#reocd

Moral OCD is often tied to Real Event OCD! That means you think you did something (like that you've actually physically done) in the past that was morally incorrect.

It's related to moral injury except the OCD part makes it repetitive, intrusive, unable to stop thinking about it, constantly checking, seeking reassurance, researching, talking about it, etc etc.

Moral injury is when you do something/are forced to do something against your ethics. Such as being held at gunpoint and told to hurt someone else or you/they will die, accidentally killing somebody, survivor's guilt, etc.

Moral OCD does not require you to have actually physically done anything, you just think you've done it. Such as, you once thought about your sister's ass when you were a child so now you think you're a pedophile 10 years later. That is OCD, lol.

OCD can appear in people of any political spectrum. I post a lot about 'purity culture' on this blog because I think purity culture (both on the left and right - it exists on both sides in different ways) has a nasty intersection with moral compulsivity.

The thing is, having moral OCD doesn't make you moral. It means that you obsess about what you think is moral. So any person of any ideology can have this neurotype, they will simply be obsessed about what they think is moral.

For example a lot of people with moral OCD have religious OCD, and are obsessed about sinning or going to hell, or about being gay. That stuff I'd expect more from a right winger - but to be clear, you can have OCD about those subjects while also understanding that homophobia is wrong. OCD knows no bounds. You could potentially obsess about both being gay and homophobic. OCD can make you think basically any horrible thought.

(Friendly reminder for all my OCD havers out there, There Are No Thought Crimes, Yes Even The Dead Babies In Blenders, your thoughts are not reflective of your morality, they are reflective of your mental illness lol. OCD is the "hey man what about THIS!" OCD is the most dramatic motherfucker lol.

It will make you think anything. The worst most vile most putrid shit you could possibly imagine. That's the mental illness. It causes us suffering, its not fun, it doesnt mean we are deranged. Its moral OCD. Thats just OCD.)

The thing about moral OCD that I always tell folks is that you can have actually done something truly horrible and it is still OCD. A lot of ppl are like "well it's not OCD cos I actually did bad stuff." Nope! If you can't go longer than 24 hours without obsessing about your event, that's OCD. Regardless of if you actually did the bad thing.

Real Events OCD (RE-OCD*): a subtype of OCD where one’s obsessions center around an actual event in someone’s past. People with this subtype have intrusive thoughts and guilt about something they did in the past that is very disproportional to the event and highly distressing to the person with RE-OCD. The events obsessed over are usually relatively benign events that those without the disorder would consider honest mistakes and forgive themselves for, such as making fun of a classmate in elementary school, leaving a bad review of a business and it shutting down, raising your voice at your friend, being rude to a sibling while growing up, or lifting chips from a gas station when you were 13. However, some people with this subtype obsess over more substantial mistakes but still blow them way out of proportion and feel constant guilt and self-hatred that impacts their life and self-esteem immensely. People with RE-OCD have a false emotional narrative of these events and feel that their actions are unforgivable and heinous crimes and that they are responsible for serious harm when this is not the case. RE-OCD has some similarities to False Memory OCD/FM-OCD; I have both. However, with RE-OCD the obsessive events actually happened in some way (even if the narrative is heavily warped), while with False Memory OCD it is unclear whether the events happened or not due to the cycle of OCD confusing and warping memory (although in most cases of FM-OCD the event did not actually happen).

Colors are my personal representation of “nostalgia” and the FM-OCD teal.

Learn more about Real Events OCD.