i am so glad you verified that we know the thoughts and compulsions arent real but we still do them just in case when i was a kid my parents took me to a family therapy session somehow my little six year old brain had enough sense to ask the doctor about my ocd fears because id figured out by then that i had constant fears that always existed like fear of contamination and random fears that i inserted into my own head like while playing the piano id suddenly tell myself i have to play chopsticks 20 times without a mistake or else mom will die as a six year old i wasnt capable of sorting out the difference   so in the middle of being interrogated about my parents fighting i told this doctor that i had a question i said what does it mean if i tell myself that a monster is coming down the hall to get us and even though i know i just made that up id still move away from the door just in case for a 6 year old thats pretty darn coherent   but she totally did not understand what i was saying she thought i was delusional she didnt understand that you can have an ocd fear and still be in touch with reality at the same time so she told my parents i needed serious therapy because i was schizophrenic and seeing monsters and they freaked tf out i saw their panic and i didnt want to disappoint them so i told them i had made the whole thing up and that i didnt see monsters   as a result for the next 16 years i lived with all these horrible rituals living in fear and further removing myself from normal society until i could no longer speak the language of the natives throughout it all my parents just thought i was being quirky when my younger brother started to show ocd symptoms they thought he was doing it to emulate me i was only able to help myself when i was an adult and discovered an ocd quiz on the internet and was like wtf other people do this  i seriously want to go on a talk circuit and share my experience and make sure that therapists understand ocd better ive only found one therapist in my entire life that actually understood ocd and explained it to me in terms of the neurobiological causes and not just oh its your fault because you stubbornly wont admit its not real