But it didn’t feel absurd when she was in her OCD flare. She would ask her partner for reassurance. She would check and recheck her filing. She would read for hours about how to report her income correctly. Before this, there was another obsession— one just like it, she says. She was convinced that she may have burned a house down with a cigarette, something, again, that would make her a “bad” person or citizen. “I would check and recheck candles, stoves, you name it.”

At the core, you might think Keagan and Lisa’s guilt for something that wasn’t happening sounds similar: That’s because it is. “At the end of the day, it’s all OCD,” says Kastens. “And your themes can always change. If you have Pure O, that doesn’t mean you’ll never have rOCD.”

Or, in Danielle’s case, you might have both at the same time.

Danielle: ‘Pure O’ OCD and ‘Relationship’ OCD

When Danielle, 33, starts a new relationship, her anxiety spikes in a way that goes beyond what most people experience (… think: asking your friends for outfit advice, overthinking how to act on a first date).

She has relationship OCD (rOCD), a subtype that latches onto romance, poking and prodding at her feelings until she’s forced herself into a thought-spiral. Did she say the wrong thing? Why did her partner take five extra minutes to text back? Does she even love them? Do they love her? The questions cycle in an “endless, exhausting loop,” she tells Glamour. “When you have relationship anxiety, you might convince yourself that you’re not attracted to your partner, so you avoid sex with them,” says Kastens. “You might have retroactive jealousy and distressing images of their sexual past, despite having one of your own.” You might also be convinced they’re not in love with you, despite them being all-in. This was Danielle’s case, which ultimately caused her to seek internal and external reassurance.

But sitting with that uncertainty is better than seeking reassurance, according to Kastens. Mental compulsions, like reassurance seeking (whether from others, the internet, or yourself), can worsen anxiety in the long term, especially when it involves others, Kastens tells Glamour.

Danielle also simultaneously suffers from Pure O, where intrusive thoughts plague her. She will have extreme memories of things she did ten years ago or more that are distressing and embarrassing. They are constant and painful; sometimes, she wishes her brain would just “shut up.”

She wants people with OCD to know that sometimes, thoughts are just that: thoughts. “You’ll see all these social media posts like, ‘Your thoughts are your reality!’ ‘Your thoughts manifest your destiny.’” For someone with OCD, Danielle says, that’s simply not the case: Don’t listen to that, she says.

Instead, she hopes that people will continue to educate themselves about OCD and OCD subtypes so that they recognize it — whether that’s within themselves or maybe someone they love.

“Listen, I’m the opposite of what most people think when they hear ‘OCD,’” she tells Glamour. “My house is a mess. I’m not super tidy. I’m not particularly concerned about germs.”