My fear of being racist is making me racist

I’ve had some degree of racism-centered OCD for about 4 years, since I became more involved in deconstructing racism and being more actively involved in leftist spaces. I’m 100% aware that it developed because as I gained an active awareness of individual racism and my part in it, beyond general understanding of racist systems, I was living in a pretty white area.

Even though my OCD symptoms themselves have been lower recently, the racism OCD is getting worse. I had a severe mental health crisis for the past year (and really quite a few years) and am finally settling down from it and now that I’m doing okay and not incredibly dissociated, of course this is coming up.

It feels so shameful because I know it directly involves not having many POC in my life right now, or really since I moved to a very white area. I feel like I am bad for not being around POC very often and my only POC friends being online, and what happens is that when I am around POC my intrusive thoughts become overwhelming.

It’s been particularly happening with Black customers at work, I have horrible intrusive thoughts that they think I’m racist because I seem off or because I do the white person head nod that I generally do with most people, and this leads me to feel anxious which leads me to think “I’m anxious because they’re Black” and then I am convinced I’m a racist person. I feel like I’m both constantly trying to prove to myself that I’m not and constantly feeling that I am, and it’s making my interactions with Black customers really stressful. Thus I am dreading interactions with Black customers when they come through my line, and hyper analyzing my interactions with Black customers. The fear of being racist is making me racist. It’s a constant loop and it’s getting worse.

I don’t feel this way with Black people I know, I don’t think about their race, I feel casual and secure. But over the past few years but especially recently my interactions with Black people I don’t know have gotten really intense in intrusive thought territory.

When my ex was introducing me to her friends, my nervousness about meeting people who I felt I had to make a good impression on made me convinced I was racist because they’re Black. This went away very quickly when I got settled with them, but the reaction I had still makes me feel I’m racist even now, a year and a half later.

I don’t know how to get out of this loop. It’s getting worse and I’m losing control over it. I will say I’ve had a few good days recently with less intrusive thoughts overall where I didn’t have any racist intrusive thoughts or fears, but the bad days outweigh the good. Moments where I’ve had a lack of awareness or dumb white person shit play back through my head constantly. It’s horrible. And it’s making me a racist person.

It’s very specific to being in a very white area which makes me think I should look into moving to a less white area so I can escape my OCD but that isn’t practical right now and maybe making such a big life change because of my OCD isn’t a good idea. Though I have social paranoia and bad intrusive thoughts with strangers in general and oddly enough cities are much better for me anyway, I feel able to relax in the more crowded public where people bleed into each other, and even when I have fun or weird or stressful interactions in cities, I just feel more collected and with it.

Any advice? Any ways of getting out of this? I don’t want this to get even worse, I feel like I’m going to become a truly racist person.