If you have OCD, you can cure it.

Unpopular opinion: OCD does NOT need to rule your life. <br><br>: The following is my personal story of how I eliminated OCD from my life after 15 years in a month. <br><br>I got a new phone. Instead of saving it on my phone to view later, set a reminder to check it in 5 days. Every time the reminder goes off and you see that you did nothing with it, this is a message from your past self saying "this didn't help me, you're wasting time". <br><br>Why reminders?<br>Reminders actually increase OCD symptoms because they remind you that you haven't used it yet. This is a message to you that you have failed at your attempt to use this resource and should probably spend more time with it. You have failed, so what this means is that you'll keep putting it off indefinitely.<br><br>This was my problem (only the most important parts).:<br><br>You see a thread with a title that seems interesting. - *guilt to ignore it without giving it a chance*<br>You open the thread. See 30+ comments in the thread (no way to read them all). - *guilt to ignore it without giving it a chance*<br>For some reason that I have no idea about, I'd take a screenshot of it. - *hardcore guilt to not use it*<br>My mind would require me to save it in a note-taking app for later using. - *no way to ignore now, I've gotta memorize this*<br>Back then, I thought that if I look at it, I will without a doubt remember it. This was a huge source of my guilt. - *must look at it*<br>I would read the entire thread of comments to truly remember it. - it was extremely hard to ignore a thread once I started it, my guilt kept making me feel bad at the thought of ignoring it.<br>I remember spending an entire day just reading one thread of comments. - *Literal madness*<br>I started giving up on the internet. - *truly mad*<br>I decided to take matters into my own hands. I decided that if focusing is too hard, I'll just make it too hard to procrastinate, and that's what I did. - *success*<br><br>I made it so easy to focus and so hard to procrastinate. The way that I did it was I would open an article and then instantly close it. - *can't use what you don't look at*<br>Then I'd set a reminder on my phone and give it a title. It didn't matter if anyone else could make sense of it, it was for me and I had used all of the space (exactly 5 words). - *can't add more information to a closed message*<br>I would open the article again after 5 days. If I still felt like I needed to read the article when I opened it, I repeated the process to try in 5 days. - *you don't need anything that you can wait more than 5 days for*<br>If I opened it and didn't feel like reading it, I would look at the title and then close it and I would never see it again. I would only read an article if I was still willing to read it when I opened it. - *looked at it without feeling guilt*<br><br>Of course there will be things that you want to come back to. But ask yourself "Is it more important than the thing I am reading now?". If you're procrastinating on something else to do something else, there's no difference. - *look at what you want to look at*<br>If it's truly that important, then you will remember it without writing it down. You don't need to write things down. - *you don't need anything that you don't remember without writing it down*<br>I still use that same method today. It works wonders for me. I'm a computer science major and I was able to do it without any time wasted on procrastination. I even got good grades. - *it works*<br><br>I no longer see what's visible. If I read something and don't remember it, it's irrelevant. If I don't remember it, I don't need to remember it. If I need to remember it, I will remember it. My mind does not play tricks on me anymore. I no longer waste time on things that I don't remember. I do my work and I am not feeling any guilt anymore. - *I'm no longer OCD.*<br>If you want to stop procrastination, you have to not only stop procrastination. You have to stop not procrastination. You have to stop guilt from taking control of you. You have to stop giving it the satisfaction of making you feel bad when you ignore it. - *you can't be controlled by guilt*<br><br>If you want to be controlled by guilt, then you'll be controlled by guilt. Guilt makes you waste time, even without actually procrastinating. You'll spend time thinking about it every day. You'll spend time thinking about it even when you're in a conversation. You'll spend time thinking about it in your sleep. - *you can't escape guilt or OCD*<br>Guilt is a downwards spiral. It will never truly go away. - *you can't be controlled by guilt*<br>Guilt is a thought, and thoughts are nothing but thoughts. You aren't your thoughts. Don't give them power over you. - *you can eliminate OCD completely*<br>Guilt and procrastination can't take control of you if you are in control of them. They can only take control of you if you are not in control of them. - *you can eliminate OCD completely*<br><br>I no longer procrastinate. I no longer even think about the things that I used to procrastinate on. They don't even enter my mind. It's been like that for a year now. I no longer have OCD. - *I'm no longer guilty*<br>The first thing that I did was take control of reminders (or notes) and stop receiving guilt reminders from my past self. It's a simple concept to understand, but it's extremely hard to actually do it. - *you can eliminate OCD completely*<br><br>I eliminated this problem completely. I no longer have this problem. - *you can eliminate OCD completely*<br><br>OCD can be cured.