Compulsion patterns

You checked whether you locked the door. You remember checking. You check again anyway because the memory doesn't produce the feeling that checking does.

A thought is stuck on repeat. Engaging with it doesn't stop it. Trying not to think about it doesn't stop it. It runs in the background of other things.

The sequence got disrupted — you did something out of the order it's supposed to go. The day is now running on a different footing and restarting the sequence helps.

Something is done — correctly by any external standard — but doesn't feel finished. The not-quite-right feeling runs until the thing is redone or abandoned.

You told someone about a minor thing you thought or did because not telling them was producing low-level guilt. The telling produces relief. Briefly.

You avoid a specific thing not because it's harmful but because being near it feels like a test of something you're uncertain about passing.

Doing the thing produces relief. The relief window is getting shorter. The threshold before you need to do it again is getting lower.

Something is asymmetrical. You can leave it. Not fixing it uses more attention than fixing it would take.

You find yourself counting things — steps, objects, words — without having decided to. The counting is just running.

A thought arrived that disturbed you. The disturbance is evidence to you that the thought means something. It doesn't. But the feeling of evidence is real.