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OCD Ocd, anxiety, guilt and shame

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What form does your OCD take Link Removed?
The obsessions have to do with two topics, mainly: that I might cause harm, usually death, to someone by my negligence; and that I will be abandoned. I go through cycles with this. For a long time it won't be a huge problem and then it takes over my life. I also do tons of ruminating over the past, as you describe, worrying that things I have done are the worst things ever and have caused a lot more harm than they probably did. If you look at the list of 10 top cognitive distortions, somewhere on this site, I think this would be #3 (mental filter). If I read or hear about or watch something about something another person has done, I comb my mind for anything I might have done that bears the slightest similarity, and agonize over whether it really was that bad. I go over my posts here over and over and over, making sure I haven't said the wrong thing. I constantly worry that people would think how horrible I was if they really knew me. I worry obsessively about whether I am being fair and honest, and the problem with this last is that my mind gets so confused because of both the anxiety and the particulars of how I was abused, that I lose touch with what exactly the truth is sometimes. My therapist understands this and does a lot of helping me re-orient to reality.

Where my symptoms differ from yours is I do have overt compulsions, and they mostly have to do with being sure I am not causing harm to others. I can get into grooves with safety where for instance, I am terrified of poisoning someone, so I can be up half the night throwing things out and disinfecting everything in sight and washing my hands several dozen times. Fortunately it's not like that all the time. When it is, I know the exhaustion. That's why I can sympathize.
 
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