OCD
Monday, February 11th, 2008 at 10:45 amIt’s been a couple months now since Erin pointed out that I may well have Obsessive-compulsive Disorder.
I don’t even know what we were talking about, but I must have mentioned that my mom used to joke that I was OCD - when I was a kid, I would wash my hands all the time. I wasn’t the type that would scrub them incessantly; I just felt like I needed to rinse them off after touching…well, almost anything: the dog, doorknobs, any kind of food - anything.
The problem is that I really don’t know much about OCD. About a decade ago, I read a Reader’s Digest article about a teenage kid that exercised constantly, and there’s a Scrubs episode where Michael J. Fox plays an OCD surgeon, but that’s about all I know of it. Of course, I had never really given it any thought. I don’t know much about mental illness, but it seems that there are a lot more people dealing with mild, manageable forms of illnesses than those who can’t function normally. It makes sense that OCD doesn’t necessarily mean counting steps and touching everything in the room; I don’t know why it never occurred to me that there are probably thousands of people that deal with mild forms of it.
Erin has a little more experience in this than I do. She was diagnosed with OCD when she was a teenager, and took drugs for it for a few years. When she described her symptoms, I started to think she might be right about me having it. The thing is, I don’t know how other people think; it’s just not possible. Until she pointed it out, I just assumed that everybody would get songs and phrases stuck in their head for days at a time. I did some reading online, and WebMD gave me a pretty good list that made her case even stronger.
Here’s what I got:
- Songs stuck in my head: Not whole songs, just a part. Not even songs, necessarily - sometimes, I hear an interesting phrase, and that gets stuck in my head. And I don’t mean that I’m humming a jingle all afternoon, I mean I’m singing two lines of a song for hours (if not days) at a time.
- Hand washing: I still do this more than most people, but less than I did as a kid.
- Spitting: I don’t know if this one counts, but I spit into the sink almost every time I wash my hands. Kind of gross, I know.
- Nail biting: Might just be a nervous habit, but I’ve been doing it since I was like six and I have been completely unable to stop.
- Replaying/rehearsing conversation: After a lot of conversations, I replay parts of it in my head dozens of times, agonizing over things I may has misspoken about, or points I should have made. I also rehearse conversations the same way. Same goes for e-mails and blog posts: if it occurs to me that I’ve got an e-mail to write, or a blog post I want to make, I keep writing and re-wording it in my head until I can get to a computer and type it up.
- Compulsion to document my life: I always feel like I need to track things happening in my life, for reference later. I’ve been tracking movies I watch for a few years. I’ve also been trying to figure out some kind of life tracking web application for a long time, to track people I know, books I read, movies I see, events I go to, trips I take - everything. I feel like I need to be able to look things up later on to see what I did with who and when. I already track some of this in a wiki on my laptop, but I want an easier way to add and link things.
- Runaway imagination: I have a habit of considering the worst case scenario, and then letting my imagination run wild with it. In the five and a half months we’ve been together, I’ve imagined Erin dumping me at least a dozen times. Before we moved in together, Erin lived in a row house, and one night I had myself entirely convinced that the old-house noises were zombies in the attic. And every time I go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I expect to find a demon staring back at me when I open the door. I know it’s completely and utterly ridiculous, but the image just gets more and more horrible in my mind until I open the door and see, just as I suspected, that nothing is there (except for the time that Erin WAS there and scared the Christ out of me).
I still don’t know if I actually have OCD. I haven’t talked to a doctor, and like I said, I have no idea how other people think, so I can’t tell if any of this is “normal.” I did mention it to my mom and learned that there are other folks with OCD in my family, so she wasn’t entirely joking back when I was a hand-washing kid.
Whether I do have OCD or not, I still haven’t figured out what to do with this information. I was actually literally speechless when Erin first told me, and I haven’t made it much further than that. If anything, I’m more conscious of it, and because I think about it more, it seems like it happens more.
Anyway, I don’t have a good reason for posting this. I doubt that I’ll bother seeing a doctor about it or anything; I mean, I’m obviously getting by, but Erin claims that the difference was incredible when she started taking meds for it. I suppose I’m kind of hoping that other people will chime in with their take on the matter, because I’m curious if anyone else knows what I’m talking about.
Tags: mental_illness, ocd
February 11th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
I do a lot of those things too, on the list. But I dont think I have OCD. I don’t really see it in you, but granted Erin does spend more time with you. And seems to know more
But germs don’t seem to bother you, you hug everyone.
I think the things on the list usually show up with everyone, its just how much does it happen to you. Time to start bloggin and keeping track! (posted on LiveJournal)
February 11th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Yeah, I’m definately guilty of all of those except the nail biting and spitting. Perhaps it goes along with being analytical or something.
(Let me know if you come up with a good life-indexing solution. I’m always afraid of throwing away post-it notes, or deleting text files because I know that the minute I do, I’ll want that scrap of information. And I’m always trying to keep track of things like cities I’ve visitied, hours of traveling I’ve done… etc.) (posted on LiveJournal)
February 12th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
I used to do this weird thing where I’d try to assign numbers to everything, and make the numbers come out a certain way (add up to something, be an even number, multiple of 3, etc.. it’s hard to explain). Words (# of letters), phrases (# of syllables, # of 4-character combinations, # of words, anything that would make the numbers add up the way I wanted), visual things that had multiple components (tiles, a bunch of shelves with dividers), I don’t know.. it used to really occupy me when I was younger, and I’d think way too hard about it. I don’t know when it stopped, but at some point it did (sometime during high school). (posted on LiveJournal)
February 13th, 2008 at 8:37 am
@infodrenched: Don’t you worry - I’ll definitely write about it when it’s done
(posted on LiveJournal)
February 13th, 2008 at 8:38 am
@Pete: You know, I totally forgot about that - I did similar stuff. I can remember having nightmares about numbers - which, in retrospect, is pretty fucked up. (posted on LiveJournal)
February 13th, 2008 at 8:40 am
@jellybellybean: That’s why I don’t really know if I actually have OCD, because everybody does this stuff; it’s a matter of finding the line between normal and obsessive.
As for germs: there are different types of OCD. Some people wash everything incessantly, some people count every step they take. (posted on LiveJournal)
February 13th, 2008 at 9:39 am
IANADoctor but I think you’re normal.
I think everyone gets songs stuck in their head. I know I’ve been singing the one line of "Through the fire and flames" that I know ever since I got GH3.
I wash my hands a lot too, especially when I’m cooking. I hate having anything wet/slimy touch my hands so I at least rinse them off and dry them as soon as I touch something like that. I think I just do that because I"ve been trained to think that’s the right thing to do when a sink is nearby or when you’re working with food. If I’m outside and I get covered in mud I’ll wipe my hands on my jeans and keep working. I don’t feel a compulsion to go find a sink just to wash my hands.
I spit about 80-90% of the time I go to the bathroom (either in the urinal or in the sink). I think this is because I drink a lot of water during the day. I’ve noticed that since I started drinking a ton of water at work, I go to the bathroom more often, sweat more profusely while playing volleyball, and spit more often. I think my body just has to get rid of that excess water somehow.
I was raised to believe that nailbiting is a disgusting habit so I never started that one.
I don’t know about replaying conversations, but I rehearse conversations before they happen all the time. If I’m talking with a group of people I’ll rehearse what I want to say over and over in my head until I’m sure it’s exactly what I want to say or that it’s smart/witty enough to add to the conversation. I’ll even rehearse stuff so much that I miss my chance to put it in the conversation (it’s one of the reasons I’m generally thought of as a quiet person).
As for the wild imagination, you might be right about that one. That definately doesn’t happen to me. Granted you’re a much more creative person than I am so it makes sense that you would have a more vivid imagination. My concern is that the logical side doesn’t kick in and tell you that your imagination has gotten ridiculous.
On a related note, did you happen to see Gabe’s anxiety post on Penny Arcade a few days ago? At least it sounds like you’re not as freaked out about stuff as he is. (posted on LiveJournal)
February 13th, 2008 at 10:18 am
I think everyone has their own OCD tendencies. For me, it’s checking to make sure the doors are locked a few times before going to bed. Even if I am in bed, if I for one second think a door may be unlocked or not checked - downstairs I go.
I’ve come up with a system that helps me remember that I did check the doors, however. Before that, I would check a door and almost instantly forget I checked it…so I’d check it again
February 13th, 2008 at 10:36 am
I hadn’t seen that post, but I liked it…and found myself agreeing with more of it than I like to admit. He basically described what I called "runaway imagination" (and he called "anxiety stacks"): the way that every minor problem is mentally played out to the worst-case possibility. And then I worry that I’m overthinking things, and get even more anxious. (posted on LiveJournal)
February 13th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
well, would be good to keep track of how often you do it and compare it to others. I do stuff a lot, but I have ADD and other stuff going on that might look OCD but might not really have it.
I was just knocking out the germ part. I know theres different things, but was pointing out that you don’t have the germ problem =p (posted on LiveJournal)
February 18th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
I have four of them, the tracking thing bad, I’ve tracked everytime I’ve played a song I own since I was 14, that’s, um, too many years, lol. (30!, omg) (posted on LiveJournal)
March 4th, 2008 at 8:31 am
Bink!!!!!