We all have those moments or experiences when something isn't lined up just right and it bothers us. People joke about having OCD, but many forget it is actually a mental disorder. OCD can interfere with your daily life and in some cases cause stress, anxiety, or even physical discomfort.
Before I go any further, I should briefly identify the six main types of OCD.
1) Checking - This involves checking things repeatedly for signs of harm, leaks, fire, or damage.
2) Contamination/Mental Contamination - This involves when people feel the constant urge to wash themselves. Mental contamination is when a person feels 'dirty' after hurting or putting someone down.
3) Hoarding - This is when someone can't get rid of a possession that they own
4) Ruminating - This one is when people get lost in thought and seem unfocused. They reflect of philosophical questions like what happens after death. These people never reach a satisfactory conclusion in their thought.
5) Intrusive Thoughts - These are often horrific thoughts involving hurting a loved one physically or sexually. These thoughts can lead to obsessions with relationships, killing others or suicide, or other negative thoughts and emotions.
6) Symmetry and Orderliness - This is the one most people associate with OCD. They are obsessed with things being lined up to avoid discomfort and/or harm.
For the sake of simplicity, I will be discussing the sixth one in this Take, since that is the one most people are familiar with and that one I fall under personally. Let's get started, shall we?
1) Discomfort
This one is one of the most obvious signs of OCD. If everything isn't just right than it is uncomfortable. For example, in the picture above, I bet many of you didn't notice that the middle picture is slightly smaller and higher up than the other two. Many people wouldn't think twice about this, but for me and many other with OCD, this drives us insane. Instead of enjoying a nice cup of coffee, I'd be staring at the picture desperately wanting to fix it, but in most cases, that isn't an option.
2) Organization
For people with OCD most of our time is spent organizing and reorganizing. Even if something may appear organized to most, a person with OCD will see it as a disaster. They'll completely reorganize it and will be satisfied with it, but this satisfaction doesn't last for long. A little while later they will look at it and once again see a disaster, even if nothing had been touched. And thus the vicious cycle repeats over and over again with no end in sight.
3) Emails
Emails, or any other form of writing formal or not, can become very stressful for people with OCD. There will be at least three cycles of proofreading and editing even for something as small as a half page email before they feel comfortable sending it, but often even that isn't enough. Essays were a nightmare for me. There would be times where I'd scrap and rewrite entire six or more page essays because I wasn't confident in it. Even writing this is difficult, because I fear that I have already made half a dozen mistakes so far.
4) Relaxation
This is a tough one and has less to do with relaxing and more with the lack of relaxation. Say you've had a long day at work and just want to sit and relax, but as you were getting a snack, you noticed the pantry was a mess. People with OCD could just leave and go sit down, but the thought that the pantry was a mess would be enough to keep them from relaxing. They would get up, reorganize the pantry, sit down, and see something else to trigger their OCD.
5) Ridicule
Often times people will tell other people with OCD to "just let it go," or "not worry about" but that is just it, we can't let it go. If we don't do something then it will constantly drive us crazy until it is fixed. That's just what makes OCD so frustrating. We can't let go of even the simplest things no mater how badly we want to.
I hope you enjoyed this Take. I may try to do more covering the other types of OCD, but I have little experience with the other types, so they may require additional reasearch. Plus I already have a few topics I want to cover already. I hope that this Take helps shed some light on what people with OCD have to go through on a day-to-day basis. I also hope that the people who do have OCD will agree with me on these and that I didn't forget anything. Thanks for reading.
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