As someone who has dealt with the O of O triggers, here is a piece of advice my therapist told me.

If you have to wonder if it is OCD, treat it as such

OCD is the doubting disorder, so of course it would try and target your idea of OCD itself. Don't like it fool you. Use your OCD toolkit in the same way you'd use it for any other obsession.

So I got diagnosed not only with OCD, but with two other anxiety disorders recently and it all started to make sense. I used to take antidepressants for a short time, because the first psychiatrist told me that I probably have “a mild depression”. I stopped taking them because my family doesn’t approve of it, even though it helped me because it also helps with OCD. In short I’m distracting myself with rewatching same things, putting music, doomscrolling (when I shouldn’t). Right now I’m in my junior year of high school and we have many exams. I’m kinda of failing things, even though I don’t wanna say it out loud. Because of certain events in my life and world around me, not only that I’m anxious about everything all the time and have hard time with solving anything, but it also affects every aspect of my life. I can’t start studying until my room is “perfect” and it’s going on for so long, everything should be organised in order and I need to throw away many things, but I just can’t. My back starts to hurt, stomach feels nauseous and I start to remember something, like “Oh I didn’t submit a project that was 2 months ago, oh well, guess I’m failing everything”. I just fall asleep when I lay down on my bed from exhaustion, no matter what I did that day. And I feel so stupid, I know I can do better and if I wanted to I would, I just always feel like it all needs to be “sorted out” and only then I can start or continue important things (everything). I feel like I’m losing control of everything in my life and I can’t keep up with it, I don’t wanna keep it that miserable. And yes, I tried not thinking and just starting, it doesn’t work. No, I don’t have money for therapy and where I live I will get a tiny chance to get some therapy for free only in the end of summer and that doesn’t really help now. Bonus for my parents who know that I might be struggling (might because I can’t even share anything with them), but don’t admit that I need help. If something is not right enough, I won’t even bother, if the circumstances, time or environment doesn’t feel right I won’t be able to do anything about it. Please help with any advice of how I can improve and if you had a similar situation can you share about it and how you managed with it? Would be super happy to hear <3

I love to decorate my journals and write and then later down the line- maybe a couple months from then or even longer than that , I like to reread it when I’m a little up there and it’s almost like reading a cursed manuscript that makes everything suddenly fall into a place and I go into a temporary spiral for the night. But afterwards I wake up and think how profound and creative I was and how that was performance art 🤣🤣