OCD people: What are your compulsions?

Post Reply New Topic

Counting (in sets of twenty).

Purposeless ritual (usually involving doing something twenty times).

Fear that my mother will die every time she leaves the house. I always make sure my "last words" to her will be "I love you". I have to find a naturally occurring pattern involving twenty, factors of twenty, or multiples of twenty (and no cheating) if she is late in coming back so she won't die.

Fear of horrible genetic diseases, which are preventable through the holistic power of the number twenty.

counting, swallowing, intrusive thoughts of a sexual violent nature, checking, could go on and on really. Swallowing is the worst really as it makes me fart bad.

Dont have any contamination stuff, not a clutterer, like pure space.

My OCd overlaps with my decompromising TS stuff but there is a big difference. OCD is not life affirming for me, where as my routines, stimming and stuff are life affirming.

Mine have shifted a bit over the years. Right now I need to have "clean" clothes that I only wear at home I can keep my bed, etc. clean. I'm really careful to to "contaminate" my clothes with what I wear to work. I really do think I feel itchy though if I'm not careful.

I also need to go back out the same door I came in through, etc. (I've explained this in more detail before). And I have a hard time starting certain things, like today I canceled and reopened a PDF a bunch of times before finally printing it. I back out of games and restart them a lot sometimes when I'm first starting a new video game.

I'm not describing this stuff well, but it actually bothers me a lot less than it did in high school. I'm on a "base 2" system where I need multiples of 2...or at least I did. It doesn't bother me as much anymore, but I used to need to do things twice, touch things twice, make sure I had physical contact with people twice, etc. 4 was better since it's 2 2s, and 16 better still, etc.

I'm kind of fascinated by how people with OCD have different number "bases"-like I'm 2, I've heard one people on here who's 3, MissPickwickian you're 20, another person I'm aware of is 5. Just kind of interesting to me.

I think bad thoughts related to myself or others being hurt/hurting others and diseases...oh and being homeless, are the things I'm trying to "avoid".

It's this one part of your brain that just keeps sending an "emergency" signal over and over again, instead of just sending it once like in a normal brain. Yay.

My biggest concern is keeping my OCD & Aspie traits from being noticed.

I have what I think of as "usable (or good" numbers". There is no one favorite or one that's worse. A lot of the number things come from having a good or bad year. If I thought that it was a bad year for me when I was 9 or 13 I try and avoid those numbers. 11, 14, and 8 were better ages so those are usable. Good and bad numbers are based on many things besides that. One example of how I use numbers is this; on weekend mornings I get up at my leisure and not to the alarm clock. I'll lay there and look at the clock until a usable number comes up before I'll get up. Since there are so many it doesn’t take long.

When I leave the house to go to work or anywhere for a long time in the day I have to check things in sequence. Stove off, refrigerator door closed, A/C set to where it should be, lights off, water dish for my dog is full, make sure doors are locked. Some things can be checked over and over. When I back out of the garage
and start down the street I look over my shoulder to make sure the garage door has closed successfully. Sometimes I'll turn back to re-check things. I really feel like a nut then so to make it look good to the neighbors (if they even notice) I make sure I bring something out with me to take as if I forgot it and had to come back just for it. I do my damnedest to avoid going back but sometimes I think I just have to.

I don't like stepping on cracks or seams.
Also, many times when I cross over a threshold or go out some doors I'll have to have an "acceptable" thought on my mind or I'll find reason to go back and re-exit the same door. "Oops! Forgot something".
All moves that may be observed must be covered by some kind of artificial rationale.
Bad thought intrusion is a constant problem. Some days are better than others, though.

Luck and misfortune (even a bad day) and the desire for good days and to avoid bad days is what drives a lot of it for me. An example would be that if I'm listening to a Pearl Jam CD on the way to work and that day turns out to be a very good day it's a given that I'll be listening to that same CD a lot on the way to work in the future whether I want to or not OR to ward of a potentially bad day that I can see coming.
If I wore a certain shirt and had a crappy day I won't wear it again for a long time if ever.

I put things in the same place at home and work. It may not even be orderly but it's the way I do things and I'll get nervous if I deviate too much.

Again, the whole thing for me is to be discrete and that in itself can drive me nuts.

Here's the kicker with all of this. There have been numerous times when I stopped doing all of this and lived normal. I'd mess the order of things up on purpose, look for cracks to step on. use bad numbers on purpose, and grin about it. This may last several months but eventually I'm back in the rut. I don't take meds for anything so I can't attribute these breaks from OCD or AS to that.

I could say more but I've covered it enough.

I have grown out of many of my OCD traits. Although I still have a few that still remain.

Currently:
Checking the alarm clock to make sure it's set right, washing my hands when they get dirty (not nearly as many times as some people though), re-naming file names and song titles so they all are the same way, and just generally checking things. I think that the checking part has a lot to do with my poor short term memory, and forgetting to do these things.

When I was younger, I was really bad about arranging things (this was a big burden on me). I am also a perfectionist...everything has to be a certain way, or I will either give up on it, or I will spend who knows how many hours trying to get it perfect. I have realized that this behavior isn't normal, and it's a big waste of time and energy, so I have become less demanding on myself.

My OCD tendencies range from what I consider to be major to minor.

My biggest OCD tendecy is that I desperately want a house so clean you can eat quiche off of the floor right underneath the toilet. Well, not THAT literal. But I crave a living space extremely clean and uncluttered. I absolutely abhor a cluttered living space. Now I'm not saying that I love to have everything arranged perfectly on order and not that everything has to be at right angles. I'm not that strict on myself. I just enjoy a spartan living space.

I feel that playing the guitar a little bit every day helps quell my OCD tendencies a bit.

I have to have something sweet every day. Just like one (and just one) oatmeal cream pie (or something like that!)every day.

I have to visit websites in a certain order every day.

There are a lot of small OCD tendencies I go trough every day. And these are but a few. But having an orderly and CLUTTER FREE living space is my biggest OCD tendency I have.

For me counting/checking, door locks, the refrigerator, the garage door. Occasionally light switches (seriously, light switches? You can see when the damn thing's off, and yet...) or the range, but not those for a while. I have to check them in multiples of 2, first 8 times, then 4, then 2, lather, rinse, repeat 'til they feel right. I can usually get past them pretty quickly if I'm not tired, but I feel like I spend my life in a perpetual state of exhaustion right now, so that's rather exacerbating the problem. I've been in therapy for it, but I think I'm going to have to put it on hiatus 'til I have more time and energy to devote to "fixing" my OCD - I'm hoping to switch from full time work to part time, which should help, a lot. But of course finding a job which is a good fit is never easy.