Most people with OCD or Pure O can identify the obsession easily. The compulsion is much harder to spot — because the most common compulsions are mental, and they masquerade as "trying to figure it out".
This article gives you the two most insidious mental compulsions and how to recognise them.
1. Reassurance seeking
You ask your partner — for the eighth time today — whether they really love you. They say yes. You feel better for thirty seconds. Then the doubt returns, sharper.
You Google your symptoms. You scroll a forum. You ask ChatGPT. You text a friend. Each interaction provides a brief, addictive hit of relief — and teaches the brain that the question was urgent enough to need resolution.
2. Rumination
You replay the conversation. You analyse the feeling. You mentally interrogate yourself: "Do I really feel this? Or am I just worried I feel this? What does it mean that I'm worrying about it?"
This feels like productive thought. It is not. It is the same mental loop running over and over without producing any new information — because the question being asked has no answer that will satisfy a sensitised anxiety response.
Why both make things worse
Every successful reassurance, every concluded rumination cycle, teaches the brain two things:
1. The question was important.
2. Mental work is the path to safety.
So the next obsessional doubt arrives faster, and the compulsive mental work begins again. The loop tightens.
The honest path out
Stopping reassurance and rumination by willpower alone is extremely difficult — because they are not behaviours, they are reflexes triggered by anxiety. The lasting solution is to address the anxiety response that triggers them in the first place.
That is the LAR Coaching approach. As the underlying response normalises, the compulsive pull simply weakens — and one day you notice you have not ruminated all afternoon.
The next step
If any of this resonates, book a free 30-minute Recovery Call with one of our LAR Coaches. No pressure, no obligation — just a real conversation about what is happening to you and whether the LAR programme is the right fit. Sessions are delivered worldwide via Zoom, Phone or FaceTime.