray to pray for something. Yes, that’s right, and it makes no sense. Essentially these ideas for prayers come in automatically. I don’t necessarily choose them. I can somewhat choose how I react, but that is where it gets tricky. OCD also blunts my emotions with certain prayers or makes things feel more real than they are So, what happened, is my ocd targeted the theme I was most worried about having a bad prayer about, which was unfortunately racism. In the past, I made a mistake that was racist (I won’t get into what it was here), and I thought about it a lot. I imagined people never wanting to forgive me and saying I deserve to suffer forever. Additionally, worrying about making racist prayers made this go up. It was frustrating, because with ocd it can take what people say too literally. So if someone says: “you deserve to suffer,” I might be thinking that thinking about it 10 hours a day for multiple months was justified. This made me have a misdirected frustration towards the people I perceived as yelling at me, which was unfortunately people of color. Here’s where ocd comes in with the prayer obsession. OCD gave me the idea: well you’re so mad at them you could pray for them all to die. Unfortunately, with the prayer obsession I’ve had, I’ve had a bit of a history with doing bad prayers when I’m not feeling great, and I don’t know if that is just part of the ocd or not, or just doing them to do them. One example is world war 3. I don’t want people to get hurt, but when I was feeling horrible I thought “screw it, I’ll pray for it cause I want to die.” I knew God wouldn’t actually do it, and the normal me didn’t want him to. Then, and I don’t know why, it seemed extremely easy for a moment to pray for people of color to die, and I actually almost did it, but I stopped myself. This is where the praying to pray comes in. With ocd, if I have a moment where I almost did a bad prayer, my mind “saves” that mindset, and it is possible for me to go back to it any time. So this situation will present itself many times to me. With praying to pray, I can essentially be put back in the mindset at any time no matter what is going on, and by saying “amen,” my brain basically magically does it and it feels like the same thing. Because it feels real to me, it seems like the same thing as a prayer. Last night that is what I did for this and I regretted it less than a two seconds later. So basically, I ended up doing a prayer that was racist. This is exactly what happened in that moment. This isn’t who I normally am (although my brain would disagree), but in that moment, with magical thinking, I prayed for all people of color to die, out of what my brain said was “hatred.” My brain also said I felt genuine hatred, but I don’t think I really do. I think it is all related to a misdirected frustration of feeling like I was yelled at, which stemmed from ocd. After the prayer, all those feelings were immediately gone. I don’t know how messed up my brain was, or how much of a role ocd played. It probably at least blunted my emotions. It sort of came on all of the sudden too, but I did it. I’m really sorry. I don’t hate people of color despite what my brain says, but I feel like I did something really bad. When I sit with what happened and don’t engage with it, it does not feel like a big deal at all. The guilt is almost all ocd driven. So I don’t know if that means there is something I’m missing or not. I might be missing something, but I know what happened in the moment

I wanna start out by saying, I am really proud of how far I've come in recognizing my OCD tendencies and learned about how it can show up intersectionally for BIPOC folks who have racialized trauma and how me, being a White person, how it manifests itself for me. I'd also like to say, this is gonna be more of an analytical and reflective post. Please feel free to read and respond with any critiques or thoughts you have. I'm embarrassed about it nowadays, but it's important to acknowledge because it was a HUGE part of my teenage personality, unfortunately. I used to be a HUGE Shane Dawson fan 😭 like, his content was my strongest hyperfixation to date. So at this point in time, I feel like I'm still trying to decipher what kind of racial commentary and satire and jokes are genuinely funny and which are just perpetuating stereotypes and straight up minstrelsy. Shout out to D'Angelo Wallace for making the video essay that woke me up to seeing this issue more clearly. I try to be aware of how I can easily fall into just laughing at racial stereotypes without being aware of the serious consequences it has for BIPOC people, but at the same time, I don't want to be too worried about everything being racist and therefore that means it's bad and should be banned, cause that's also not always helpful, I've noticed. So racialized fear and polarization is something I'm deconstructing. I hate to admit this, too, 'cause it's embarrassing, but my OCD seems to latch onto racial issues. I end up obsessing about whether or not I'm causing marginalized people harm or not, particularly when it comes to racism. I believe this is because I know I was one of those White kids who was into "edgy" humor when I was a teen. I think it's just lingering guilt from knowing that was wrong, but OCD makes my guilt and rumination and therefore compulsions to "fix" it so much worse than most people. It's frustrating, but I have come a very long way in confronting and dealing with it. I'm very proud of myself for being aware that that's an issue I have. I've got to give credit where credit is due, to my biracial friend (who also happens to have OCD) for essentially helping me learn this, albeit the hard way with many arguments about racism and trauma. It's something that isn't talked about much, but we're learning to build bridges in our understanding of how mental health affects us as people with different forms of racialized trauma. Mine's not so much trauma, but social stigma, whereas his was from actual bullying and harassment and physical assault, simply because of his race. I've also learned how to recognize and deal with my own mental health issues WHILE confronting race because of Black advocates like Tony Nabors who does Racial Equity Insights, F.D. Signifier who does really great intersectional analyses on social issues pertaining to Black people, and D'Angelo Wallace for being the first Black YouTuber that made the problem with Shane Dawson video that finally helped me break out of my lowkey toxic parasocial/trauma bond relationship I had with him, lol. Does this post seem too wordy and analytical for this forum? Let me know if this isn't the right audience for this type of writing and reflection. I just wanted to talk about it because it's something I had to figure out largely on my own. Wondering if anyone else relates to this or can see themselves in this.

I’m on track to getting my diagnosis and i’m already questioning it. Pocd feels so real, and even though i once saw someone say “it has to feel real or you wouldn’t worry” which is like god level reassurance honestly, it hurts. I can’t look at children, they deserve better. My usual attraction seems to be gone and i can not think about anything else. At the same time i don’t really feel anxiety. I’m scared i don’t feel bad enough, if i just smiled maybe i honestly wouldn’t feel bad? I don’t have many other ocd symptoms either, except for some stuff when i was a kid and like questioning everything about myself. I’m clinging to the hope that this is Pocd instead of me being a Monster and at the same time i’m so sad that i have to go trough this. I don’t like myself but i’m sorry for my younger self. I just want to be held and be told that everything will be okay but how can i know? Even then i feel like comfort of that kind only really applies to others who are struggling and aren’t horrible like me. In so many ways i sm convinced i am a monster even though it might be a bit irrational. Maybe i’m a monster after all and then i should really get away from everyone i love. They deserve better :( After a lifetime of struggles (nothing super serious) i’m just getting started with therapy and i’m so.. scared. What if it won’t help? What if it turns out i’m the bad person i fear to be. Is there any way i can prepare or some tips or literally anything else? I would appreciate any wise words