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I just found out this was a specific thing that has a name and by golly it is EXACTLY what I've been experiencing for the past few years.

TW: talking about magical thinking and specifically "bad numbers" (won't write it in case it is a trigger for someone, but if numbers are a trigger, feel free to skip this)

For context, my first ever experiences with OCD (undiagnosed at the time and I guess probably Pure O because I didn't have many compulsions) were in 2012. I had finished my first year of college and it was over the summer and I remember having a somewhat stressful weekend where I had to drive a lot and then wake up early on Monday for work. When I woke up on Monday, I felt completely off and didn't understand why. Super, super anxious. Throughout that time (it lasted months), I had a lot of intrusive thoughts and fears. This just kind of came out of the blue. Classic intrusive thoughts involving disgusting things that I couldn't believe would come into my mind and I'd try and run from. Didn't really know it was a symptom of OCD, but I knew I had high anxiety most of the time. Thankfully this terrible state of high anxiety passed, for the most part, but it was the start of my mental health journey.

I bring that up because for years I had on and off bouts of anxiety and depression, and I'd get intrusive thoughts here and there that would still kind of scare me, but those happened infrequently and it never felt severe like it had in 2012. That is, up until late 2019, after a series of misfortunes and a ton of work stress, I was deep into a depression. It was around this time that I was driving to work, feeling super defeated and tired, when I saw a "666" in a license plate. Now at this point in my life I was pretty much atheist, so normally something like that wouldn't have phased me (as this is a Christian taboo number I guess), but in that moment something just sort of snapped and it really freaked me out. From there on out, I seemed to see it, at least from my point of view, all the time - on social media, in amounts of likes, in URLs, in addresses, phone numbers, license plates, etc. (I should say, I noticed it so much more because I was constantly hyperaware of it. Kind of like when you hear a new word and starting noticing it being used in conversation more).

This gave me a lot of stress and I was convinced that it was because I was a bad person or had bad thoughts or something along those lines. In 2020, I kind of had my breaking point and my anxiety got so bad that I could barely function and constantly had this fear of basically doing anything because I would constantly be scanning for that number. To try and make sense of it during this time I got deep into this belief that it was angel numbers and basically just signs for me to balance out my mental / physical health (which in actuality isn't bad advice lol), but still I just would always freak out and wonder why it was happening to me. It permeated into other repeating numbers as well and got so bad that I was nervous to look at a clock and see any two or three repeated numbers side by side.

Thankfully I got on medication at this time and talked to a CBT therapist. I was always nervous to talk about this "magical thinking" but I had expressed it a little to my psych and they mentioned I might have a mild form of OCD along with anxiety so I got prescribed an antidepressant.

It took months but I got better! I wasn't constantly scanning for repeating numbers, I wasn't super nervous about it. At times if that number popped up in a weird unexpected spot, I might have a bit of an anxious reaction but I was pretty good about not letting it spiral. We didn't really discuss the OCD much in my CBT but I did learn tricks to responding differently to my anxiety.

But unfortunately, through moving, I ended up losing access to my therapist and psych and ended up weaning off of the antidepressant. However, I felt like I had a handle now on my fears, and this was the case (every now and then I'd get into an obsessive "magical thinking" state of mind, but not often) up until around November of last year. I had a stressful September and a stressful November and I started experiencing intense anxiety again, and that brought on my obsessive thoughts. The magical thinking obsessions came back which was really frustrating because I thought I was over it.

However, I just recently found out that "magical thinking" is a pretty common OCD trait. I didn't know it had a name, but seeing that others experience this as well makes me feel not so alone in it. It's funny because rationally I can realize that I see a lot of numbers every day in all places, maybe I see the number "421" multiple times every day, and yet none really freak me out unless I happen to see "666" randomly. But as we all know, OCD doesn't like rationality and it's easy to doubt that rationality.

So sorry for the long post, kind of just wanted to get this off my chest and actually really talk about it since I always feel nervous to talk to friends/family/therapists about it. I definitely think learning about it is a big help, and I can take some steps with my new therapist (who isn't CBT) in ways to embrace these fears and not run from or heavily react to them.