I was diagnosed with OCD in the early/mid 90's, before they were really doing AS diagnosis (at least around here). I definitely have it, and have some aspects of that OCPD too (only heard about OCPD after joining this site).
My OCD symptoms are related to stress. The more freaked out I am, the more I need to do them to relieve stress. Thankfully most of the time they're not bad, and I don't think people notice them. I do go back through doors from time to time, and try to seem casual while doing it so maybe it looks like there's a plausible reason I'm doing it.
I tried a few months ago to see what would happen if I quit doing them. To see if they really don't help anything. But unfortunately, I had a ton of horrible things happen at work right after quiting them, which doesn't help my logical brain convince my emotional brain that it's just nonsense...
Danielismyname wrote:
Just FYI, in OCD you feel as if something bad will happen if you don't do the compulsion [that alleviates the anxiety]. You can also have pure obsessions (pure "O"), which cause discomfort but there's nothing you can do that alleviates the anxiety other than avoidance (if avoidance is pertinent to the obsession).
That's a great description of it!
Thankfully I don't have the obsessions part of it too much. I think I used to have things pop in my head, like that I was going to get some disease, or family members were going to die or whatever, but that part seems to have calmed down.