Things my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder causes me to do {OCD}
- have extreme anxiety to the point of hyperventilating ( for no apparent reason)
- Do things twice or multiple times because the first didn’t “feel right.”
- Become anxious and distraught because I had a “gut feeling” something bad would happen - in a situation where there was nothing for me to worry about at all.
- Do things a certain amount of times because “if you don’t, something bad will happen.”
- Lock the door every night - even if I can see that it’s already locked, I will unlock it and lock it again.
- Run through my day in my head before I can get out of bed.
- Shower in a certain order (EX. shampoo, conditioner, body wash - never ever body wash first.)
- Have extreme anxiety if I don’t give in to my compulsions and obsessive thoughts.
- Not being able to let something go - running it through your mind over and over and over again with no control of your thoughts.
And a whole slew of other things. I’m tired of people generalizing OCD for just wanting things to be neat and clean all the time. While it can be that, it can also be a lot of other things. People glamorize OCD, thinking that if you had it, your life would be so much more organized, and clean, and neat. That assumption is so much more wrong than i can express. OCD is hard. OCD is living with that extra voice in your head, telling you everything that could go wrong, or making basic tasks so much more difficult than they have to be.
Before I was diagnosed, I used to think that using OCD, as a synonym for neat, wasn’t bad. But I didn’t know what was causing me to feel this way all the time, and I never wished it upon anyone. When I found out the struggles I had were from OCD, it became clear to me that the use of a psychological condition as a synonym for clean, was wrong. And in a way, yeah it kinda offends me, because people do not know how hard living with OCD is.
To sum it up, be kind, and respectful, and patient with mental health.