Asklemmy

44151 readers

1341 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

126

Have you ever had an illness that most people don't understand? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

150 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

TIL what-if questions result from OCD.

It's not the "what-if" that's OCD, that's normal. Even hypothesizing about worst case, traumatic, life-altering experiences is normal, healthy human behavior; you should always plan for the worst and hope for the best. It's when it causes you anxiety/distress, and you can't stop thinking about it, and it's so persistent and invasive that you find it hard to function normally that it reaches the level of OCD.

Also, the OCD-level "what-if" often doesn't make logical sense. Ex. people think OCD is "I need to wash my hands all the time", but really it's "if I don't wash my hands, my loved ones could die in a car crash".