OCD

Posting daily in the lounge to keep us informed of how loopy you are.

Calling your boss in the evening to tell him how great he is.

Just watch a few episodes of Monk and take notes.

CM

I have a tendency towards OCD that I work very hard to master.

But I used to tap/touch fingers on things, and then suddenly feel like I had unfairly favored one finger over the others, and I would spend hours trying to find, by trial and error, the point at which I had tapped each finger and equal numebr of times.

Of course, I never found that point.

Sometimes, especially when eating, I will freak out and demand as much tablespace as possible. You'll catch me removing everything I can from teh table, and shoving everybody's plates over until I have enough free space surrounding my plate to feel comfortable.

Im glad I caught this when it was starting, when I was 13 or so, and have been aware of it basically since the beginning. I rarely have any serious problems, just some occasional freakouts where I will ridiculously clean a desk or table.

But then, my OCD tendencies have moved aside in recent years to favor sensory integration disorder. I cannot stand to be in contact with a lot of materials, especially fabrics and paper based products. Plastics and metals are comforting, and a great number of sympathetic responses as well, especially to the sounds of people touching things, like chalk on chalkboard or pencil on paper.

Quote:

Original post by krikkit ... like chalk on chalkboard or pencil on paper.

Argh. I can't stand to touch most materials with my fingernails. Chalk, wood, that sort of thing. I have to clench my fist so that the evil chalk won't touch theM [help]

I always check at least 5 times if I have my keys on me when I leave my room, even if I'm not going to shut the door and no-one else is in the house to shut it.

I don't label any of my burned CDs by name. Instead I memorize their location from left to right in my disc organizer, so that I can always find them even though they lack any identifiable marks whatsoever.

Not sure if that counts as OCD though. Does it?

I have a few minor tics, but I also work pretty hard at keeping them under control. The worst is cleaning dust off of things. Usually I'm really not all that bothered about dusting or cleaning things more than once a week (unless they need it bad enough), but occasionally I'll just lock into a completely crazy cycle where I have to clean any and every bit of dust I see. It really sucks when the urge hits and I'm near a keyboard, because the little cracks between the keys are invariably filthy and really bug me. For a while I kept my workstation's keyboard unscrewed so I could pop it apart and clean it at will, but I got to the point where I was spending more time wiping down the keys than typing with them, so I started trying to cut that out.

The other one that gets me a lot is my cell phone. Several times during the course of a normal day, I have to find my phone and wipe off all traces of dust, skin, hair, etc. from my phone. I haven't been too terribly concerned about that one yet because the phone cleans off very quickly and most people don't notice that I'm doing anything odd.

Reorganizing things sucks. Once I start ordering something or putting things into some kind of a structure, I find it extremely hard to stop, even once the job is "done." There's always this sort of nagging doubt that I've done it the best possible way, so if I really get bad I might reorganize something four or five different ways before I stop myself. I really don't like the feeling at all, so I usually don't even start organizing things unless I absolutely have to.

Since I've started carrying loose change with me on a habitual basis, I've developed an extreme aversion to not using exact change. Every morning I count out the optimal number of coins to be able to make exact change for as many purchases as I expect to make that day with as few coins as possible. If I ever have to buy something in cash and don't have exact change, it bugs me almost literally to the point of physical pain, which isn't so fun. That gets a lot of weird looks from cashiers; apparently, being that precise with change is pretty unusual.


I'd never really consciously noticed it until I read MrEvil's post, but I also often check things like my keys, phone, wallet, email, etc. at least three or four times before moving on.

I have ADD, so instead of doing random weird things like all you freaks with OCD, I don't do much of anything.

Quote:

Original post by Conner McCloud Just watch a few episodes of Monk and take notes.

Oddly enough, I'm watching Monk while writing this. Weird.

Anyway I'm normal and healthy by all accounts, but there are some in my family who have suffered from various, erm, chemical imbalances. (Sorry, bad pun, sorry.) I just hope I can find a healthy wife and have healthy kids with none of these disorders, but with the prevalence of dyslexia I don't know if that'll happen.

The closest things I have to OCD are spending way too much time on programming assignments going way beyond (and in a different direction from) the original assignment and fidgeting with my fingers (like writing on my hand, mouse, or desk as if my hand were a pencil).

My mom had the same thing.. we used to go on a lot of vacations and trips, and I can't count how many times we would have to drive back after going 10 miles to check and make sure that the garage doors were closed, or that she really turned the curling iron off.