OCD - My Experience

Welcome back to Smiley Central, as I said in my first post, I have OCD. This is not only very annoying but is also stressful and time-consuming. In this post I will try to explain OCD to those that live without it and bust the commonly believed OCD myths, there are a lot so I'll try my best!

First let me try and explain OCD as short as possible. Google will tell you that OCD is:
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a disorder of the brain and behavior. OCD causes severe anxiety in those affected. OCD involves both obsessions and compulsions that take a lot of time and get in the way of important activities the person values.
Which is a pretty good explanation except from describing the feeling as "severe anxiety", feelings are hard to describe but I will try to explain to you what OCD is like. 
When I was younger I would stay up hours past my bed time worrying that my dying wouldn't be even to my first and hoping that I wouldn't turn over in the night and not turn back over.

Some people that don't understand OCD don't know that there are many different types. When you have had OCD for a while, you will start to categorize these people. So for those of you that don't have OCD, here are some categories.

1) OCD is being a clean freak
This is the type of OCD in which the sufferer can't bear to have any germs on them and will freak if they have dirt under their finger nails. My Nana knew someone like this and then thought that was all OCD was, she was wrong. Maybe the person she knew either didn't know much about other types of OCD or, understandably, didn't want to talk about it. People with this type of OCD are very vulnerable to bulling, they generally wash their hands every two minutes and blurt out facts like it takes the average hand dryer 45 second to remove 97.5% of the moisture from your hands (yes, that's true) and it can be easy to make fun of them but please don't, their OCD is hard enough to deal with already, the don't need all the teasing.

2) OCD is being organised
When a teacher found out that I have OCD she said that she wished her husband had the condition, I immediately knew that she though OCD is just organizing. Some people think that obsessive organizing is something that you do and be done with, but it isn't. When obsessive organizers organised, they don't stop or do things by measures, it takes up a lot of their time and energy, disabling them from doing what they want to do, this can also effect their ability to complete work.

3) OCD is checking things over and over
Some people with OCD check things frequently even though they know they turned off the oven, some people that suffer severely with that kind of OCD count all the tiles in their house before leaving. These OCD horror stories are usually the ones that capture headlines, this cause people to believe that only that is OCD because the magazines usually leave out the rest of the information or it gets cut. 

4) OCD is repeating
Some people repeat actions until it feels right or safe. Other people know about this and, for the millionth time, think this is all OCD is, you know the drill, it is so much more and don't make fun of them.

In order to not bore you to death I will just tell some types of OCD:

• Checking
• Repeating
• Organizing
• Cleaning
• Hoarding
• A need for symmetry

For more types and information on OCD, copy and paste or click the links:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/living-ocd/201107/the-many-flavors-ocd

https://www.dosomething.org/facts/11-facts-about-obsessive-compulsive-disorders-ocd

Here is a screening test to check if you have OCD:

http://psychcentral.com/quizzes/ocdquiz.htm

Thanks for reading this looong post, I hope I haven't taken to much of your time and I'm sorry for not posting in about two weeks.

Have a fantabulous day,

xxx

Catherine