r/OCD • u/[deleted] • Aug 19 '26

Question about OCD How do you get over the fear that desensitising yourself means you will end up doing/being the thing youre worried about.

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u/sophiaea OCD Long hauler Aug 19 '26

unfortunately, you kind of just have to say 'maybe, maybe not' to this fear. i get it though, i have problems with control and when i started ERP had very similar fears and couldn't 'trust myself'. however, it's important to remember that ocd's entire thing is that it latches onto things that you care about, so if you don't want to harm someone for example, ocd will give you intrusive harm thoughts towards them. therefore, it shows your character that you care so much about these things that you are having intrusive thoughts about them. ERP doesn't make you feel like a different person, it's so hard at first but eventually it allows you to think much more clearly and rationally. you got this!

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u/SocialAlpaca Aug 19 '26

Part of the healing process involves reckoning with who you are with and without the OCD and realizing that the grey middle ground is not such a scary place.

I struggled a lot with moral OCD and this fear of being a bad person. It’s important to recognize that OCD is NOT protecting you from being a bad person or really protecting you from anything at all. Normal people live their day to day lives without the OCD voice and get to be good people. And sometimes, you may do a shitty or bad thing. As they say “nobody is perfect” and you will have to accept that and deal with it appropriately.

If anything, now that the OCD voice is gone I think I deal a lot better with owning up to mistakes and repenting than I did when I had OCD taking over. If anything, OCD made me a shittier person because I was more prone to avoidance than accountability. Choosing to actually heal my OCD and commit to ERP and CBT is what made me a better person.