OCD Counting?

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I'm diagnosed with OCD, and though we've talked about it some in therapy (with my previous therapist actually), I'm not 100% sure as to what symptoms lead to that diagnosis. I know it's a mix of things, my severe fear of contamination one of them. I do have a bit of difficulty differentiating between what are OCD rituals and the routines associated with Aspergers, probably since I'm just now beginning to really understand Aspergers since it's a new diagnosis for me. I'm fairly certain that my intrusive, violent, disturbing, unwanted, and involuntary thoughts are the type associated with OCD (typically common in PureO OCD, I believe).

Anyway, on to the point of this post. I just wanted to give some background information as to where I currently stand.
The issue I'm having right now is with counting. It is as if my mind will get stuck on obsessive thoughts, always thoughts that I do not want nor do I feel I voluntarily think, and for some reason, my response has been to count the corners in the room, or maybe even certain objects. This is something that I will find myself doing, consciously, up to 20 times within an hour (an estimate, though not an over-estimation). I cannot say when this started, why this started, how this started, or when it began to get worse. All I know is that it has become a compulsion that is an hourly thing lately. I always seem to count in the numbers that I tend to do things in (4, 6, or 8... sometimes, though rarely, 5).

I was wondering if this could be related to OCD, or is it perhaps something else?

Any insight and help is much appreciated. I'd like to bring it up in therapy next week, but I have trouble describing it accurately when I'm sitting down face to face with someone, speaking it aloud.

PureO OCD sounds like a pretty groovy cool thing to have.
I mean it has such a "with-it" vogue name... PureO!
Nothing gross and lame like my AssBurgers.

PureO! It sounds so arty! so foreign film festival-ish.

Counting corners in a room sounds kinda cool too, I think I'm going to start doing that as a stim. There's a lot more corners than one thinks!

Well its definitely obsessive behavior, and its definetly compulsive behavior. So I think that its safe to say that its related to obsessive compulsive disorder.

You ought to moonlight for my company: R.G.I.S. Inventory Services. Or for one of our competitors in the retail inventory industry.

We go into retail stores, large and small, dressed in uniforms with little computers on our belts, and UPC scanners in our hands, and we physically count all of the merchandise in stores (Walmarts, Sears, victoria's secret, various grocery stores,pharmacies, dirty hardware stores, whatever).

You even already use the 'good technique' that they drum into us - that of counting in groups. The name of the game is to look at rows of say: campbells soup cans on a shelf and- not to count em one by one- but to see the stuff in groups of three of four. Then you key them in by group ( three plus two plus four plus three) into your machine. The machine does the work of adding them together. But you already like to see and count in groups.

Since you have the compulsion to count you might as well get paid for it.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 07 Nov 2013, 8:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I haven't been diagnosed with OCD, but I'm pretty sure I have it, especially since my father has it.

One of the main "OCD" things me and my father do is count things in our heads, as mentioned above.

Actually, my father counts things in his head, but I just count. "1...2...3...4...5..."

I'm doing it again.

I frequently count things. If I'm bored, I often count things.

For example, at church, I usually start with determining which of the hymn numbers for the hymns we are singing that day are prime numbers. Then I'll add them up and determine whether the sum is a prime number. Then I factor each hymn number and the sum of the hymn numbers.

That is followed by counting the number of people at church. Then the number of lights hanging from the roof. Then the number of stained glass windows. Then the number of pews. Then the number of tiles across from wall to wall. Then the number of tiles each pew covers. Then I calculate the area of the main part of the church in square feet based on the size of the floor tiles.

I usually sit in the very last row so it isn't too noticeable that I'm looking all over the place.

Aside from counting, whenever I leave the office and nobody is behind, I have to check a number of things at least once including whether or not any toilets are running, whether the printer is turned on, whether any computer monitors are turned on, and check every door to make sure it is locked. Then in the office kitchen, whether any burners on the stove are turn on, whether the oven is turned on, and whether the refrigerator or freezer doors are open. Then when I leave, usually through the back door, I lock it behind me and then drive around the block and check it again to make sure it is locked. Sometimes I turn around ten or twenty miles from town and come back and check them again, but that doesn't seem to happen as often as it used to happen.

On the other hand, if someone else is still at the office, I just leave.

I don't count really, but numbers have to add up to certain things if that makes sense? Like I have to have the volume on the tv or radio on certain numbers but if it's like 45 I add it 4+5=9. I also will add up the numbers on a digital clock. I went thru a phase where every sentence I said I would picture a keyboard in my head and type it out.

Sometimes I count seconds just to reassure myself that time is actually passing.

I'm always counting, hence my username on WP. I must count into the tens of thousands every day in small batches. Sometimes with an upper limit of 16 or 25 or 100 depending on what I'm counting. I often create three dimensional images in my mind and either count the sides or the edges or the corners of the objects. Sometimes I wish it would just stop but it rarely does. Even if I'm not counting as such, my mouse pointer is busy tracing out various geometrical shapes on the screen while I'm reading posts.

PureO is just a psychiatric myth. Even in studies with patients dx with PureO they could find slight compulsive symptoms.

I thought Pure O is when you don't do rituals. My sister and I don't do rituals but we're pretty damn OCD. Is compulsion the same as a ritual?
When I was in my early 20s I almost started turning off light switches in a ritualistic fashion but managed to stop myself. Then I went on anti-depressants.

Yes, the turning of light switches would be a compulsion and even ppl who are mostly PureO still have slight compulsions who sometimes break through. I still think it makes sence talking from PureO, because some ppl are really maybe 95% "O", but I think it is important to keep in mind that when you look for slight compulsions in such ppl, you'll find them.
This reminds me on a study from adults who had Tourette-Syndrome as children and now as adults claimed that they don't have Tics anymore. When Psychiatrists watched them very carefully, they still could find in many cases some minor Tics even the ppl themselfs didn't notice because they were very slight.

Last edited by Raziel on 31 Dec 2013, 3:53 am, edited 3 times in total.

Yes, I do counting a lot. I'm often obsessed with counting to even numbers, multiples of 5, and powers of 2.

I've told psychiatrists about it, but they don't think it's enough to fully qualify for an OCD diagnosis.

My OCD counting has become like a sport in that when Iam watching a film and I see anything that needs counting behind the actor, maybe he is standing in front of a flight of stairs for instance, I have to count the stairs knowing that before I finish the camera shot is likely to change.

I counted alot at times but my OCD fluctuated between phases of different forms/aspect/types. The counting was pretty annoying at times when I was tired & wanted to rest my mind or when I was trying or supposed to focus on something I was doing. My OCD got a lot better after I started medication. I still have some of th mental stuff like counting at times but it's not nearly as bad as it was before & I don't feel like I have to do it. It's kind of more like doing it out of the habits I had rather than doing it because of OCD but there's still some OCD in there.