What is OCD? Do I have OCD? The Reality of coping with OCD.

Alchemy For Life

What is OCD? Do I have OCD?

OCD stands for obsessive-compulsive disorder. It shares a symptom with ADHD in which you can be caught in a repetitive loop because of anxiety and stimulus. But it is different than ADHD.

The reality of OCD

The reality of OCD often involves constant, intrusive thoughts and the need to perform specific rituals to reduce anxiety. Day-to-day life can feel consumed by repetitive behaviors like checking, counting, or cleaning, making even simple tasks take much longer. This can lead to exhaustion, frustration, and difficulty focusing on other responsibilities.

If you have to make sure all of the stove top burners are off, and you have to do it from right to left, and you have to do it three times before leaving your house you can be a bit… delayed.

It is interesting to know that there is something very ritualistic about this behavior.

I tend to find a lot of value in both rituals and ceremonies, and you can learn more about that in the episode called become ceremonious. But become ceremonious is talking about giving more meaning to something and taking your time. On the other hand, OCD is creating a repetitious ceremony for other reasons.

My Experience with OCD

As always I’m giving my experience, from my perspective on a particular state of being and this is no different. I’m not giving perspective from a clinical evaluation, and I think most people are in that same place. Most joke that they have ADHD or OCD or Autism, and are pretty convinced that they experience Anxiety. Your mileage may vary.

Having said that, I never really thought I was OCD. The exception being this: I have two coffee warmers—one in my home office, and one where I have coffee and wake up in the living room in the first hour. When I leave the house, even if I’m convinced that I’ve turned them off, I’l go back in and check all the while mumbling under my breath that this is dumb.

But I do it because it takes 30 seconds to prevent a fire while I’m gone. Nothing really has to be in a particular order—I don’t care if the food on my plate touches, I don’t arrange my many mugs a certain way. My office is a bit messy at times. I do like to fold my towels a certain way but that’s because I learned how to make them look pretty (I was having house guests and thought that would make them feel more welcome) and it just sort of stuck. True, if I have cheese, sausage and crackers at the end there’s almost always a bit of cheese, sausage and crackers cuz I like to eat them in parallel because they complement each other. But that’s it.

I tell you this in case you can relate. I tell you because it’s really easy for people to fall into the trap of pointing a finger at a specific affliction, or state of being.

It’s OK to be quirky. It’s OK to have a personality. And it’s also OK if you have OCD.

Do you? Do you think you have OCD?

Coping with OCD, and yay acronyms!

CBT and ERT are used quite a bit to help those with OCD. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is commonly used to treat depression and other issues. In Three Voices, there are a number of exercises that are essentially CBT in which we use our third voice to overcome what our second voice tells us.

ERT (Exposure and Response Therapy) is like CBT but it’s used to gradually expose someone to the thing that triggers their OCD. So in the case of someone who has to check the locks even though they know they are locked, the therapy may go so far as to suggest someone leave their house without locking their doors at all. Obviously one should take care with this particular use of it. But you can do many things like this to challenge your own OCD. Being gradual can be a good way to slowly overcome it without setting off a strong reaction. These strong reactions are also addressed in the new book BeCAUSE!.

OCD Psych Charm

I’ll let you in on a secret—I originally wanted to make the symbol be of something very symmetrical, but then print it offset in such a way that would be annoying. But then that’s not a cool symbol. So after some thought, I came up with the universal symbol for power/on/off for electronic devices. My reasoning is that often OCD will cause people to check if something is on, if it is off, or turn things on/off in a particular order, or repetitively. So now you can have your own power button that you can push.

Possible Alternatives

• You may need to be reminded to not always be “on” (if you’re in sales, or have a public figure persona). Push it just before you get home to your family. Push it just before you talk to clients!
• Remind yourself to be on, put a smile on, and put your best foot forward
• You like technology. ’nuff said.

Remember: Whether you have your OCD charm or not, you are seen. Join the community if you want to chat about this episode. It’s free.

Resources:

NIMH page on OCD

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