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I've been suffering from a weird kind of anxiety.
Everything I say, I find myself rephrasing 5 times to make sure it's factually correct. In that, all edge cases and interpretations are covered. And feel similar anxiety when others say things without much care. This has lately made it impossible for me to comment anything on the motte at all, or speaking rather difficult with most people except those who I can explain all the terms and conditions to, and have it understood by them.
I don't know if this is OCD or what.
Sounds like my old friend social anxiety. We all have it to varying degrees.
What helps me is just pushing through and saying/posting stuff and resisting the urge to clarify or edit or whatever.
It's not social anxiety.
I don't feel this unease verbalizing the answer to "What did you have for lunch?"
Its more along "What do you think about process X"
And what I feel about process X is ..
{condition_a:{probability_a:<>,utility_a:<>,...},condition_b:{...}...condition_n{...}}Most people would answer "C !" or something.
Smarter people might answer "C, with terms and conditions"
Further refined people might answer "if c then C else D else A.probability ..."
But I get major unease if I can't verbalize EVERYTHING.
I am not a psychiatrist or in any way qualified to comment on this. So here I go.
When I was a kid I used to have two sneaking suspicions, and one odd habit.
One: I could make myself invisible if I wanted to. I will not burden you with the specifics of how I knew I could do this, but suffice to say it was a spell I could invoke, coupled with a hand gesture. Once I did this, I could go invisible. However, I only ever did this when alone, and chose somehow never to reveal my power to anyone.
Two: I was the target of aliens who were clandestinely firing their weapons at me all of the time trying to kill me. It just so happened that all of my movements--the gait of my walk, the fact that I moved my hand this way instead of that, that I sat instead of standing, etc.--these movements allowed me to expertly dodge all of the beams and missiles or whatever they were shooting at me.
The habit I had was like a nervous tic. I would blink my eyes, and move my mouth a little. Yes, I would do this compulsively. Sometimes if I bumped my left arm I would then bump my right arm in the same congruent spot. Etc.
All of these are symptomatic of OCD, something I learned much later in life. And all of these beliefs and habits eventually went away on their own. I probably have new ones now I am not aware of--my wife says even now when I am concentrating (on writing, on playing piano, drawing, etc.) I move my mouth in a weird, but predictable way.
My oldest son sometimes shows mild tics of this sort--I am not inside his head but as he has grown I noticed once a thing he did with curling his hand up and down for a while, which he eventually stopped. Now it's a throat-clearing thing he does. I am assuming that will stop, too, but I am keeping an eye and ear out in case it doesn't. I don't mention it to him.
All this by way of commiseration, though of course the experiences I am giving an account of here do not match your experiences. I don't have any solution for you except to say that what you are describing seems like a kind of compulsive overthinking.
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