Potentially dangerous compulsions with OCD? Please help!

Hi everyone, I’m living with OCD with harm-related obsessions and I’m concerned because the compulsions I’m doing to “correct” a situation may be in and of themselves dangerous. For example, one obsession is worrying about hitting a pedestrian while driving, so consequently I (try to) check every crosswalk excessively before driving over it.

I had a recent compulsion related to this that, ironically, could have been in and of itself dangerous and I feel really guilty. Yesterday I was driving and accidentally drove over a crosswalk without checking for pedestrians. Instead of just moving on with my day, I had the compulsive urge to "re-do" the scenario. So, I purposely took my eyes off the road while approaching another crosswalk (I tried to make sure there were no pedestrians around that could walk into the street before I did this) because in that moment I felt like it would give me reassurance. Of course it made things worse, because now I can't help but think, "God forbid though that a jogger, pedestriain, etc. had run out into the crosswalk at the time I took my eye off the road and I couldn't have stopped in time!"

When dealing with similar past compulsions, my therapist has assured me that I likely have a subconscious mechanism that stops me from doing a compulsion that is “actually” dangerous because I don’t really want to hurt anyone (i.e., I did make sure there aren’t any pedestrians immediately nearby before I purposely took my eyes off the road), but I’m not so sure.

Has anyone struggled with these forms of compulsions and would you have any advice from me? I've been told by my psychiatrist to stop and take a deep breath if I feel myself wanting to act out a compulsion like this, but that isn't working because the urge is too strong and I just give in to it. Honestly, I feel like I might have to stop driving, which would be debilitating because of my job. Thanks so much.

I struggle with similar compulsions when driving. It doesn't help, that I may be OSDD and sometimes it's not 'me' that's driving- 'me' gets a bit uptight about that...

So... yes. We struggle with wanting to go back and check, recreate situations, etc. The best thing I can say, is make yourself not act out compulsions to check. I know that's really hard, because your brain is screaming at you to be sure you didn't hit anyone. But sometimes I will make myself not go back. It's like this, if you hit something big, you'll know it. I have unfortunately run over small animals, and it wasn't very mistakable for a pothole. A person would be a lot more.

It's difficult, because you want to do the 'right' thing, and check... but when it's imaginary pedestrians... I mean, at some point we have to trust that we didn't hit anyone, or we'd never make it anywhere.