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OCD Themes
OCD can attach to almost anything a person values. These guides focus on the shared cycle underneath different themes, including the compulsions that are easy to miss.
9 articles
Existential OCD: When Life's Biggest Questions Become a Loop
Existential OCD is not a deeper interest in meaning. It is the OCD cycle attached to questions that cannot be answered, with rumination doing the job of a ritual.
Read postChecking OCD: Why One More Check Never Feels Like Enough
There is a specific and well-replicated finding here that is worth knowing: checking makes your memory feel less reliable, not more. That is why the tenth check is worse than the first.
Read postContamination OCD: More Than a Fear of Germs
Everyone thinks they know this one. Most of what they know is the stock photo. Contamination OCD is broader, stranger, and more treatable than the stereotype suggests.
Read postHarm OCD: Intrusive Thoughts About Hurting Someone You Love
The thoughts are horrifying, they attach to the people you love most, and the horror you feel about them is the clearest sign of what they actually are.
Read postPure O: Why "Purely Obsessional" OCD Still Has Compulsions
Pure O is a useful description and a misleading name. The rituals have not gone anywhere. They have moved inside your head, where they are much harder to spot.
Read postReal-Event OCD: When the Obsession Is Something You Actually Did
Most OCD themes are hypothetical. This one is not, which is why people conclude it cannot be OCD - and why they spend years trying to solve it instead of treating it.
Read postRelationship OCD (ROCD): When Doubt Attaches to Your Partner
The question feels like the most important one in your life, and answering it is the compulsion. Here is what relationship OCD is and why "just work out if you love them" is the trap.
Read postScrupulosity: Religious and Moral OCD
When OCD attaches to faith or ethics, the compulsions look like devotion and the doubt looks like conscience. That is what makes this one so hard to see from inside.
Read postSexual Orientation OCD (SO-OCD): What It Is and What It Isn't
This theme is about intolerance of uncertainty, not about sexuality. It happens to straight people, gay people, and bisexual people alike, and the mechanism is identical each time.
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