I'm so worried I am really a criminal. Am I overreacting? Real event

You are setting yourself up to be triggered by asking for reassurance from randos online who know nothing about, and have no compassion for, OCD (the trolls in the legal sub). Not judging, I’ve done the same thing and looking for external validation for OCD is a very very hard pattern to break out of.

If you going looking, you can find some people who will tell you it’s bestiality and you’re bad. We can all find people who will tell us we’re bad and should be in jail if we go looking for that. I could easily find a subreddit where people would tell me I’m going to hell or jail or should eliminate myself from the gene pool— because I’m gay, because Im transgender, because I’m disabled and unable to work, because I stole food and medicine to survive when I was younger, because I have Bad Thoughts, whatever.

There are thousands of different standards of good/bad, and thousands of compassionless, context-blind people who will spout their own bizarre opinions like they’re objective truth. If we go around presenting our OCD fears to groups of randos, we will always find people among them who will affirm our fears no matter how warped they are, because those people’s perspectives are warped too. Doesn’t mean anything they’re saying is factually accurate, but it will feel more real to our psyches than a thousand messages of reassurance. Look how many people explained in very specific terms why your situation is not a real concern— did any of that succeed in convincing you? This is the really hard thing with reassurance-seeking, the good responses usually provide very temporary help at best, and the bad ones can destroy us.

/r/OCD Thread