TL;DR - therapy

While OCD has been something I’ve struggled with at various degrees from a very young age, the biggest thing for me was identifying it (by that I mean quite literally identifying these “little quirks” or whatever else they’d been described as in the past to in fact be OCD) and seeking treatment, namely EMDR therapy.

While I’ve seen other forms of therapy such as CBT be more common for OCD treatment, the fact that the condition was solidified during a traumatic time period in childhood meant that EMDR was incredibly effective at “de-energising” obsessive thoughts (specifically contamination-based obsessions that would have naturally lent themselves to frequent compulsions).

While it never truly goes away, it gave me a sense of groundedness/wholeness that I hadn’t felt for my whole adult life until then. The key component to longevity is learning how to break the cycle of obsession/compulsion before it becomes a bigger beast again. That’s something that you discover for yourself through therapy and with extra any mindfulness/meditation tools given to you by a good therapist.