It's very possible that the only way to ensure you don't become a conservative old person is to keep checking whether you're wrong. Every time. Genuinely mull over the opposing viewpoint even and especially when it's uncomfortable. You absolutely cannot a) consider yourself safely incapable of terrible principles because you're a good person, or b) treat a your disgust reaction to something as a moral truth. You can't get comfortable. Tiring! But you'd rather be tired and choose the right path, you know?
^Posts that slowly kill people suffering with morality OCD themes
There's already so much abuse, harassment, and threats in progressive spaces that extremely traumatize people with morality OCD, harm OCD, responsibility OCD, etc. I literally woke up today from a PTSD-OCD combo nightmare about enduring a severely abusive harassment campaign on here because someone accused me of not being morally perfect.
This post can be summed up as "Always question your every thought, belief, and perception of reality. You are never safe. Your disgust at something doesn't mean shit. Don't get comfortable. Don't stop worrying. Don't stop anticipating when the bad thing you're scared of will happen. This will never be over because you are always at risk of becoming a monster, and your thoughts have the magic to make that true. Your thoughts and memories are not enough proof of your character. Obsess over your morality every second of the day. It sucks but you wouldn't want to be immoral, would you?"
Please consider the effects of the wording in posts like this. My OCD already tells me I need to die because progressive spaces have insisted over and over again that any privileged identity I have causes my existence to inherently harm people who don't have said privileged identity. Having OCD in progressive spaces is absolute hell.
Hey, I hear you, and I'm sorry this post brought up those difficult feelings for you. I also think you are misinterpreting the point of the OP.
Everyone DOES need to examine their ideas! But some people examine them too much, and too obsessively, and that's not a good thing. The solution to that is not to stop examining your ideas entirely- and it's likely that this is not something you're in a lot of danger of falling into through your mental health journey, anyway. You probably don't need to hear this kind of thing, and it may in fact be difficult not to take it in a more extreme way than it's intended because you're already predisposed to the other extreme of what it's addressing.
But that also doesn't mean that the past is wrong, or that it's a bad post. It doesn't even mean that the post failed to make room for your experiences where making room was necessary to the conversation.
It just means it's not really for you or people like you, and you probably need to be having a different conversation about this than the one op is trying to have.
@worth-beyond-a-number-scale hi, i also have severe ocd with morality, harm, and related themes. i empathize deeply with what you’re saying, and i also think @nothorses and the OP are making important points here.
yeah, having ocd in progressive/leftish spaces really is hell. i feel like that all the time. it’s ironic that i can feel so much less safe in queer spaces sometimes, even BIPOC spaces, which just leads to me constantly feeling alienated as a queer and non-binary person of colour. some of the worst betrayals i’ve had have come from these spaces.
and yeah, there is so much misunderstanding of ocd and lack of compassion around it. people don’t get how we just constantly question ourselves and worry worry worry and fear we’re capable of terrible, awful things. it’s exhausting. constantly.
i’ve found some exposure therapy and ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy) techniques to be helpful in addressing my ocd, and my therapist also just started introducing inference-based CBT, so we’ll see how that goes. i’m interested in how different techniques can work together and across each other to help me deal with the massive uncertainty and chaos and fear i live in all the time.
but also, there is a gift in being so attuned to uncertainty, and always asking questions. it allows me to see the grey areas and nuances more.
it’s so hard to actually sit with it all, and to not having everything just completely capsize me in its immense impossibility of “true” knowing. it’s made and still makes me cling to absolutes and wanting specific people to somehow save me from the world and be the arbiter of the “truth,” but then i can never actually believe in that and it ends up drowning my relationships in the pressure of it all, and the confessional/morality dynamic. and the nuances of existence are terrifying.
but having this intimate struggle with, and understanding of, nuance and complexity and im/possibility, also helps me to be more empathetic, and to learn to try to give myself a break more (still doesn’t really work most of the time…) it really is so hard. but i wouldn’t give up my ocd, my awareness of the hard space of uncertainty, even how it can tip into psychotic delusion and terror. i wouldn’t give it up because i think there is something that is also really beautiful and creative about being able to question things so much. i wish it didn’t tip into such extremes so much of the time, but i’m working on cultivating a balance. it sounds like you are too.
being able to question one’s principles and values and ideas is so important for the reasons mentioned in the op & by @nothorses, but it’s also true that how we go about it is going to vary a lot depending on our particular struggles.
i’m intrigued by therapeutic techniques that emphasize cultivating trust in one’s values, while also figuring out how to sit with uncertainty and questioning. and, even as people with ocd who question everything, we do also need to challenge our own biases and assumptions, and to recognize our mistakes.
i wish there was more understanding of how it’s important to do this without just moralizing everything, how it’s important to dismantle the culture of punishment that we live in. i think that’s a real problem, that questioning gets so intertwined with punishment, and that “checking your privilege,” for example, becomes a moral/punitive injunction rather than a process of developing empathy, curiosity, and care.
anyway, there’s a lot more i could say about all of this, but i’ll pause for now
