ramblingsofocd

[ramblingsofocd]

if you're one of those people who are like "oh my god im so ocd!!" and then you just like to be organized, shut the fuck up. literally shut the FUCK up. You have no fucking idea what its like. Its like being trapped in a mental prison. Its being called weird and ridiculed by my own family because i have to wash my hands between helpings of food or because i have to run out of the bathroom when i flush the toilet or because even when i smell something awful i have to breath through my nose instead of my mouth because if i breath through my mouth it feels like i can taste it. Its developing conditions that accompany it, like excoriation disorder which makes me dig into my nails so hard they're permanently fucked up and look ghastly and sometimes even bleed and which means i have scabs on my head all the fucking time because i pick at them constantly, or misophonia which makes me flinch at every trigger sound, it gets so bad to the point where i start hitting myself and had to move away from walls because i was sure i was going to bang my head against one. hard. It's having violent intrusive thoughts, sick intrusive thoughts, thoughts that make you stay up into all hours of the night and fret over whether you're a good person, thoughts that make you think about death all the time. your own death, death of loved ones, how people will die, how people will react to you dying. It's having morality ocd, which makes you hate yourself more than anything after any minor mess up. It changes your life. Its fucking hard to live with. so i never want to hear "oh I'm so ocd" from people who aren't actually ocd ever a-fucking-gain.

[ramblingsofocd]

oh fuck do i have ocd lol

you might!! it's hard to tell when there's an overlap with general anxiety (and OCD is categorized as a type of anxiety disorder) but yeah, do you:

- find yourself needing to rewrite, reread, clarify, or follow-up to an unnecessary degree - overexplaining yourself to people to be perfectly understood, otherwise you feel like some harm might happen to yourself or others

- do similar things with your physical environment - re-checking and making sure everything is "where it should be" to prevent loss or harm - needing to know where everything is, having backup plans, with an anxiety attached to having these systems in place

- anticipate worst-case scenarios frequently, imagining that if you don't do something, then a domino effect of things might happen to cause catastrophic harm

you may also have compulsions / rituals attached to these, ranging from kind of logical (cleaning & sanitizing spaces to prevent illness) to pure physical impulse ("i need to touch the doorknob to make sure it's locked, even though I can physically see the lock without touching it")

OCD can be associated with strong feelings about morality, religion, or other belief systems ... it can be tied to anxious superstitious behavior

nail picking, skin picking, hair plucking, scratching at things on your body or clothes that feel out of place

there's a lot but this is mainly the stuff that has been present for me in my life

[ramblingsofocd]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[ramblingsofocd]

i really wish more people talked about moral ocd bc i truly think that its its own special brand of hell

[ramblingsofocd]

i'm exhausted but my mind won't stop fucking racing

[ramblingsofocd]

people seem to forget that even people with contamination OCD are often not clean....? and in fact their OCD can make things dirtier....?

it seems counter intuitive but contamination OCD can result in really, really dirty environments.

hi I have contamination OCD and one of my biggest obsessions is mold! I go to extreme lengths to avoid mold! and I just spent an hour cleaning real, not imagined mold out of my bathroom! how did that happen!? how did it get that bad!? it's really simple! my OCD made me avoid mold which meant avoid cleaning the mold which meant the mold got worse which made it harder to clean the mold.

the increasing distress at the mold meant very little until it got me to the point of breakdown where the mold was finally bad enough that my avoidance of it was a weaker force than my need to get rid of it.

I do this a lot.

I bounce between obsessively getting rid of anything that could possibly be moldy or get moldy in the next week and avoiding disgustingly moldy food because I can't touch it. usually I'm doing both. the mold causes me distress but the distress of dealing with it once it's there is greater than the distress of having it there. I solve this by obsessively preventing mold to the point of self destruction.

I have a completely disrupted relationship with food and my environment that makes things infinitely worse for myself because I'm constantly operating in both directions. my environment gets worse while I further restrict myself and destroy myself to try to prevent it but I can't just.... fix my environment? because that would involve interacting with mold.

I live in mold hell 🙃 help

[ramblingsofocd]

I see other people with OCD say they can’t write their intrusive thoughts down because it makes them feel worse and then here I am being like “if I don’t get these out of my head Right Now I will combust” and as someone who doesn’t have super obvious rituals and compulsions I almost wonder if writing them down IS the compulsion. If I don’t write them down to get them out of my head then I feel like I’m going to die, the thoughts will never end, and I will be stuck in my room obsessively thinking these things until I die because I’ll forget to eat or I’ll get sick and I’ll starve to death or not seek medical help and I’ll die. And then when I look at it like that it’s like. Oh. Yeah. That’s the OCD right there! Fucking hell.

[ramblingsofocd]

List of stupid moral OCD thoughts I’ve had (and will continue to have) :

[Keep in mind I am fully aware that these sound like strawmen conservatives would make up, but like. This is my life. And it is a mental illness. This isn’t stuff the ‘woke left’ genuinely espouses, my brain just decided to latch onto an ideology I agreed with and push it to a comical extent, specifically to hurt me.]

- It is racist to have difficulties understanding someone’s accent if they aren’t white (I can barely understand people who have the same accent as me by the way, since I have auditory processing issues).

- Thinking the N-word is just as bad as saying it (queue 1000 intrusive thoughts of the N-word). This is based on one tweet I saw years ago that I’m pretty sure was a joke, by the way.

- It is bigoted to look at someone who is visibly marginalized, but it is also bigoted to avoid looking at them.

- Eating chocolate in the vicinity of a black person will make them feel unsafe, and thus I am racist for doing it.

- If I look people in the eyes, then I’m faking being autistic, and if I don’t, then I’m obviously playing it up (so also faking it).

- Anytime I am having sex with someone, I could be raping them, because I can’t read non-verbal communication. Even if I ask them repeatedly if they like what I’m doing, I could still be raping them, because they could be lying, which would also be my fault for not making them feel safe enough that they wouldn’t feel the need to lie. So basically I have no way to know whether or not I am raping someone when I’m having sex with them. Also, me expressing sexual arousal/enthusiastically consenting is pressuring the other party into consenting, thus coercion, because they’d feel bad saying no. And also me asking them if they like what I’m doing is pressuring them. As you can guess, I rarely enjoy having sex. Because if I did. Then that’d be rape. Of course ! /s

- If I’m attracted to a visibly marginalized person, I’m fetishizing them, but also, if I’m not attracted to them, then I’m bigoted. And also I’m a horrible person for thinking about this because it shouldn’t matter if I’m attracted to them or not, everyone deserves respect (<- guy who has not been disrespectful to them in the slightest).

- I must always be the one changing my path when walking around visibly marginalized people, because if not, then they’ll think I think I own this space more than they do.

- When putting my hand up in class to ask a question, my fingers must always be separated, because if they’re all next to each other, then I’m doing the ‘Heil Hitler’ greeting.

- If I reblog guilt trip-y mutual aid posts, then I’m hurting other people with OCD (and could be responsible for someone’s suicide), and if I don’t, then I’m a horrible person who’s responsible for whatever happened & happens to the person/people in the post.

- If someone likes me (platonically or otherwise), it means I manipulated them into it, and thus I am a danger to them.

- If I even as much as glance in the direction of someone’s breasts, then that means I’m attracted to them. Which gets pretty gnarly when it happens with a family member or a minor.

- Not applicable anymore, I’ve had top surgery, but before that: If I say I’m a man with breasts, then I’m pretending to be intersex.

- I’m privileged for having moral OCD, because people who are really struggling don’t have the time to think this much.

- I’m a bad person for even taking time to think about my problems because there’s so much worse happening constantly in the world and at the end of the day, I’m very privileged.

- It is my moral responsibility to constantly be questioning myself, my morals and my identity, because what if this time it’s not moral OCD. What if this time I’m actually bigoted. What if this time I’m actually wrong.

[I’ve talked for a while about my moral OCD, but was always scared to talk about what it’s actually about, because it is a type of it I rarely see mentioned (despite it being much more common in leftist online spaces than people would like to admit) and if I do, the general response is that the people who have OCD about being bigoted are actually bigoted for having it. Which is fucking. Soul-crushing. Anyways yeah, I’m scared to post this. But I’ll do it anyways. Yeah.]

[Reblogging is okay; I want people to see what it’s actually like. I might mute it later or delete it if it gets too overwhelming/gets me harrassment.]

[ramblingsofocd]

Just a reminder that OCD is not a homogenous experience

Not everyone with OCD has contamination OCD

Not everyone with OCD washes their hands obsessively

Not everyone with OCD has observable compulsions

Not everyone with OCD feels the need to be neat and have symmetry

Not everyone with OCD worries about germs

Not everyone with OCD feels able to talk about their rituals, compulsions or intrusive thoughts

[ramblingsofocd]

moments i should've realized i had moral ocd

when i was 10 i was convinced the police were going to arrest me for looking at boobs

thinking i was abusing and neglecting my first pet to the point where i gave him away so he would be "safe from me"

being so, so, so, so forgetful ("oh, what i ate??? oh, no idea! i was too busy being guilty over the fact i'm not 100% vegan yet!")

jumping at every opportunity to get drunk/high/etc. so i wouldn't have to think about anything anymore

having had like a million coping mechanisms but never knowing "why" and thinking i was doing it "just to get attention"

getting an anxiety attack everytime i mess up at work somehow

feel free to add on lol

[ramblingsofocd]

People acting like you’re completely evil for simply not liking bugs sets my OCD off a little bit

You can’t say anything about being terrified of spiders online without someone going “but the spider didn’t do anything to you!! Why do you hate them?! It’s unethical to kill them!!” And they’ll start referencing that one poem even if you never said you killed a spider in the first place

Some people literally treat it as a moral fault if you’re afraid of bugs. I saw a comment on Facebook where the conclusion was basically “if you’re scared of bugs, that’s Bad and you need to work on that and learn to be Completely Okay with them or else you’re Bad” like some people don’t have an uncontrollable fear of bugs

A fear of bugs is also an OCD thing. My contamination OCD really doesn’t like them. And some people with trauma who lived in infested/dirty homes also do not like bugs- So acting like being scared of bugs is an inherently bad thing leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

But I always have a nagging thought at the back of my mind now when I see a scary bug. “Why are you scared of it? You’re a bad person if you’re scared of it.”

[ramblingsofocd]

nobody:

me: *likes a post*

my ocd: was that post you liked actually good? what if that person is secretly bad and people find out and then you're a bad person by association because you liked their post? what if this post has secret dogwhistles that you don't know about? and by liking it that means you agree with it! reread it 30 times until all the words don't even seem like words anymore and the meaning is mush! what? you can't tell if it is a bad™ post? see, you actually are a bad person because a good person would be able to tell. you are going to hell now! you need to think at least 5 'good' things so you can counteract your eternal damnation!!! now now now now NOW NOW NOW!!!!

[ramblingsofocd]

thinking about how I've seen OCD get talked about now, but haven't really seen many posts that actually explain what it is. And like, obviously people shouldn't get all their info about mental conditions from posts, but u can't deny that internet communities and stuff play a major role in people recognizing and putting names to their own experiences.

But like since the general public has like absolutely no idea of what OCD actually is (no thanks to popular media), and a lot of things I see talking about intrusive thoughts don't mention OCD (either bc they originated in OCD circles or bc intrusive thoughts aren't Exclusive to OCD or for some other reason), there should prob be more explanation put out on what OCD actually consists of.

Which is kinda hard in some ways, bc there are so many ways OCD can present in terms of what "themes" a person experiences, so someone talking about what their themes are might not ring a bell with someone who experiences different ones. But like, the core thing with OCD isn't the presence of certain themes, it's a specific pattern of spiraling thoughts and reactions.

Like. OCD is a mental condition/illness where people experience stressful, unwanted, repetitive thoughts. These are intrusive thoughts are what make up the "obsessions" part of the disorder. In response to these intrusive thoughts, a lot of people will perform certain actions or think certain things in an attempt to neutralize or disprove the threat they represent. These are the "compulsions" part of the condition.

For a more "traditional" example, someone experiencing intrusive thoughts that they might catch a communicable disease may obsessively wash their hands or google their symptoms to try to lessen the anxiety. While someone who is worried they might hurt someone (even though they very much do not want to hurt someone) may avoid being near sharp objects or may avoid the people they're afraid of hurting.

One of the issues with OCD is that performing the compulsions provides short term relief, but in the long term it only strengthens the stress caused by the intrusive thoughts, thus furthering the thought spiral and actively making it worse, to the point where, depending on your themes, you may be (almost) convinced that your intrusive thoughts represent the truth or the inevitable or something permanent.

Intrusive thought themes cam be literally anything, but some of the common ones are stuff like

Questioning your sexuality, gender, etc (what if I'm actually straight/gay/bi/trans/cis/etc?)

Being worried about losing control and hurting yourself or others physically, sexually, emotionally, basically any way (what if I want to kill someone? What if I'm a pedophile? What if I'm an abuser? What if I want to stab myself? Etc)

Fear of becoming or being sick

Worrying something bad will happen to you or people you care about

Worrying about your spiritual beliefs or lack thereof (what if I'm actually Christian? What if I'm actually atheist? What if i don't believe in the faith i ascribe to? Etc)

Worrying about relationship status (what if I don't actually love them? What if they're not "the one"? What if they're cheating? What if *I'm* cheating? Etc)

What if I'm a bad person?

Fear of losing things

Fear of things not feeling right (this is often be related to other themes via magical thinking. ex: if I don't have my things organized Just Right then something bad will happen)

Fear of unreality

Compulsions vary by theme a lot obviously, but some common ones include

Hand washing

Organizing things until they Feel Right

Checking and double checking and triple checking to make sure you did something correctly

Obsessively reviewing your memories to disprove a thoughtor make sure you don't believe something

Arguing against the thoughts in an attempt to disprove them

Testing your mental reactions to a thought or to certain kinds of content, to show yourself you don't actually believe or feel something

Obsessively googling symptoms, testimonies, things related to your thoughts

Obsessive prayer

Repeating phrases, mantras, affirmations, etc in an attempt to make thoughts go away

Avoiding things and situations that set off your intrusive thoughts

Repeatedly asking for reassurance from others ("I'm not being xyz, right?")

But yeah this obviously isn't exhaustive but, just, if this kind of thing sounds familiar, you should probably do some research on OCD, bc while intrusive thoughts can occur with other conditions, the intrusive thought-compulsion spiral is the core of OCD and isn't really a subaspect of depression/anxiety/ptsd/etc. and the treatment and management of OCD can look different from other stuff, so its a good thing to look into.

(Also it's important to keep in mind, esp if you're someone that doesn't have it, that someone's intrusive thoughts Are Not "secret desires" or "repressed urges" or anything the person even remotely wants to act on. Someone having harm-related intrusive thoughts is not at risk of actually acting on them, no matter how worried they are of doing so.)

Anyway this was a long post and I don't have a neat way to wrap it up and also I accidentally added a poll and now can't get rid of it so here's free poll. I'm running on nyquil and a small amount of straight gin (which works very well at numbing a sore throat) rn gnite

[ramblingsofocd]

if anyone needs help identifying things that can become moral scrupulosity OCD obsessions/compulsions, heres a list of some i've experienced:

rereading your posts/texts over and over

checking your notes and/or followers list frequently to "make sure" bad actors aren't interacting with you

checking OP's blog before interacting with posts

compulsively opening a social media tab to look at your notifs and then closing it, over and over

fearing ways that things you say/do (or don't do) could be taken in bad faith. being anxious that your words/actions will be misconstrued as morally wrong, bigoted, rude, or aggressive

feeling guilty or obsessing over whether you should or shouldn't have reblogged a post

feeling like you aren't "allowed" to disengage from online discourse or unfollow people who post it

fearing you're being stalked, talked about, or called out behind your back. fearing you'll never be forgiven and that people might even celebrate your disappearance or death, even though you havent done anything wrong

searching your own name/username to see if anyone is actually talking about you

imagining defenses you would make against nonexistent heinous accusations or arguments against you, to prove that you didnt do it

feeling like you have to roll over and become a doormat when others are cruel to you, because it could cause strife if you do anything other than grovel or apologize

having trouble enforcing your own boundaries out of fear that they are somehow "wrong" or unethical

ending up surrounded by people who have all the "right opinions" but are super mean and unpleasant, and make you feel like you have to walk on eggshells

fearing that just HAVING moral ocd makes you a bad person somehow (for example, i often fear that having moral ocd is somehow pushing a 'stranger danger' or misanthropist agenda, even though i actually have a lot of faith in my fellow humans)

some of these bullet points are not inherently bad on their own, but if you find yourself having this kind of anxiety very often, that's not normal, and it's time to get offline or even seek professional help if it's impacting your life

this list is catered to how online culture influences moral scrupulosity, it is not indicative of how everybody's moral scrupulosity functions, and it is not exhaustive

[ramblingsofocd]

For this Disability Pride Month, I saw a post that was shittybad and it made me angry. So have this

[ramblingsofocd]

Ramblings of OCD #1 - 1/6/24

Your girlfriend isn’t in the mood and you feel sad. You feel guilty for being upset. You start to wonder if you’re secretly a rapist. You start to wonder if she ever felt coerced. Maybe she’s never wanted it and you never knew it. Maybe you’ve been a rapist all this time and you didn’t know. Maybe she dreads being around you. You start to wonder if you’re just like the ones that hurt you. You start to wonder if maybe you’re evil and maybe wanting sex is the root to all evil. Maybe you really are a sinner like they say. Maybe being a woman is inherently sinful. Maybe you need to go back to church. Maybe you need a lobotomy. Maybe you need to stop having needs. Maybe you need to stop asking. Maybe you need to cut it out at the root. Maybe having sex is the root of all evil. Maybe wanting sex is the root of all evil. If you want it, you’re evil. Maybe you need to only let her initiate. Maybe you need to stop wanting things. Maybe you need to stop wanting sex. Maybe you’re a bad person who needs to be punished. What if I’m just like them? What if I hurt her on accident? What if I didn’t realize what I was doing? What if I need to stop having sex forever to be a good person. How do I make it stop? How do I make it stop? How do I make it stop? How do I make it stop? How do I make it stop? How do I make it stop? How do I make it stop? How do I make it stop? I want it to stop. I don’t want sex anymore. I don’t want sex anymore. I don’t want sex anymore. I don’t want sex anymore. I don’t want to hurt her. I don’t want to be like them. I can’t be like them. I would rather die than be like them. I would rather die than be like them. Maybe sex is the root of all evil. Maybe I am the root of all evil. Maybe desire is the root of all evil. I should stop having wants and needs. I need to stop having wants and needs. I need to be better. I can’t hurt her. I would rather die than hurt her. Please kill me before I hurt her. It’s inevitable, I’m the root of all evil. I’m going to hurt her because I’m so fucked up. Because sex is the root of all evil. Because I am the root of all evil.

[ramblingsofocd]

I struggle with moral and religious OCD the most, as well as POCD and harm OCD. I tend to write repetitive things in certain number counts. If these are topics that are triggering for you, it’s best you block me or the trigger warnings that you know will upset you. I have a lot of trauma, and it will show up in my OCD ramblings. I am not a bad person. I have to remind myself of that a lot.