(NOTE: This particular blog will change as I notice things that I need to put on it.)
OCD (for me) is…
- Having to make the bed before getting in it and after getting out of it.
- Organizing books by subject/genre and then lining them up in descending height order.
- Sorting my closet by color, dark to light.
- Not stepping on vertical cracks for small tiles and any cracks for larger things, but when I do having to snap my fingers three times.
- Sligthly unscrewing a cap and screwing it back in three times before opening it fully in two turns; putting back on I need to slightly screw it on three times before closing it all the way in two.
- Wiping feet three times (L, R, L) before opening a door and entering a room with the doing the opposite (R, L, R) after closing the door behind me.
- Keeping everything symmetrical or at least parallel.
- Being an extreme grammar nazi.
- Making lists.
- Hand sanitizer.
- Sweeping before sleeping.
- Showering at least once a day.
- Accidentally bumping or dragging on foot across the ground and having to bump or drag the other foot so that it evens out.
- Showering, dressing/undressing, etc. in the same order every single time.
- Hiding in my bedroom because it is the only correct room in the house that can be kept that way long term.
- Going to a friends house and ending up cleaning the entire time because there is no way to not do it and feel comfortable. (Or, at the very least, organizing and straightening things to my satisfaction.)
- Hating to be touched unless initiating first contact.
- Typing in 9 point, Times New Roman, with half inch margins whenever possible.
- Hating that there is not the same amout of blank space at the bottom of a notebook page as there is at the top, or that when tearing it out of the notebook the margins become uneven.
- Disliking wearing hooded clothing because it is near impossible to get it to lie right.
- Not learning to iron clothes because otherwise I would end up ironing every single article of clothing I own.
- Anxiety that never fully abates and can easily spike to a full blown panic attack.
- Not dating because people will eventually get over the 'your disorder is adorable' to 'why can't you just fucking stop it?!'
- Being driven slowly insane by noticeable hair/lint/etc. on myself or other people.
- Having to backspace and entire paragraph, if necessary, if a mistake was made earlier in it while I was typing it.
- Hating that the margins in most notebooks are uneven.
- Not being able to eat food that my brain, without real reason, views as 'contaminated'.
Welcome to the tribe you have loads of rituals must be very frustrating i can agree with the touching something i still have problems with and hand sanitizer. Alot of my other rituals i have now gained control off. Are you on any medicatrion and in therapy? i hope you find the tribe helpful. Take Care
I am actually not in therapy at the moment because, even though I do have a lot of rituals, I don't feel that they negatively impact my life enough for me to go to all the hassle of changing them. Does that make sense? The pros in this case outweigh the cons.
Haha, I've been wearing a hooded, grey sweater today — earlier I was just adjusting the hood over and over, and thinking to myself, \”This is probably an OCD thing.\”Don't know if this helps you, but I find that simply acknowledging that a habit is OCD helps. Before, all I knew was I was driven to adjust things until they were as perfect as possible, and if I couldn't, I'd just become VERY agitated — sometimes angry — without knowing why.About not learning to iron — I can totally relate! It's hard for people to understand sometimes that avoiding doing things can be due to OCD, because they don't understand the extent of perfection to which everything we DO do, must be done. The other day I realized I rarely read newspapers — even though I enjoy reading them — because it's so hard to put them back together JUST the way they were!I do a lot of L R L, R L R patterns as well.