Why is is so difficult to ‘give up’ OCD?

This might sound like a daft or insensitive question, but I also have OCD and have never been able to answer it for myself. For me, it’s a problem with obsessively trying to understand my thoughts – I’ll have something flit through my mind then have to go back and check what I thought; not really because I’m worried about it being immoral, more because I want to understand it (though I think it generates the same feeling of ‘wrongness’ as most people with scrupulosity etc. experience, and ultimately stems from similar obsessions with fairness, perfection, certainty etc.)

I find it very easy to understand that all I have to do is accept that I might have had a nonsensical thought, but it’s almost impossible for me in practice to avoid my compulsions. Pretty much the only way is if the thought is so fleeting I can’t remember anything about it, although I’m still left with an unsettled feeling. Normally it’ll be some pretty obscure context that will set me off (I used to be almost exclusively obsessed with philosophical problems) and in that case I’ll keep rattling thoughts around my head, trying to understand what has triggered the discomfort, without rnormally being able to lay my finger on what exactly the problem or question is.

For me, it’s easy to imagine someone with OCD about their sexuality needing to just label any thoughts in that context as unhelpful, and ignore them, while in my mind my problem thoughts seem to always demand attention because they are pretty much always about something new, or a repetition of an unsettling thought / context that I wasn’t able to satisfactorily ‘close out’ previously. However, I know that everyone’s OCD is unique, and that it would be foolish (not to mention insensitive) of me to assume that mine is a complicated matter, and everyone else’s is an easy fix.

This being so, why is is so difficult to ‘give up’ OCD? Why do you think we can’t just accept that it’s a ‘doubting disease’, and the only way to deal with it is to accept that doubt, even though we all know that’s what we need to do?

I don't know, but I'd be interested in what others have to say.

My OCD is a few things. Checking locks more than ten times, being sure equipment at work is off, then I get home and think I broke the law somehow, and that the police are going to be coming to my door to take me away. I have thoughts of "if I think this, so-and-so is going to get hurt/die!" I can't write out anything bad happening to someone, because I think it'll happen to me.

Yes yes.

I don’t know, but I’d like to know. Low discomfort tolerance? My own compulsions are self-soothing in the short term, but damaging in the long term. Another component for some of my own compulsions is they are ingrained decades-long habits. My compulsions have short term pay offs & time on their side. I’m trying to shift my compulsions into habits that are more beneficial but it doesn’t happen overnight.