I hate that "OCD" has entered the general lexicon

Post Reply New Topic

Over the past few years, I've constantly been hearing "Oh, I'm so OCD about that." As a person diagnosed with OCD at age three, this always makes me angry. These people don't have any idea how tortorous and awful this condition is, and by using it to refer to anything that might irrationally bother them, they seem to be trivializing it. If someone says or does something that causes me to have an obsession, they find me extremely annoying, but if they're "OCD" about something, they should completely understand my inability to let something go. But they don't. Stop saying you have a disorder when referring a certain thing when you have NO IDEA what OCD is actually like.

OCD, ADD, ADHD, schizophrenia, autistic...the list goes on.

In general people know little about disorders and will propagate nonsense about them.

Yep, you're right, people shouldn't use OCD to describe common traits that don't cause the problems that OCD does. I watched a show called "Obsessed" about people with OCD. It is very torturous and impairs people greatly.

I think it's only a matter of time before people start saying "I'm so Asperger's about this" when referring to an interest.

Whenever I saw people say it, I always thought they actually had it. How can you tell if they actually have it or if they don't? I say I was so OCD about my home as a kid but I really mean it because I really was OCD about it to a point it would upset me if anything was out of place because I liked it spic and span. Then when my parents decided "aw screw it" I had a lot of anxiety and it didn't help when my dad brought home a puppy that wouldn't house train and oh boy, tremendous anxiety to a point I went literally insane and I would have turned into a psychopath if the dog didn't get hit by a car because I was getting closer to drowning that poor thing due to compulsion but the only thing that kept me from doing it was fear of being hospitalized. Why? Because of dog pee. Yes lot of people don't like dog pee but it would give me distress and anxiety if I saw any pee on the floor and I would flip out like Linda did in Snow Cake when her dog peed on her floor. Now I am not literally OCD about my house anymore. Yes I will say the puppy was bad for my OCD and I do mean it literally because of what it did to me and it didn't help that my whole family abandoned me emotionally during the whole thing.

This really annoys me too. Just the other day I tried telling my family about what true OCD entails because they were all going on about how 'OCD they actually are' about cleanliness. I couldn't really get a word in, though.

If anything, when people refer to OCD in this way, what they are describing is usually more in line with OCPD. Even then, I don't really know anyone who would fit the criteria for the disorder. We all have traits of disorders to some extent, but usually they are just normal variations of human behaviour.

I also have this problem where people claim to have a 'really bad phobia' when it simply appears to be a strong dislike for something.

I say I am OCD about germs and I do have OCD and am diagnosed with the condition. I do struggle everyday with it and sometimes I am more in control of it than other days. I say that as a way to have others relate to what I am going through

If i just said "I have OCD" well they wouldnt know what that meant or how it affects my life or what i struggle with. It also seems unnatural to just list a diagnosis and start listing symptoms in a casual conversation. So instead this is how I phrase it.

This makes me mad. So I guess I get kind of passive aggressive and start questioning how exactly do you have obsessive compulsive disorder? I'll be like so what are your obsessions tell me about your compulsions, and how are you treating your disorder. Hopefully it makes people think twice before casually claiming to have a disorder that they don't have which is really serious and affects other people quite seriously.

Interesting discussion. My ASD diagnostic profile includes 'traits of anankastic personality' (which is the same thing as OCPD), although having read the criteria there seems to be a lot of overlap between this and ASD, which I guess is why it does not merit a separate diagnosis. My psychiatrist has also stated to me on several occasions that I appear to struggle with obsessive thinking of a similar nature to that seen in OCD, although less so with the compulsions.

For these reasons, it is not unheard of for me to use phrases such as the ones mentioned in this thread because I sometimes find it a useful way to describe the way I can get 'stuck' in lines of thinking and patterns of behaviour, without claiming to have the full disorder. I am not making any claims about severity relative to anyone else, but obsessivity of one form or another is a genuine problem for me.

Comparing this to autism is also interesting. Autism (even specifically Aspergers) covers a very wide spectrum with individuals all being affected differently in different circumstances and areas of functioning. As such, does one person saying they have it, or even that they just have some traits in one specific domain, really imply anything about how others with the condition are affected? I am becoming increasingly convinced that this doesn't cost us as much as we might think. Those who are aware tend to recognise when something is a myth. Those who are closed-minded and judgemental will tend to always find something to latch onto to support their position anyway. And those who are unaware but open to finding out can use those type of discussions to learn something.

Like how people say they are nymphomaniac, kleptomaniac, pyromaniac, or 'ret*d'.

I have OCD and it bothers me too. People seem to do the same thing with bipolar disorder. And I see jokes like "I have ODD (Obsessive Dog Disorder)". There is also a company called Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics, which upsets me.

I have OCD, but I can't say it really bothers me that much when people say it. It's dumb when people use it to describe something that is nothing like OCD. But OCD is really a spectrum, and I have found that many people that say "I'm OCD about..." really do have obsessive compulsive tendencies. Perhaps they don't have enough of a problem for it to be a "disorder", or perhaps they have a mild case and are undiagnosed. I actually feel that it gives me something in common with the person, and I like not feeling so different.