Does anyone else here have ocd that is the fear of making mistakes? but not nessecarily scared of making the mistakes, but more of what other people might think, do or say about you because of that mistake? Like I don't mind making mistakes, I mean we're humans, we all do that. but what bothers me is when people bring up that mistake and makes me feel guilty for it. I've been a victim of narcicisstic abuse so my whole live I've been scared of disappointing ANYONE because of a thing that I didn't mean to do or regret doing. I don't ruminate on the mistake itself, but on the possibility of being in danger or being hurt because of the mistake. My fear focuses more on my fear of abusive people than on myself. Like each time i make a mistake, i think, "am I gonna be hurt/dissappointed again because of this?" Another example of mine is when I look a certain way, i think, "does that i mean I'm going to be verbally abused and belittled again because of that one stain on my clothes?"

A lot of people in the OCD community have a fear of making mistakes! You are definitely not alone. I think a lot of superficial fears (eg fear of making a mistake, fear of getting sick, whatever) have a much deeper core fear behind it. Getting to the core fear has been helpful for me in my own OCD recovery and also in helping others as a therapist. You can do this by doing something called the "downward arrow" technique - asking yourself okay, someone judged me for that mistake, then what? Then what am I afraid of? What would be so bad about that? Then what? Getting to the root of that core fear is important because usually it leads you to recognizing that - this is a scary thing for sure but ultimately something we cannot protect against 100% or ever be 100% sure about, which is the whole point of ERP treatment and why it's so great. Our anxiety has good intentions, it's trying to protect us but often it goes into over drive in such a way that it becomes costly and prohibitive. Good luck <3