#ocd compulsions

[openmindpsych]

i love mental compulsions

(x)

[co-fronting]

Thing that bugs me a lot about OCD with invisible or purely-mental compulsions is how that gets called "Pure O," which as a term is completely inaccurate. It's not purely obsessions; we don't not have compulsions, you just can't easily see us outwardly performing them. The way "Pure O" is described almost absolutely has compulsions that are just not labelled as such, because doctors, peers, whatever can't personally see them. Which just gets into all of my problems with how much of diagnosis is about outward behavior to others rather than internal experiences... Mental checks and ruminations are compulsions. Invisible rituals are still rituals. Anything that you need to do that's ritualistic and is done to "combat" your obsessions until they go away can be a compulsion. It doesn't matter if people can't physically see you doing them, and I'm so tired of watching them get rebranded as "purely obsessive" instead of what they are.

[therpistlr]

🧠 How Daily ERP Helped Quiet Pure OCD (Without a Therapist) — Workbook That Mapped It All Out

Pure OCD isn’t obsession without compulsion — it’s obsession with invisible compulsions: mental checking, reassurance seeking, thought suppression, and analyzing the meaning of intrusive thoughts.

The themes vary — harm, SO-OCD, scrupulosity, existential dread — but the cycle is the same:

Intrusive thought hits

Mental rituals kick in (often instantly)

Temporary relief

More anxiety

Repeat

That’s the trap. The only way out? Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) — even when the compulsions are all mental.

💡 What ERP Looks Like for Pure O

Writing and re-reading scary thoughts on purpose

Sitting with uncertainty ("Maybe I'm a bad person. Maybe I’ll never know.")

Blocking mental reviewing, confessing, or reassurance-seeking

Letting anxiety rise, peak, and fall — without fixing it

ERP isn't about feeling better right away — it's about retraining the brain to see the thoughts as irrelevant noise. And it works.

📘 One Workbook That Actually Gets Pure O

If doing ERP alone sounds overwhelming, this helped tremendously:

👉 The Pure O OCD Workbook

It’s written by clinicians, but practical and easy to follow. Some highlights:

Breakdown of Pure OCD themes (harm, sexual, religious, etc.)

Worksheets to build a personal ERP plan

Imaginal exposure scripts tailored to intrusive thoughts

Strategies to interrupt mental rituals

Relapse prevention and tracking tools

It teaches how to face the fear without giving in to compulsions — step by step.

⚠️ What Keeps OCD Going (and ERP Stops)

Rumination (“Why am I thinking this?”)

Reassurance-seeking (Googling, confessing, analyzing)

Avoidance (of people, triggers, media)

Treating the thought like it’s meaningful

Needing certainty before moving on

The more the mind tries to “figure it out,” the tighter the OCD grip. ERP breaks that cycle — and the brain learns that uncertainty is safe.

✅ Recovery Is Possible

Pure OCD can feel isolating and exhausting. But with consistent ERP — even without a therapist — things can change.

The thoughts may still come, but they lose power. The anxiety fades faster. The freedom grows.

It takes work, but it’s worth it.

👉 Here’s the workbook that helped make it doable, one day at a time.

[ocdculture-is]

ocd culture is *maybe* im the one person who shouldn't be allowed to recover because what if i become a terrible person without the constant guilt and terror.

OCD culture is

[chainsaw-headache]

This is what It feels like trying to ignore compulsions

[monstersholygrail]

🤣🤣🤣🤣 Omg im loosing it! Please get vampire bf a therapist to work this out, think he developing OCD poor guy

Not all of my OCs inadvertently catching my OCD lmaooo 😂😂 First Bunny Secretary and now Army Medic Vampire Boyfriend. Poor Ocs hahaha

I imagine him sitting by the computer after you tell him you think he has OCD. He’s silent the whole time he’s reading over the entire history of the disorder. You’re sitting there silently, ready to face the denial that’s sure to be coming.

“Yeah, I don’t have this.” And there it is. You give him a blank look.

“You compulsively check my temperature every time you enter the bedroom,” you point out.

“You’re sick, that’s normal.”

“You always touch my pulse and wait till it beats eight times before letting go,” you mention next. He merely shrugs.

“Well what if the previous seven were a trick?” He shoots out in response, his mind likely supplying that as a reason to fuel the compulsion.

“That’s not how pulses work,” you say gently.

“Ok— and how was I supposed to remember?! If you recall I haven’t had one for a very long time!” He cries out dramatically, slapping his hands on his thighs and storming out of the living room.

With a sigh you get up to follow him. Knowing it’ll take some time before he comes to accept it. Vampires and change not always mixing well. But with your help and your presence it’ll all be ok.

[ocd-safe-space]

(This is a vent. If you don’t want to see my vents for whatever reason, you can block the tag #my vent)

I fucking hate having OCD. I can go on for days about how it makes me stronger and more empathetic and how I’ve learned important lessons from it, but at the end of the day it’s just a mental disorder that tears me down and exhausts me and makes my life hell.

I constantly feel like I’m a terrible person. I feel like I’m a terrible person right now.

I can’t DO THINGS like people without OCD can. Right now as I’m typing I keep having to go back and delete and retype certain letters, I always have to slightly adjust the position of things, the mental compulsions are so exhausting, the whole thing is just so exhausting and I hate it.

No matter what I fucking do I can’t escape it, it’s literally how my brain is wired. It’s tied so deeply into how I think and act and how I perceive things that I couldn’t remove it without completely changing who I am as a person.

I envy people without OCD. It must be nice to not constantly be fighting against yourself and dealing with the most violating, dehumanizing intrusive thoughts and shit all the fucking time. It’s literally like dragging around a giant ball and chain only that ball is your brain 😭

[thejohnlockedfemboy]

guess who managed to self-regulate a panic attack for the first time ever last night 💪