Ocd

[Adalaide]

I know that television likes to make everyone think that OCD is hilarious. Everyone with it is some sort of neat freak who needs to lock and unlock their deadbolt 5429847528945 times (or some ridiculous number) before they go to bed. Since a lot of mental health issues are linked to celiac I thought I would share an article that is actually pretty spot on for what it is truly like to live with OCD. For fair warning, this article does have strong language.

 

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[LauraTX]

Everyone should read this.  Thanks for posting.

[GF Lover]

Great Article.  Society is "in love" with being different.  People think that if they have this (any condition) then society will treat them special and give them more attention.  It takes away from the seriousness of the condition and the difficulty people who actually have the condition face in real life. 

 

This is my experience with real life OCD and may help people understand how the obsessive part fits in the psychiatric part.

 

I am one of the so called "clean freaks".  My home always looks like a showroom, laundry is always done, paperwork is filed as soon as it enters the door. You get the picture.  Now the Psychiatric part.  I spend enormous amounts of energy doing this because I expect tragedy to walk through my front door at any moment.  I must be prepared to deal with the crisis at hand.  Every time the phone rings I expect it to be "the call" about someone in an accident, someone has died, etc.   Keeping my home spotless and in order gives me a sense of control with my out of control thought process.  There is a name for what I do, it is catasrophizing.  When I drive down the road I imagine every possible accident that could potentially happen to me.  Every sound I hear seems to be someone breaking in my home.  Every smell is a potential gas leak or fire.  I intellectually know why I do the OCD stuff.  I also cannot stop doing it, just like I can't stop the thoughts in my head.  My Hubs and Son don't question why I must move the furniture around at 3:00 in the morning, they just help me if I ask.  They don't worry that I'm in the closets making sure that the clothes are sorted by color, by sleeve length, and that the hangers all match. They understand my struggle.  Someone who doesn't know me would probably call me crazy but in reality I am just coping the best way I know how.  Having OCD is not funny, not fashionable and certainly should not be made light of. 

 

Colleen

[Adalaide]

I'm actually a sort of messy person. I like to call it organized chaos. For me the two most difficult things have always been the thoughts and food. Even at a young age I would sooner go hungry than skip particular rituals relating to my meal and snacks. To this day I will not eat Reese's Pieces without a flat surface to sort them by color and number. I am incapable of eating a sandwich cut straight up the middle. People think that's crazy, that it's a personal choice and I'm being picky. I'm not picky, I literally can. Not. Do. It. I'm the same way with every phone call and driving. Every time I walk down the stairs will be the time I fall and end up with a compound fracture, or impale myself on something I'm carrying, or actually just kill myself by breaking my neck. Every time I make dinner will be the time I cut a finger to the bone, finally end up with a burn serious enough to end up in the ER, burn the house down or some other horrific thing. I also need things to be just so. While I'm capable of being spontaneous if I don't have plans, if I do actually have plans I mentally go to hell in a handbasket if those plans suddenly don't work out. This is amplified about a million times if blame can be pointed at an actual person.

 

Frankly though, the worst possible part of all of it is knowing that all of that is completely freaking crazy. There's that old saying that as long as you are still sane enough to wonder whether or not you're crazy, you're not. Except for us we know damn well we're doing and thinking things that are positively nuts. We actually get to be completely aware of how crazy we are, which is terribly frightening (at least for me).

 

I'll admit, I've been known to crack the old joke "I'm CDO, it's like OCD but the letters are in alphabetical order like they should be." I still think it's funny, maybe especially because I think things should have orders, classes and such like a scientific system. But the way society makes like of OCD is enough to drive me (and probably most of us) batty.

[SkyBlue4]

My son is struggling with OCD. They believe it was brought on by a strep infection that he had when he was just 7 yrs old. It calmed down and he was able to function well until this summer when it returned with a vengeance. We're not sure what caused it to resurface again so severely. He's constantly tortured by intrusive thoughts and not able to attend school. We've had to begin medication therapy in conjunction with cognitive behavioral therapy.