Tuesday, 30 March 2010
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My Name is queenof__hearts and I Suffer From OCD
I have had obsessive compulsive disorder since I can remember.
It's nothing huge. For me, it doesn't interfere with my life. For my family, that's another story:
Numbers:
I have to have the volume on an even number. Say, I'm in the backseat and my sister is driving, she gets impatient because she can't focus on what number the radio falls on while driving. So, the fact that I pester her about it really gets under her skin, so she puts it on an uneven number anyway then has a fit when I keep complaining. What's the big deal? Why can't she just do that for me?
Food:
When it comes to food I cannot touch another person's food with my bare hands (no matter what they say) or else I will start to think that they think my hands are dirty and they will later throw out that food and get new stuff. Just because I touched it with my bare hands. The "sanitary" issue.
Bathrooms:
Can't touch anything with my bare hands. Germs are everywhere.
Other people:
Can't shake their hands because they all have germs but I can't be rude and not shake their hands, so I do. Then I wipe my hand on my jeans a thousand times over.
The list goes on but I'll stop there.
Do any of you suffer from nagging, obsessive, intrusive thoughts similar (or totally opposite) to mine? How does your family handle it? If you're a parent with an obsessive-compulsive child, how do YOU handle it?
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About the Author
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- From: queenof__hearts@xanga
- About Me: Just an anonymous college student blogging about her anonymous college life.
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Comments (17)
Definitely. I have an electric stove, so i have to make sure that the skillet or anything that's on my stove is lined up perfectly with the outline of each heated plate.
Sometimes it takes me forever to get out of the house because I have to touch the light switch in a certain way.
It's not everyday, but sometimes I get a day when everything has to have its place and be placed just how i need it. And if a family member places something in a way that bothers me (mostly because it's not perfectly lined up with something else) it drives me crazy! And most of the time they will not fix it.
Or going into a blockbuster or any place where DVDS, books are lined up, drives me nuts! because everything has to be equidistant from each other and perfectly aligned.
So I get where you're coming from!
For volume, I go with multiples of five.
I prefer to work in patterns. I find it to be more efficient, but it probably goes deeper than that. When I worked in a factory and had to pull items off of the pallet to put on the assembly line, I'd work in patterns. It didn't interfere with anyone else, yet my coworkers gave me such a hard time about it. Some of them would grab from my side of the pallet, intentionally, or knock over my parts I was pulling from. I don't know why people have to be such jerks. *sigh*
clinically diagnosed with OCD last september. my OCD is mainly centered on obsessive thoughts. i obsess over things that scare me and i think of all the ways that they can come true.
also, i'm a compulsive hand washer, and i can't write on paper that has any foreign marks on it. so, if one of my friends writes on my paper, i have to rewrite what i wrote on it. =/ no rips either.
My best friend has OCD, and while some of her compulsions were weird, I never, ever would make her feel bad about them. The only thing is that some of them were unsafe (she would have to tilt her seat back almost to the floor and would try to do it while she was driving). I hate that people are making fun of you guys for having this. OCD is a real disorder, and people should understand that.
Yes, I absolutely know what you mean. I've had OCD for as long as i can remember pretty much. It drives me crazy when people say "oh I just had to go back and make sure the door was locked, I'm so OCD!" That's not real OCD. OCD at one point pretty much took over my life, made me lose friends, do poorly in school... but it's been so long now that I've learned to control it. To give you an idea, I also have a number thing, and I used to (over 10 years ago, when it was in it's peak) stand at the light switch and flick it on and off in a certain number pattern. Sometimes for an hour or more. I'm so glad to be past that.
My parents pretty much ignored it, and thought I was just acting up to get attention. I didn't want to tell them because I was afraid of being shipped to away to "get help"
Honestly the way I got over a lot of my stuff was by doing it, and it was very very hard. It's the same thing they make you do if you get professional help. If you have a hand washing compulsion they make you sit with dirt on your hands for the whole session. I did the same thing for myself, little by little. I would turn the light off once and get into bed and make myself stay there. Even if I lay there wide awake for hours worrying about it, eventually I would fall asleep and in the morning everything would be fine. I know it's hard, but if you want to get over your OCD, i really believe this is the only way.
I hate living with OCD. When I am stressed (And my stress level is HIGH) I clean the house over and over until there's nothing more to do and I'm exhausted!
I wash my hands and use germ x ALL the time. It doesn't bother me at all.... I feel like everyone should be doing this to avoid germs. I don't touch door knobs, light switches, the handle on the shopping carts, etc. I also hate it when ppl touch me with their hands. It grosses me out....blach.
I think I have OCD. I have over six bottles of hand sanitizer I take everywhere with me. I don't touch anything or anyone's hand, and once I do I'm so quick to squirt hand sanitizer on my hands. I also hate it when people cough or sneeze around me. I always have to look down when I'm walking to see what I'm stepping in.
When I have heavy bags in my hands I never put them down until I get to my house, or to the car. Once I put them on the ground thats it, and then I'll have a hard time wanting to pick them back up because of germs and what not.
Everything around always have to be spotless. No stains and cleaned with hand sanitizer...seriously...or anything else that will get rid of the fear of germs and touching not so clean things.
I hate it but I can't help it.
I've never been diagnosed with OCD, but I probably have it. I have tons of ridiculous thoughts that probably will never come true, but I go out of my way to avoid them. I am terrified of contamination. I wish that I could at least clean stuff that I think may be contaminated, but I can't. I can't touch it. SO I let things get so contaminated that I end up just throwing everything away and buying new stuff.
I was diagnosed with OCD only a couple of years ago, but it started long before that. I have to do many things a certain number of times too- a LOT of things that are random and not for any reason. It's not generally that I'm afraid of germs, I just feel I have to do them a certain number of times to feel "right." It's hard to explain. Generally I want things to be an even number as well, whether it be volume on the TV, the number of steps I take if I start counting them, and so on. I've never wanted to go on drugs and have learned to cope with it somewhat without them; the time I was diagnosed was the worst because my compulsions would keep me awake and I was getting very little sleep. Often times, my OCD is worse when I'm extra stressed.
There are methods of behavioral adaptation that can help, like gradually changing one little thing you do at a time. For me, I always felt weird talking about it because I was afraid of what people would think, and because some people think it's a joke- but it's really not. So it's great that you're talking about it and don't worry- you're not alone!
As far as explaining it to people if I have to, I generally just mention that it's an anxiety disorder; OCD is one way anxiety manifests itself. That seems to help them understand. I haven't had much problems explaining to my family, though, because most of my immediate family has the same problems.
I don't know that I have OCD or if I do, I have a very mild case. But as an example: One time we had boxes of hamburger helper on the shelf. Some of them were facing a different way, with the label facing the inside and the list of ingredients facing the outside. While the others were opposite. I saw it and it bothered me until I went and made them all face the same direction. Just little stuff like that every once in awhile.
When I was younger, I was really big on rituals and numbers. A few years later I was obsessed with hygiene, showering up to three times a day or washing my hands four times.
I used to ring the doorbell 80 times before walking in. A few times I had to start over because someone opened the door and went in before me.
I don't do anymore rituals but I still have a thing with numbers. Counting every step I take or making sure I stepped once in every square on the sidewalk. (stepped on a crack and went all the way back :/)
It's been under control for the most part ever since I picked up crochet. Counting stitches, finishing the item within a certain amount of time, etc. I used to take it everywhere with me and I noticed that was starting to piss other people off ha. It doesn't interfere with my life as much as it used to.
I think everyone has a bit of OCD. I know if someone goes into my room and moves something I'll freak out. Litterally. I once had like a temper tantrum. I threw everything and then had to start over. The funny thing is, my room is no where near clean.
When cleaning things or organizing, I'll move things at least three times. Like if I'm stacking up magazines, I'll think they're crooked and then I'll realized I was the one that messed them up and then I'll fix them again and it'll just keep going.
I have it too, but it's not a bad thing. I kind of look at it as a way to stay organized. If anything is out of place, I do correct it. Maybe I'm just not a slob.
i have ocd... Im messy though, if Im thinking about a possession of mine I have to see it... like If I m getting dressed and I want to wear purple, I take everything purple I own out of my closet and then try everything on and wear whats comfy-est. its lame, and my room is always a mess... but thats me.
I was diagnosed with OCD a year and a half ago, alongside manic depression. In its height, my OCD manifested itself in rituals and obsessions with the most random things. To this day, I can't go to bed without touching all the doorknobs in my room with both hands and equal pressure. Whenever I read, I used to have to read the line five times and pronounce either out loud or in my head the punctuation, so that 'comma' and 'period' became literal words in my sentence structure. This and not the depression is what alerted my mother, because it was making school really difficult to cope with. I'm not particularly germaphobic, nor am I organized. But things do have to be equidistant for me to be okay with them, and the volume has to always be on an even number or a multiple of five.
I used to take Zoloft for the depression and OCD, and it did help significantly with symptoms. Now that I'm off of it, I can tell that they're coming back, and it frightens me. I do wish OCD wasn't so commercialized and part of everyday lingo; it demeans the disorder, for which I think there needs to be more true awareness.
@septapus@xanga - "
When I was younger, I was really big on rituals and numbers. A few years later I was obsessed with hygiene, showering up to three times a day or washing my hands four times... Counting every step I take or making sure I stepped once in every square on the sidewalk. (stepped on a crack and went all the way back :/). It's been under control for the most part ever since I picked up crochet. Counting stitches, finishing the item within a certain amount of time, etc. I used to take it everywhere with me."I did all of those. The showers had to be a a specific amount of time, done in a certain pattern, and at a certain time. I still continue to count every step, make sure I step at least once in every square on the sidewalk, I avoid cracks, and for the big squares of cement, I have to take the same amount of steps in every square, and if that it impossible, it has to have a patter (2 steps, avoid the crack, 3 steps, avoid the crack, 2 steps, etc.)
haha.. and I still crochet. I love it so much. :) Things that aren't lined up annoy me, and I can't bear to see people's tags sticking out. I also have this weird obsession with watching people eat. It literally disgusts me, and I have to have a certain amount of food on my spoon or fork, and I have to chew a certain amount of times before swallowing (Including applesauce, yogurt, and foods that aren't 'normally' chewed). People tease me for it but there's nothing that I can really do *shrugs* Plus, I don't see what the big deal is.