Pure OCD isn’t obsession without compulsion — it’s obsession with invisible compulsions: mental checking, reassurance seeking, thought suppression, and analyzing the meaning of intrusive thoughts.

The themes vary — harm, SO-OCD, scrupulosity, existential dread — but the cycle is the same:

Intrusive thought hits

Mental rituals kick in (often instantly)

Temporary relief

More anxiety

Repeat

That’s the trap. The only way out? Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) — even when the compulsions are all mental.

💡 What ERP Looks Like for Pure O

Writing and re-reading scary thoughts on purpose

Sitting with uncertainty ("Maybe I'm a bad person. Maybe I’ll never know.")

Blocking mental reviewing, confessing, or reassurance-seeking

Letting anxiety rise, peak, and fall — without fixing it

ERP isn't about feeling better right away — it's about retraining the brain to see the thoughts as irrelevant noise. And it works.

📘 One Workbook That Actually Gets Pure O

If doing ERP alone sounds overwhelming, this helped tremendously:

👉 The Pure O OCD Workbook

It’s written by clinicians, but practical and easy to follow. Some highlights:

Breakdown of Pure OCD themes (harm, sexual, religious, etc.)

Worksheets to build a personal ERP plan

Imaginal exposure scripts tailored to intrusive thoughts

Strategies to interrupt mental rituals

Relapse prevention and tracking tools

It teaches how to face the fear without giving in to compulsions — step by step.

⚠️ What Keeps OCD Going (and ERP Stops)

Rumination (“Why am I thinking this?”)

Reassurance-seeking (Googling, confessing, analyzing)

Avoidance (of people, triggers, media)

Treating the thought like it’s meaningful

Needing certainty before moving on

The more the mind tries to “figure it out,” the tighter the OCD grip. ERP breaks that cycle — and the brain learns that uncertainty is safe.

✅ Recovery Is Possible

Pure OCD can feel isolating and exhausting. But with consistent ERP — even without a therapist — things can change.

The thoughts may still come, but they lose power. The anxiety fades faster. The freedom grows.

It takes work, but it’s worth it.

👉 Here’s the workbook that helped make it doable, one day at a time.

Im so fucking tired of OCD being painted as "the cleaning disorder" and "everything must be so neat and tidy disorder" its not. its can be like that, sometimes. but just as often as OCD can cause (severely mentally and socially taxing) attention to being clean, often times it actually the opposite. and in my case, its severely the opposite. im sharing pictures because i don't know how to better explain to people that i can not walk on the floor of my room. i walk on top of old clothes and books and trash. I hope you realize this is an incredibly vulnerable thing for me to do.

(Quick disclaimer that I actually have no idea what I'm talking about and you should probably look up real answers from qualified experts but hey what the hell let's give it shot lol)

So when people say "Moral OCD" they seem to usually be referring to a subtype of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) that's more officially called "Moral Scrupulosity". But I mean look at that weird fucking word, who's gonna take the time to write that out each time, am I right?

Anyway, moral scrupulosity / moral OCD is basically this obsessive fear that you may be immoral, evil, a bad person, harming others, not doing enough to help others, etc.

Someone suffering from this might, for instance, become fixated on how they had thoughts about something gross, cruel, or wrong and they become terrified that this must mean they're an evil person. Alternately, they might obsess over something relatively insignificant that they said or did, looking for any signs that it might have been ignorant or hurtful or whatever.

This subject comes up periodically when dealing with fucked up media because a (relatively small, but noticeable) number of people who seek that stuff out or enjoy it end up feeling this sort of moral OCD related to it, convinced that it makes them a bad person.