"pure o"

I've been divorced for about a decade. Right when I broke up with my ex-wife, my then mother-in-law was diagnosed with fatal breast cancer. I find with O's/C's that I only understand what's happened retroactively. (They creep up, masquerading as normal mental life.) I say O's/C's because obsessions and compulsions are often indistinguishable for me. Though I wouldn't admit it to myself til much later, what I started doing at this time was 'calling for' her in my mind. 'Her' has taken on different people throughout the years, always a motherly figure (never my actual mother though), but I realize now that it started as my mother-in-law. Basically I say a variation of the word "mother" in my mind, to try to calm myself down. But like all o/c it only gets me more worked up in a way that appears to be solvable only through more of itself. (e.g. say it one more time and in the right way, then we can stop.)

This particular forum doesn't seem to get much activity (maybe because it's hard to talk about OCD stuff without bringing it to life), but I do wonder if anyone else has this particular "pure O" kind of experience.

One of the problems is that understanding doesn't seem to help but only gets scooped up into the O's/C's themselves. Anyway I still do the calling for her thing in my mind, but I have thankfully moved away from other "pure O's" like praying for this and that. (Not a religious praying but more like a superstitious one, e.g. if I say these words three times in a row then it won't happen.) Some of my other "pure O's" have turned into saying vile things in response to feelings of rage. My therapist didn't understand this - probably because I didn't undersatnd it and I think they only know what their client knows - so it didn't really get resolved when I had therapy.

Prozac eventually stopped that shyte for me. No more counting, or i love yous.

I'm not sure I can say with much accuracy whether medication ever really helped me, but I've been on a few of them before (including prozac).