go on with your living

i think avoidance is such a little-recognized ocd compulsion. all the time i talk to people with ocd who are like "i was always having intrusive thoughts about using kitchen knives and harming myself or others but i'm okay now because i just stopped using knives ever 👍 so i'm good now"

if you don't know why this doesn't work, the issue is that ocd never stops when you implement a compulsion. it evolves. today you've "solved" it by never using a knife again (and losing access to an important cooking tool, thus limiting an aspect of your life) but in a few months or a year it'll be that forks are dangerous too. and hey, isn't it risky to use the stove? avoidance will even begin to manifest in places you might not recognize.

when the characters never really make peace with it