Is it bad to suppress or otherwise try to control OCD tics, or should I treat them like any other compulsion?

I've been having this weird somatic compulsion to constantly tense, bend or move my neck, on and off for 5 years. I've never been diagnosed with any kind of tic disorders, though I've occasionally had similar motor tics related to blinking hard or tensing/flexing muscles), but they were always mild and short lived, but this one feels different because it's so persistent and it's just taking over my life right now.

At this point I'm almost convinced it really is a somatic OCD compulsion and not a "real" (neurological) tic, because the movement just feels more varied and unpredictable and is related to the feeling that I'm somehow holding my neck wrong and need to fix it.

But here's the problem: I have to stop doing this because it's causing me neck pain and I'm scared that I could actually damage my neck in the long run. I try to sort of "relax" into it, and it sometimes works, but if I'm doing this during periods of high anxiety (like these days), what often happens is I just end up suppressing it by subconsciously tensing my neck to keep it still. I might even feel like I'm "relaxed" in the moment, but then I get a headache and realise I'd been doing this.

And then of course, if I have to think about stopping it, I'm inevitably bringing attention to it, which makes it worse because the more I actively think about it, the more it happens.

From what I understand, when it comes to intrusive thoughts, you're supposed to just let them be, but if you have compulsions, you're meant to resist them. But what do you do about somatic obsessions like this one? I don't understand if in this case it means letting the tic happen (stopping the mental compulsion of being preoccupied with it) or suppressing it (stopping the physical compulsion of doing it).

Whenever I had similar "tics" in the past, I remember that trying to stop them too hard made them worse, and if I allowed myself to just do them, they'd go away. It makes sense to me that trying to stop them convinces your brain that it's something to be scared of. But what if, in this case, it really is something to be scared of because I'm hurting my heck?