Hands up every person who thinks they’re a ‘little bit OCD’.
Ask most people that these days and they’ll tell you that, yes, they’re a bit OCD. They think it means liking things tidy or being a neat freak or having your CDs in order. They think it’s not stepping on cracks in the pavement or organising your wardrobe in a particular way. They think it’s all a bit sill and fun and oh ho ho, aren’t we whacky with our OCD ways.
Which is all very well and very jolly but it’s *not* OCD. Being a neat freak or liking things ‘just so’ isn’t OCD. It’s just… well, being a neat freak or liking things just so.
I am actually a little bit OCD. Actually, I’m more than a little bit. I am not bad, in fact by most standards I’m fairly low level OCD and can go long periods of time without actually being OCD at all. I am always a bit OC, but not OCD. The point being you can be obsessive and/or compulsive without being OCD since OCD is Obsessive Compulsive *Disorder*, and unless it’s having a direct *negative* effect on your life it’s not a disorder.
Before going on I should point out all this is from my experience. My OCD is not everyone else’s OCD or ‘normal’ OCD (mainly because there is no ‘normal’ OCD) and I’m not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I do think that it’s one of those conditions that probably benefits from people talking about it and trying to make it easier for people to understand.
In general when it comes to my OCD behaviour I have issues with rules. I’m not particularly neat or tidy, I don’t worry overly about germs or dirt (in fact most people with OCD are not the ‘classic’ cleaners) but I do worry about rules and the ‘right way’ of doing things. That manifests in various ways; for example I can find myself verging on a panic attack at road crossings if people are crossing the road when the red man is on, but I also then have social anxiety because I think people are looking at me and wondering why I’m not crossing when the road is clear. If there isn’t a pedestrian crossing I’m fine, put me at a pedestrian crossing and I can’t cope with the idea that I can do something that I shouldn’t (to be quite honest just describing it is putting me on edge). It’s not rational, it’s entirely stupid but that doesn’t matter. I *know* it’s not normal and have had people tell me it’s not normal but, hey, that’s the whole point. It’s a disorder, it’s not supposed to be normal.
I also have self-imposed rules. Some of them are pretty common (and not uncommon with people without OCD), things like checking doors are locked at least twice before going to bed/leaving the house. Some are less based on rationality but actually have more of an impact on me. For me things have a right order. CDs do have to be in alphabetical (and then chronological) order, books have to be by type and then by size. Or sometimes by colour. Or history books have to be in chronological order. Oh, so do play texts. And art books usually by art style. But maybe not. Regardless though, I know the order and woe betide anyone who puts them in the wrong order. My biggest one on that front though is coloured pencils. They don’t have to be in rainbow order, since rainbow order doesn’t take into account pinks, browns, black, white, metallic colours and so on, but I do have an order they need to be in. I like arranging them, it makes me feel very calm and content. If they’re in the wrong order though it gives me major anxiety.
‘Anxiety’ for most people means feeling a bit upset or nervous. ‘Anxiety’, when it comes to mental health, is way more than that. If I have a full on anxiety attack it’s often a full on panic attack. I can pretty much entirely shut down emotionally, I have major paranoia, I feel physically sick and frightened. I get convinced something terrible is about to happen to me or to someone else. And all that just because someone put my coloured pencils in the wrong order.
It sounds ridiculous, and it is. It’s stupid to become an emotional wreck because someone mixed up some pencils or because they crossed the road at the wrong time or diswasher has been loaded wrong. I have found recently that I can’t stand to tread on the edge of shadows. Not for any particular reason, just because. I know it’s irrational, and to a certain knowing that it’s irrational helps me to cope with it. I have coping strategies that help me deal with my OCD behaviour but they don’t eliminate them all. Some of them are entirely involuntary (in social situations where I’m feeling stress and/or anxiety I start clenching and unclenching my fingers which helps eleciate the stress slightly. A bit anyone. Not much), some of them are about breathing or mental exercises. I don’t have any medication and would rather avoid having them if I can, but thankfully my OCD isn’t that bad (yet. And hopefully won’t get worse).
There’s also some weirder stuff that goes on entirely in my head too. I constantly have to fight a compulsion to push people off bikes (I’ve never done it I hasten to add). I will literally clock watch until it gets to a time that’s a pattern (10:10, 12:34, 22:55) but if I miss it then it’s sort of bad luck (but not actually luck. More a general bad thing). If I do see it then it’s a good thing. I’ll suddenly find that I need to count certain things or work out anagrams of words I’ve seen. With most of those things there’s no specific rule that I’m working to, it’s just something that I know I have to do. Thankfully pretty much all those behaviours are fairly benign or have no real direct impact on what I do. the mental behaviours of OCD are the ones that most people don’t talk about though and so most people don’t realise how upsetting they can be for a lot of people.
To be honest most of the issues with my OCD are not the actual obsessive/compulsive behaviours themselves, it’s the anxiety that goes alongside them and technically can be seen as a seperate but closely related mental issue. That’s what makes it a disorder and why it’s hard to deal with sometimes. I do joke about it a lot and make fun of it, but that’s because it is a silly condition. There’s stuff I do that makes me laugh. But almost everyone who thinks they’re a ‘little bit OCD’ really needs to understand why they’re not. If you treat it as something that’s a bit of a joke then it doesn’t help people who suffer from it really badly.
Just to add, if you’ve not already seen it this article over at Cracked on OCD is also really good and talks about a lot of the same stuff as I do above. And maybe a bit more coherently too.
Reblogging this blog about my OCD for #WorldMentalHealthDay because the simplest ting we can do to normalise mental health issues is talk about it.
Reblogging again for #WorldMentalHealthDay once again me talking about my OCD. Talking about this stuff really does help, believe me.
Just A Little Bit OCD…
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