My OCD puts upon me a lack of trust in almost everyone and everything. The degree of lack of trust varies, so it is an ongoing and fluid situation more nuanced than “I trust nothing, ever.” However, OCD is often paradoxical. Or, maybe rather, it is irrational to the point where it has major holes in logic that contradict a blanket approach to the world.

So I trust almost nothing (including myself you’ll find) in some fashion, yet I find myself with all the trust in the world in these things:

1. Cab/Uber/Lyft drivers
I have an extreme fear of driving that comes from OCD. I in fact no longer drive because of this. This fear has more to do with all the negative eventualities that I can’t stop my mind from thinking about. Yet when I hail a cab or rideshare, regardless of the quality of the driver’s driving skills, I find myself with no anxiety at all. I trust these random people with something I am not at all trusting in myself about—and that which I do not trust in myself should extend to the people driving me. But it doesn’t.

2. The security of most websites
I am absolutely paranoid about any web projects I build and am crazy about the security of such. As well, I am even more paranoid about things like passwords I use and the potential of them being placed in plaintext somewhere that someone could find. I take this to extremes because of my OCD, and this is perfectly fine with me. I don’t want my work to mitigate my OCD in general to mitigate this. Yet, I never fear much about how my passwords are stored on the websites I visit most frequently. Even though I know how the sausage is made: I know most of them to have rather poor security. But my brain doesn’t obsess over other sites, just things I can control. This is the antithesis of how OCD normally works.

3. Other people’s cooking
I have a minor—but greater than “slight”—contamination OCD theme that runs through my everyday thinking. I will throw out perfectly good food because I don’t trust it. Turns out, this only extends to me. If I am involved in the food itself, I don’t trust myself. I fear undercooking, I have a fear of keeping things out of the fridge too long. Yet when I am eating at another person’s place, I fear none of these things.

I wanted to think of five things to complete this list, but I am finding that this situation only seems to exist with these three things. Thus, you can extrapolate my level of distrust in the world that my OCD brings. Brings upon my own self, and others. All other actions, processes, and entities in the world beyond these things. Now, my distrust may be only a two out of ten, so there is a scale there. At the same time, the reality is most things hover above a seven out of ten.

Yet it is a good exercise to see where my OCD is so clearly irrational. This informs me that maybe most of the thoughts that are commanded by my OCD are somewhat irrational. This doesn’t at all stop me from having them, as OCD is a mental disorder. But in looking at all of the above, it is somewhat nice to know that someday I may be able to apply logic to the massive distrust OCD brings.

Until then I’ll go about obsessing about things going wrong.