Reddit reviews The Imp of the Mind: Exploring the Silent Epidemic of Obsessive Bad Thoughts

This is very common. I've read a ton about it because I've had similar thoughts and wanted to know what was up. If you've never had a history of violent/sexual outbursts or anything there's nothing to worry about. This is pretty helpful. Most good books on OCD tackle the obsessional as well as compulsive aspects but that one is the only one I know of that deals with obsessions exclusively.

Self-diagnosis can lead to trouble, but these are good interim practices: self-educating (so long as it's not distressing to you) and self-treatment (to the extent of journaling to identify OCD triggers, experimenting with herbal supplements, exercising regimens to relieve stress, and establishing a solid schedule for the sake of keeping your mind/body busy and confident about what's going to happen next). The book I'd recommend for you is The Boy Who Couldn't Stop Washing. Despite the misleading title (the book is actually a collection of brief memoirs from people with different types of OCD followed by medical commentary), it's actually one of the best books I've read for explaining OCD - "the doubting disease" - "the epistemic illness".

Question (feel free to PM your response, if you'd prefer): Are you more upset about what could be going on inside your head or what is going on in there? In my case, what helped me cope with the "not knowing" was imagining worse-case scenarios (usually because I couldn't help it, to be honest) and slowly, slooowly adopting an understanding that their implications in my mind, however real they felt, couldn't affect my real life. It was a kind of self-correcting Rational Emotive Therapy and I'm still an overly-critical perfectionist at times, but I don't stress about hypothetical scenarios anymore. I'd also strongly recommend reading the first few pages of Lee Baer's The Imp of the Mind, which can be found for free here.

The urge to balance out sensations is called somatic symmetry and most people don't find this too distressing on the whole - usually just distracting or embarrassing if there's no way to do it without being obvious. That said, if a person's been burned, pricked, etc, and feels the need to recreate the sensation on the other side of his/her body, that can obviously cause distress. The last time that happened to me, I quickly removed myself from the environment I was in to weaken the temptation to reproduce the sensation. You'll see this exact thing depicted in TV shows like Monk. One insight that may help you understand somatic symmetry is that OCD and Tourette Syndrome are neurologically associated comorbid conditions. In fact, people with both (as well as their clinicians) frequently report being unable to tell the difference between an obsessive-compulsive urge for a compulsion vs. a Tourettic urge for a tic. When the sensations are so similar, some clinicians refer to the symptoms as Tourettic OCD (TOCD) and you can read about it here. In any case (OCD, TS, or TOCD), phenomenological descriptions (how it feels) typically cite the sensation of something like needing to clear your throat or an "itch" that needs to be scratched. Like if I'm asking someone to scratch a certain spot on my back, they need to get the right spot, pressure, and duration or the itch won't go away. If you do a lot of reading about OCD subtypes, though, and still don't understand it all, don't sweat it. Even the people who've published scientific journal articles on TOCD don't entirely understand it. We all just have to do our best.

Asperger's is often associated with single-minded, obsessive, and analytical thinking. But so is OCD. The difference tends to be that in Asperger's, the things obsessed about aren't necessarily associated with the condition directly and don't necessarily cause distress: e.g., A person with Asperger's may be intensely interested in studying law, or building cars, or Chess, and find that these preoccupations don't cause any distress whatsoever. In OCD, the rule is that the preoccupation must cause you distress or it's not strictly speaking an obsession. A distinguishing question will be this: Do you have frequent trouble empathizing with others and understanding why they have the emotional reactions they do? If not, Asperger's becomes less likely.

This is all I have time to write for now, but I wish you the best of luck in learning about your stressors and finding relief.

Check out this book. I read it a few years back and one of the main points is that everyone experiences negative thoughts of all sorts, but most people just ignore them and aren't really affected by them. Talk therapy is good for treating rumination.