Take the OCD Test: General OCD and Taboo OCD Symptoms

OCD does not always look like excessive cleaning or repeatedly checking a locked door. It can also involve intrusive thoughts, internal checking, reassurance seeking, confession, avoidance, mental review, and repeated attempts to determine what a thought or feeling “really means.”

These patterns are especially common in Taboo OCD, where the intrusive content may involve violence, sexuality, children, suicide, morality, religion, or another subject the person finds deeply disturbing. Core Healing Therapy describes this cycle as intrusive content followed by doubt, checking, reassurance, avoidance, confession, and attempts to achieve certainty.

For each question, give yourself:

0 = Not at all

1 = A little

2 = Moderately

3 = A lot

4 = Extremely

Part One: General OCD Symptoms

1. Do unwanted thoughts, images, doubts, or feelings repeatedly return even after you believe you have already resolved them?

0 1 2 3 4

2. Do you repeatedly check things such as locks, messages, memories, conversations, decisions, feelings, or past actions?

0 1 2 3 4

3. Do you ask other people for reassurance about the same concern more than once because the reassurance stops feeling certain?

0 1 2 3 4

4. Do you mentally replay events or conversations trying to determine exactly what happened or what something meant?

0 1 2 3 4

5. Do you avoid certain people, places, objects, situations, or activities because they trigger unwanted thoughts or anxiety?

0 1 2 3 4

6. Do you repeat actions, thoughts, prayers, phrases, searches, or other behaviors until they feel complete, correct, or “safe”?

0 1 2 3 4

7. Do you repeatedly question your own memory, motives, feelings, attraction, morality, identity, or intentions?

0 1 2 3 4

8. Do attempts to solve an anxiety-producing question give you temporary relief, only for another doubt or “what if” question to appear?

0 1 2 3 4

9. Do obsessive thoughts or compulsive behaviors consume significant mental energy or interfere with relationships, work, school, sleep, or everyday life?

0 1 2 3 4

10. Do you feel driven to obtain certainty about questions that other people appear able to leave unanswered?

0 1 2 3 4

General OCD Score: ____ / 40

Part Two: Taboo OCD Symptoms

Taboo OCD can involve intrusive sexual, violent, suicidal, religious, moral, or otherwise socially unacceptable thoughts. Core Healing Therapy describes these thoughts as unwanted and ego-dystonic, with much of the suffering coming from what the person fears the thought might reveal about them.

11. Do you experience unwanted sexual, violent, harmful, suicidal, immoral, religious, or otherwise taboo thoughts or mental images?

0 1 2 3 4

12. When these thoughts occur, do you experience fear, disgust, shame, panic, guilt, or a strong sense that the thought conflicts with who you actually are?

0 1 2 3 4

13. Do you become stuck wondering whether having the thought means you secretly desire it, agree with it, or could eventually act on it?

0 1 2 3 4

14. Do you repeatedly examine your emotional or physical reactions to taboo thoughts to determine whether you “liked” them or what your reaction means?

0 1 2 3 4

15. Do you search your memories for past events that might prove or disprove the feared identity or meaning behind the intrusive thoughts?

0 1 2 3 4

16. Do you confess intrusive thoughts, past actions, sensations, or doubts to another person in an attempt to feel certain that you are not dangerous, immoral, abusive, or otherwise the person you fear becoming?

0 1 2 3 4

17. Do you repeatedly seek reassurance through therapists, friends, family members, Google, forums, AI, articles, or other sources about whether your thoughts mean something about you?

0 1 2 3 4

18. Do you avoid children, family members, knives, medications, balconies, sexual situations, religious settings, news stories, or other triggers because of what you fear you might think, feel, or do?

0 1 2 3 4

19. Do you repeatedly test yourself by intentionally examining your attraction, morality, emotional reactions, bodily sensations, or level of certainty?

0 1 2 3 4

20. Have you hidden intrusive thoughts because you are afraid other people, including mental health professionals, will misunderstand the content as your actual desire or intention?

0 1 2 3 4

Taboo OCD Score: ____ / 40

Your Score

General OCD: ____ / 40Taboo OCD: ____ / 40

TOTAL: ____ / 80

Symptom Insight Score

0–20: Low symptom endorsement

21–40: Mild to moderate symptom endorsement

41–60: High symptom endorsement

61–80: Very high symptom endorsement

A particularly high

Taboo OCD score may be useful even when the general score is lower, because many Taboo OCD compulsions occur internally through rumination, self-testing, checking, reassurance seeking, confession, and repeated attempts to establish certainty. Core Healing Therapy discusses this internal cycle extensively in its writing on POCD, Suicide OCD, Relationship OCD, Harm OCD, and other Taboo OCD presentations.

Help is available and so are OCD Exposure Therapy workbooks at CoreHealingTherapy.org or by clicking the image:

This is not a formalized test and is intended only to provide insight into possible symptoms. If these symptoms are causing significant distress or interfering with your life, seek help from a licensed medical professional.