Work related ruminations

This week has been tough for me. My supervisor at my job gave me some feedback that really triggered some intense OCD thoughts. They told me I was making careless mistakes on a task and that I am not being detail oriented enough. I’m sure that all of you are aware of how crazy this might sound to someone with OCD who double and triple checks everything they do. Anyway, because of this error they took away my other responsibilities because the mistake I was making was apparently bad enough that they felt they couldn’t trust me to do anything else. On top of it being terrible management and that it doesn’t teach me anything or show me what to do differently, it also seriously triggered my anxiety. Now anytime I do something at work I have been checking it 100x over because I’m afraid of another mistake. I wish people would be kinder when they criticize. Sending love to anyone who checks their work for perfection ❤️

I only recently was diagnosed with OCD and have started my journey which I am proud of, but am struggling with finding balance because of the dissonance between my work responsibilities and ERP. I have been attracted to the career I am in because I care about doing right by others, and I have a passion for helping leaders create a healthy environment for the people on their teams. I also of course like clear expectations, writing and following rules, so educating on policies and procedures is a strong suit. Unfortunately, I am just recently learning that a big theme for my OCD includes moral scrupulosity and it has opened my eyes to see why I have struggled so much mentally the past year. I work in HR as a team relations specialist which means I make recommendations on how managers should address issues with their teams, i investigate employee concerns or allegations, and also advocate for team members when they are being treated unfairly. Additionally my job involves doing nonstop documentation of the content of every call we have, every email received and sent to us etc. we then have to save them as files and write notes summarizing each file or piece of correspondence and key information from it. (There is very much the mindset of there being no such thing as too much documentation at my company) I have noticed that since taking this job a little over a year ago, I have not been ok. I love the work I do and the good moments where I feel like I helped someone. I also love that the company and managers put so much weight on doing the right things, but the expectations put on those of us in the roles also feeds my OCD and reinforces my compulsions like getting reassurance that my thinking is right, ruminating, or checking and rechecking. It also gives strength to the arguments OCD makes to me about needing to analyze excessively to make sure I am not missing anything, or that I am not mistakenly engaging in cognitive biases and factoring them into my recommendations. Since I have a large influence over how situations with team members are handled my OCD emphasizes this and convinces me that if I do not do my job adequately or make a compelling argument, I am doing a disservice to the team members I support.....but so does the HR leadership at the company. It is consistently emphasized that we are expected to be the ultimate moral voice in every circumstances and that we are responsible for remaining 100% objective in guiding leaders on what to do to ensure all risks are assessed, taken into account and avoided in addition to us making sure leaders are doing right by their teams. Many of the others in my role like myself also keep spreadsheets during investigations we conduct that documents all perspectives in situations of people we interviewed, track definitive evidence, and analyze all factors/ devils advocate arguments to ensure appropriate steps are taken to address and that every situation is handled fairly. I'm finding that even though I tend to be behind on work because of my just right struggles with documenting and investigations, I am seen as a star performer in my role because I am hyper-empathetic, scrupulous, and risk aversive. Unfortunately, those same qualities makes my OCD obsessions and compulsions stronger. Not sure if there is anything I can really do at this point because finding a new job isn't an option right now, I just needed to get this off my chest and see if anyone has experienced similar where they found themselves in a spot where their work responsibilities were at odds with their recovery or made it more challenging to use ERP tools.

My ocd has been not bothering me as much recently. But I was invited to go to a work conference and this is triggering! Basically one of my core ocd fears is that everyone in my field thinks I’m a laughingstock. When ocd was quite bad and affecting my work, I got fired… twice. I also abruptly quit one of my jobs and did really poorly on another job. I didn’t realize it was ocd at the time that was affecting my work. A lot of my work in therapy after getting diagnosed was connected to work. Now, I don’t feel like ocd is tangled up in my work life anymore. Except I have to go to this conference alone where I will be surrounded by respected peers in my industry. I feel ashamed that I don’t have a bigger community in my professional field, which I’ve been working in for a while. Ocd tells me to ruminate on having “the right number of contacts.” Ocd tells me that people have been gossiping about me due to how I got fired in the past. Ocd makes me really really wish I understood where I stood in the industry, how people actually think about me. Any thoughts on ERP? How to be present in the moment at the conference?