OCD Safe Space

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About me

Hello!! My name is Eight, and I run this blog :))

I am a genderfluid girl, (genderfluid but like mainly/usually a girl) a lesbian, and i use she/they/he pronouns. (Order of preference) I am autistic and have OCD, maladaptive daydreaming disorder, and potentially body dysmorphia.

This is a sideblog that I made in order to post about OCD and support other people with OCD. There may occasionally be posts about other disorders or neurodivergent types, but this is a primarily OCD-focused blog.

(Rest is under a read more)

So I've decided to get this blog going again, because I figure if I keep waiting until I magically have all the time and energy to do everything I want to do on here, I'll probably just never start it.

To start off with I would just like to say that I am really really sorry to everyone who sent an ask I haven't answered :(( I have really terrible executive dysfunction and for some reason answering asks just hits me right in the executive function.

So--asks are still open, however I can't guarantee I'll respond :(( I'm really sorry about this 😭 but if you'd like to send one anyways, I will definitely read it and if I can respond I will :)) I love all of you :D

But I am going to try to start posting a lot more in terms of resources, education, awareness, storytimes, stuff like that :D

If you don’t have OCD, take this as an opportunity to educate yourself and support your friends with OCD!!

If you do have OCD, I think you get a dragon or something. Remember to take care of yourself this month!! And other months as well please 😭

(TW: OCD stats below, including stats about depression, suicide, and psychosis. Please don’t read, or be careful reading, if you have health OCD. The parts about stats will be in pink so that you know what to avoid or read carefully.)

So for OCD awareness, this is your reminder that OCD is included in the TOP TEN most disabling disorders by the World Health Organization. It affects 1%—3% of the global population.

The International OCD Foundation says that between 25% and 50% of people with OCD will experience depression in their lives.

Stats from the National Institutes of Health say that 36% of OCD patients reported lifetime suicidal thoughts, and 11% have a history of attempted suicide.

(Also I don’t have a source for this one so take it with a grain of salt, but apparently 2%—10% of people with OCD will also experience psychosis.)

OCD is an extremely serious disorder that tends to be very misunderstood by the average person. It causes extreme stress/anxiety, guilt, and fear, and can be extremely hard to live with.

So this month, please remember to look out for yourself and your friends with OCD!! Feel free to reblog this to spread awareness, but it is NOT obligatory. (We don’t do reblog bait here ^^) If you decide to reblog, feel free to add an OCD-related story in the tags if you want!!

Anyways, hope you’re all having a good day!!! Thank you for reading ❤️

“People should generally be aware of current events and showing support to minorities/helping out where they can” and “people with OCD sometimes do need to step back for their own safety” are two statements that can and should coexist.

I have OCD. I am able to stay updated for the most part, and since I’m young what I can do is limited but I do try to do stuff. However, I have a bit of an easier time doing this because I spent a long time learning to separate my emotions from everything else.

If I let my OCD control things, I would be drowning in guilt all the time. That’s why I think it’s so important as a person with OCD to recognize that guilt is a neutral emotion. It doesn’t make you a better person and it doesn’t make you a better ally. All it does is whittle away at your wellbeing.

There is such a big difference between being aware of privilege you hold and unlearning internalized biases, and just feeling guilty about it. Because again, your guilt does nothing to help anyone. You don’t need to feel constantly guilty in order to be a good ally.

Anyways. IMO every activist should be aware of their physical, financial, and mental limits, and be careful not to cross those. (Hurting or burning yourself out does nothing for anyone except screw yourself over!!) And people with OCD often get to their limits sooner than people without.

If you don’t have OCD, I need you to understand that it is debilitating. Between 25% and 50% (or even up to 70%) of people with OCD will experience a major depressive episode in their life. 10%—25% of people with OCD will attempt suicide.

Wait are you the person who sent the asks after I posted that thing about people with OCD shouldn’t feel guilty or whatever it was??? OMG I am so sorry, I didn’t realize this was affecting you 😭

I did get your other ask, I must have forgotten to reply.. anyways please don’t worry, I do appreciate your apology but I already forgave you for what you said, and I completely understand where you were coming from when you said it. I genuinely didn’t realize that I and the others who replied were making you feel bad. I’m really sorry and that wasn’t my intention ❤️

bit of a mini vent, maybe? no idea.

uhh, i sometimes feel scared that i don't fit criteria because of how messy my room is, and because of ocd's watering down as a cleanliness/perfection disorder. for me, (if it's the case that i have it) i leave stuff to finish later, but then forget about it unintentionally, and suddenly- it's all a mess. then i can't touch any of it because it's just. not something i can touch.

i don't know if it's a contamination thing that i don't realize is contamination, so i've just been explaining my inability to wash dishes or look at dirty pots/pans as sensory issues, which while true, doesn't explain my inability to put my dirty clothes into a washing machine, because they're not dirty in a food-buildup way.

uuuugh and then the moral spiralling about dumb stuff having to do with gender or how i appear online is the worst. whats that? a sense of dread appearing when i see one notification in my activities thing on tumblr? its a like on a post. why am i dreading stuff. worst part is i don't know what i'm dreading. i'm just dreading.

Hello again!!!

So, your room being messy definitely does not mean you don't have OCD!! Contamination OCD is definitely a very real thing, but it's not the only type of OCD, and you can have it without being neat or organized. to Also about your room, omg I relate sm 😭 that sounds very executive dysfunction.

It could be contamination and sensory issues at the same time. Personally I have a lot of sensory issues that kind of become compulsions, maybe you have a similar thing??

I'm definitely not a professional, so like don't take me too seriously, but to me at least you definitely sound like you're showing a lot of OCD symptoms.

This is the OCD loop btw: | intrusive thought/fear ➝ bad feeling of anxiety, wrongness, and/or dread ➝ urge to perform some sort of compulsion, be it physical or mental, to relieve the stress ➝ stress is temporarily relieved ➝ intrusive thought comes back and cycle repeats | That's the basic cycle, and literally any anxiety, compulsion, and severity can be filled into the blanks.

I don't know your situation, but if you can, maybe look into therapy?? I can't really offer much advice on that since I've never been, but I hear from a lot of others that they make massive improvements!! And if you can't get therapy, there are still things you can do and resources you can access in order to help yourself out.

i have intrusive thoughts, i spiral, i have obsessions, but i don't think i have compulsions. maybe i do, but they're not visible? or i just didn't know they were compulsions?

what kind of compulsions exist that people just don't know are compulsions because when we think of them, we think repeatedly checking stuff, rereading something a ton of times, washing hands, counting, praying, etc. ?

Hi!!! it sounds like you could definitely have OCD, although I am not a professional, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt ^^

There are all sorts of compulsions that aren't just the stereotypical ones--in fact there's even a specific subtype of OCD called Pure O (Pure Obsessional) OCD, where you get intrusive thoughts without visible or physical compulsions.

So like, the compulsions with that are generally mental, which definitely count as compulsions still!! Things like going over an event or thought repeatedly for various reasons, like to reassure yourself that you didn't do something or that you don't want to do something, or to try and justify something that happened so you can stop all the unreasonable guilt. Mental compulsions can also be repeating a phrase or visualization in your mind. (There are other kinds of mental compulsions as well, these are just a few examples)

You might have mental compulsions, or you might even have physical compulsions that you're not registering as compulsions. Sometimes it can be hard to realize when something's a compulsion.

I would recommend doing research if you haven't already--not just like professional articles or diagnostic criteria, although those are helpful too, but also look at people's personal experiences and see if you relate to any!! If you search OCD on Tumblr or TikTok, you'll get a lot of vents and people talking about their experiences, and then there's also subreddits. (Do be careful because some of it can be triggering, but it can also be really validating to find out that other people are dealing with the same things)

good for you being able to help people, you're doing good work but like. sometimes you have to get over your laziness and cowardice and actually take the guilt head on, it'll make you less of a bad person. the only way to have morals in this day is to hate yourself

Hey so uh. This feels a lot like you're offended by my original post because you're projecting your own self hatred onto it.

Literally all I said was that "hey, people with OCD shouldn't have to hate themselves" in an exaggerated way.

As for your second paragraph, I can't tell if you're calling me lazy and a coward or if you're referring to yourself.

Either way. Honestly I doubt you'd be a monster without 24/7 guilt, but I'm not you and I don't know you, so that's ultimately up to you to decide. But no, you don't have to hate yourself to have morals. Again, if you want to hate yourself, obviously that's your decision, but please don't push that on others because that is so unhealthy.

i have it but like, i don't get to feel however i want because i feel more than other people, that's how people turn into bad people. guilt is a part of holding someone accountable, disorder or not and getting a free pass from feeling bad about your privilege is kinda bigoted!!!!

no shade, just my personal opinion that having your morals intact is worth more than loving yourself tbh

No offense but I feel like you really misunderstood what I was trying to say there 😭

I'm not saying that people with OCD get a free pass to be terrible people. I'm saying that if they can fix their mistakes WITHOUT feeling like scum the whole time, why not do that???

My guilt doesn't make me a better person!!! It makes me a worse person actually!!! My guilt makes me avoid things and get defensive about everything!! I am a better person when I'm not drowning in guilt!!!

I'm going to be a little uncensored here, sorry, I'm not trying to attack you but I really want to get across the point I was trying to make.

Guilt makes me less sympathetic. I have had terrible OCD since I was a little kid, and guilt just makes me want to hide away and die. It's when I'm able to stamp down my guilt that I'm able to focus my energy less on survival and more on things like learning how to be a better ally, finding things I can do to help, et cetera.

Also. Idk, might just be my autistic thinking, but feeling guilty about your privilege feels kind of useless. Why sit around feeling guilty about it when you can use it to more easily do good in the world??? For instance, I have the privilege of internet access :D that means I can do online activism and also support people who are struggling through this blog!!!

Like, we all know already that emotions and thoughts don’t influence morality. So if a person with OCD does do something wrong, they can still acknowledge it was wrong and make amends, but I don’t think they should have to feel guilty.

I don’t think people without OCD understand just how much the disorder dials everything up. A guilty feeling that for a person without OCD would rank like a 2 or 3 and then they move on, would probably rank closer to a 7+ for a person with OCD, plus they get stuck on it forever 😭

So uh. People with OCD, I just don’t think you’re obligated to feel guilty about things ^^ I would assume that most of the things you’re beating yourself up about are probably made up by your OCD, and then if you are actually in the wrong about other things, I really do think you can resolve it without making yourself suffer in a way that people without OCD never have to deal with :D

Idk. Let me know what you think if you’d like ^^ (preferably only if you have or think you have OCD. No offense but I’m less interested in what those without OCD have to say about it)

i'm okay i promise. like i know god does not want to kill me. just wanted to give you a little laugh of how absurd it all is. hope you're doing well <3

Ohhh I see 😭

i’m an atheist.

Oh no 😭

I get that tbh, one of my obsessions lately has been the idea of hell.. I am not even Christian.

If it helps, I really don't think god would want to kill you.

I assume that you grew up Christian probably?? (Or Jewish, Muslim.. I'm going to assume Christian so if I'm wrong sorry, but this probably still applies if it's a different religion) Because the thing about growing up in religion, especially that religion, I say as an ex Christian myself, is that it really sinks its claws in you. So even when you decide it's not for you, you still sort of believe it and feel like it's gonna come and get you even though it's not.

And even if you didn't grow up religious, the world is still just very oversaturated with religious things. So even then it still makes sense that it could've gotten into your head.

Hi, I assume you're the person from the ask I just answered?? (If not sorry for mistaking you lol)

It's absolutely no problem!!! I'm really glad if what I said was able to help you in some way ❤️ I completely get how reality feels all warped and stuff during a spiral 😭

Make art!! Any sort of art. Drawings, writing, songs, video games, et cetera et cetera.

I'm an artist with OCD myself, and it is so cathartic 😭 I feel like I can write really authentic characters with OCD, because I draw on my experiences with the disorder, and like it's just so cathartic to make a character go through the same shit you have to go through. I've also written several vent songs about OCD and that was also a really good way to express things I think. You don't even have to share what you make, it can just be for you.

Also, it doesn't have to be polished or anything, or even art in the sense of what's traditionally considered art. Sometimes it feels like shedding a heavy weight to just pour out all your feelings in a diary entry.

Anyways!! Hope this was helpful in some way!!! I also hope y'all are having a good day <3