idk if it’s the mental illness but sharing literally any information feels like oversharing. i’ll be like “i skipped breakfast this morning” and immediately im like “i might as well have told them where i buried the money”
This is exhausting my mind is a prison and as soon as I remember every mistake I’ve made in my entire life I wanna explode and never speak to another person again why can’t I move on and accept that I’m not a bad person I’ve just made mistakes like every other human has
I keep getting the fear that I’m the bad guy with the thing with Kim?? Like I was the one who was being abusive and mean and manipulative? I have no basis for this no confirmation everyone involved would tell me otherwise but I can’t stop thinking about it and thinking about how awful of a person I am and how I’m doing things that are wrong and bad and need to stop and need to stop making mistakes and need to stop reaching out and need to stop blah blah blahhhajdjwkhfldfjlwhdlaja no bitch you NEED to touch grass and go see some people other than your mom and dad and brother and realize that not every thought is verifiable truth
No one in my family is bipolar to my knowledge no one has bpd I haven’t even experienced any traumatic things other than my parents being kind of invalidating of me crying and being bullied at school and the existential torture that was growing up in the church I gotta write all this down and bring it to therapy or the psychiatrist or something
Obsessive-compulsive disorder has become somewhat of a stereotype in many people’s vernacular. When one likes things neat and tidy, they may say “I’m so OCD” without thinking about the implications of that, or that it’s an actual condition.
There are many symptoms of OCD that people are well aware of. These include things like ritualistic behavior, repetition, and anxiety based on change or loss. But what about symptoms that aren’t as common?
If you don’t recognize OCD symptoms in yourself or a loved one, it’s hard to know when it’s time to seek treatment.
Remember, OCD breaks down into obsession and compulsion. What kinds of things fit into these categories that aren’t normally considered OCD symptoms?
You don’t have to figure it out on your own. We’re here to talk about some lesser-known OCD symptoms so you can make an informed decision about your mental health. Read on for more.
One thing that many people don’t recognize as an OCD symptom is excessive self-analysis or a need to figure things out about the self.
This means that the person with OCD may try to assess everything about themselves until they feel comfortable with the idea that everything is “okay”. They may analyze their actions (“why did I do that?”) or emotions (“why did I feel sad about this event?”) and once they feel satisfied with their analysis, they’ll no longer be in distress.
While this isn’t a bad thing per se, this process takes up a lot of time and energy. It isn’t always possible to finish the analysis as some things don’t have clear explanations. This makes the distress worse.
Have you ever had to re-read a sentence or phrase, or even an entire page, before you felt satisfied? This can happen with books, documents, or even the subtitles on a show or movie.
OCD can cause you to become stressed about whether or not you’re understanding something correctly. To ease this stress, you may read the thing in question over and over until you feel that you’ve gotten everything that you can out of it.
Again, this isn’t bad on paper, but it makes everything take much longer.
People with OCD are often perfectionists. Many people see perfectionism as a good trait, but when it’s compulsive it turns into a serious problem.
This applies to the re-reading issue. Someone with OCD wants to make sure that they’re understanding everything perfectly before they move forward. Not doing that gives them stress.
This applies to everything. Painting, writing, schoolwork, even doing the perfect parallel parking job. Everything has to be “just-so” or it’s not good enough.
For the perfectionist, nothing is ever good enough, so they never release that stress.
People with OCD don’t only police themselves and demand that personal perfection. They may begin to police the people around them as well.
These people want everything to be perfect. They can’t control others, however, so this creates rifts in the perfection that they’re unable to fix. To resolve this, they can display controlling behavior.
They may turn conversations into rituals. If someone doesn’t respond the way that they expect, they may try to correct them or re-route them in a way that fits into their perfect narrative. This can also happen during any time where the person with OCD feels slighted or experiences something that they deem an injustice.
Did someone else not get punished for the same mistake at work that you were punished for? Did someone else get a larger raise than you for no reason?
These injustices need to be corrected or the person with OCD can’t rest.
Everyone encounters intrusive thoughts from time to time. These are thoughts that are unusual and uncommon for the person experiencing them. They may be violent, overly-sexual, anxious, or “disturbing” in some way.
Someone with OCD, though, experiences these thoughts and gets stuck in them. They get caught in repetitive thought patterns. While the average person is able to let the thought pass over them, the person with OCD feels the need to over-analyze them.
Why are the thoughts there? What do they mean? Do I really feel this way?
People with OCD experience anxiety, and instead of self-soothing, they need reassurance from the people around them.
If someone is experiencing thoughts that their partner is leaving them, for example, despite there being no evidence to suggest this, they may need verbal reassurance that this isn’t happening, complete with evidence and emotional support.
They may encourage reassurance without asking for it. They’ll make a statement like “I hope that my job evaluation goes well” and wait for others to console and validate them.
This also relates to everyday activities, and it isn’t always verbal. If the person with OCD is anxious about an event but no one else seems anxious, this reassures them that they shouldn’t feel that way either.
The actions of people with OCD often stem from the feeling that they’re somehow bad or unworthy. Some people worry that they’re violent, or that they’ve done something terrible even when this hasn’t happened.
This leads people to confess to every small thing, even things that other people wouldn’t consider a problem. Things as small as stealing a pen from work can trigger intense feelings of guilt or shame.
Some people feel as though they’re definitely going to cause a car accident someday, and that this event is inevitable. They may worry that they’ve hit a person or an animal during their drive, and pull over to look for any evidence that supports that thought.
Some symptoms of OCD aren’t as identifiable as the obvious ones, and they are often misdiagnosed as another condition. They mimic the symptoms of trauma and mood disorders.
If you think that you or a loved one is displaying signs of OCD, it’s a good idea to get a formal diagnosis so you can receive treatment. You don’t have to manage it on your own.
If you’re seeking treatment for OCD in San Diego, the Mental Health Center of San Diego wants to help. Our compassionate and qualified professionals know how to treat and support people with OCD. Contact us today so we can get to know you and start working on your treatment plan.
What people think OCD is: I love organizing my pens ❤️
What OCD actually is: oh god cars are sentient and can hear me if I speak badly about them and then I’ll crash and die oh god the mythological goddess Artemis will smite me down if I have sexual thoughts oh god if I see a child for longer than .0001 seconds I’ll suddenly turn into a pedophile oh god
Being sexually non normative is so funny because like it’s just so much work to understand things that other people apparently just intuit??? So much time is spent on like intellectualizing and understanding the semantics of sex (what does it really mean to be sexually attracted to someone, what is desire, what is arousal, how do I really consent when I’m not sure about these 27373662528 questions… etc etc etc) when it seems like a lot of people just sort of. Have gut feelings??? or. Act naturally???
lol it’s like I think some people genuinely just sort of go with the flow of how they’re feeling and I’m in a therapist’s office asking her to break down for me the semantics of what it actually means to “want to have sex”
Good evangelical girl to "I can't tell the difference between what I want and what I feel like I should want" pipeline
When I had my wisdom teeth out at age 17 I was terrified that I would say something out of character when I was under anesthesia or come out accidentally (even though my parents already knew but denied it as a phase???) or reveal some deep secret about myself
When I was in college I couldn’t take showers unless someone was sitting outside of the bathroom to warn me in case someone threw up because I had convinced myself that taking a shower or using public restrooms = someone’s going to vomit and you won’t be able to escape. I still plug my ears when I go into a public restroom and gag if I smell or have to touch or even see any bodily fluid and all that shit and OCD heightens your disgust factor so it makes sense?
And I keep getting this fear that I’m turning religious again and that I will trick myself into going back to church and my brains like “hey. You should go back to church. I know you hate it and it made you feel tortured inside because of who you are but like…. Was it all that bad or were you just making it up?” Like YES IT WAS THAT FUCKING BAD
Or “was i the one who was emotionally manipulative and abusive with Lauren when she purposefully did things that she knew would upset me and did I do something wrong when brendan led me on for 8 months being like “hmmm idk if we’ll date..” because he was sexually attracted to me or when alexa broke up with me overnight with no chance for communication or discussion about it at all?” Or when I hooked up with two people at different times when I was single because they asked me to do it when I was shitfaced and had no self control and afterwards I was like “well if you didn’t you would have looked like a bad person even though you hate hook ups and you feel guilty for even saying yes because you don’t know if you even like sex or not but good thing you said yes because that’s the morally correct answer” and the only reason I did that is because kaila told me I should hook up with Noah because he was attracted to me and tiff told me I should hook up with Bridget because we were the only two lesbians at her wedding and Noah wouldn’t stop snap chatting me and Bridget who was so fucking ugly asked me at the end of the wedding and I felt like I needed to say yes
Or when I started dating alexa even though everything about her cringed me out but I was like “no you’re making it up you’re the weird one she’s normal even though she’s strange and has no friends in real life you have to push through or else you’re a failure” and then she was weirdly hypersexual and I did stuff I hated over discord because I set no boundaries with anyone? Or doubting that Lauren even ever liked me even though she stalked me for ~4 years and I hooked up with her again because I felt bad saying no and feeling like I deserve all of this because I’ve done something morally wrong and deserve it? And I’m still basically a virgin because I never felt comfortable enough to let myself be vulnerable and was constantly worried of what they were thinking of my performance? And over apologizing and over explaining to every single person I know just in case they think I’ve done something morally incorrect?
I have not identified with anything as much as I do moral OCD and relationship OCD and I’m in a great deal of pain right now honestly
scrupulosity and an OCD obsession with morality is so much more than just wanting to be a good person.
yes, I want to be a good person. but for me, that comes along with:
and sometimes… this obsession with being a good person actually prevents me from being as good a person as I would be otherwise (e.g it can make me come across as selfish and not compassionate)
Trying to cope with the fact that I have a mother with OCD and a brother with OCD so therefore it’s likely I do as well and have been diagnosed with obsessional thoughts and behaviors but also doubting that I have OCD because I don’t want seem like I’m sick and looking for attention is like pure torture rn and the most obsessive behavior ever and realizing the extensive, hours long online research I do is a compulsion and has been for years is not helping
Like once someone plants a seed in my head that’s all I’m going to worry about, I’m worrying that I have all these terrible diagnoses even though I’m the one who told me I had them and just believed it because I told myself it was true, comorbidities do exist but I’ve never been screened for anything other than ADHD and anxiety and depression, I am doubting if I’m even bipolar or not because I genuinely don’t know if the psychosis was cannabis induced or if it was a bipolar manic episode or what tf happened to me because I felt Completely Fine until I went off of my SSRI
If someone told me I had signs of ASPD or NPD or anything else that no counselor or psychiatrist or my mom who was a counselor has even told me I’ve showed signs of I would 100% believe it because I’m like “well if someone else thinks I do then I must!” I feel like I’m posting for attention but I also hate getting attention because I don’t like it I never have so which is it? I dunno I think I just want to know if I’m going insane or not and get validation?? It’s like my brain is playing ping pong with itself right now as far as my obsession with my diagnosis and how everyone in my life feels about me and I am spiraling out of control and I have been doing this shit with self diagnosing myself since I was seventeen even with actual health issues like I could convince myself I have cancer in about 10 minutes if you gave me the right articles! I could convince myself I hate every friend I’ve ever made and that they hate me back with zero evidence or rational feelings if i think about it hard enough! I’ve always been an empathetic person my entire fucking life so why am I doubting that I’m empathetic or have feelings?? This is the worst period of my life I’ve experienced so far
i was recently diagnosed with OCD, and we seriously need to change the way we talk about the disorder. the average time between onset of OCD symptoms and beginning to receive treatment is over a decade, and i suspect at least part of the reason why is the way we talk about OCD societally, or rather the way we dont talk about it.
no, OCD isn't the "clean freak" disorder. you dont have to check that your door is locked 17 times in order to have OCD. the actual symptoms of OCD are as varied as any other disorder, but it seems that only the most palatable or easily digestible symptoms get talked about regularly.
no one wants to talk about mental compulsions (ex: ruminating on past and potential future situations with "what ifs"), and how they can be even more severe or disruptive than visible ones.
no one wants to talk about the extremely distressing intrusive thoughts that can happen, let alone the fact that intrusive thoughts dont start and stop with violence. yes, this includes bigotry and pedophilia, and no, people with these thoughts are not bigots or pedophiles. intrusive thoughts play on your fears, not who you actually are.
the reason no one with OCD is talking about their symptoms and experiences is because we're demonized for having them and harassed for expressing them, and that shit is unacceptable. we fucking deserve safe places to discuss our symptoms without fear of it being misconstrued and used against us (or just straight up being verbally assaulted, or worse). thought crime isnt fucking real. your thoughts do not make you a good or bad person, your actions do.
STOP STOP STOP DOING IT AGDLFJWHDLCHLQDHWL why do I keep DOWNLOADING THIS SHIT just chill the fuck OUT
catchymemes