What is this?

crimsontinker7 said:I’ve never actually said this to anyone before. Honestly, I’d rather just hear what you all think...
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve felt like a slave to my own set of rules and rituals. I’ve always had these rigid principles about how things have to be done. Even today, if I’m making a sandwich, there has to be an exact, symmetrical number of slices of turkey and cheese laid out perfectly. It’s the same with brushing my teeth. There’s a specific sequence I follow—exactly how many times I wash my face, how many times I spit out the water and toothpaste, and so on. If I accidentally break one of these rules, I feel compelled to invent some kind of penance. For instance, if I wash my face four times instead of three, I have to pour water over the sink faucet twice. If I fail to follow my own internal logic, I get incredibly frustrated. That’s why I invented these little "punishments"... they’re meant to restore balance to my rules.
I know, it sounds bizarre. 🙂
And then there’s the talking to myself. It happens constantly. Sometimes, while I’m talking, I’ll feel like I didn’t pronounce a word quite right, so I’ll repeat that same word over and over until it feels "correct." When I’m thinking about something, too, I often find I can't control the direction of my thoughts. For example, if I visualize a man running, eventually he’s going to take off sprinting. No matter how hard I try with my mind, I can’t force him back down to the ground.
It happens with any thought—a bicycle, a plane, anything at all...
When I’m watching a movie, I’ll sometimes get the nagging feeling that I missed a tiny, insignificant detail. So, I end up rewinding the film just so I can be absolutely certain I saw and heard everything. Or when a song comes on, I have to listen to it until the very end, even if I’m in a rush or supposed to be somewhere else.
I have these other patterns too, like which months I need to trim my hair or when I start wearing a jacket. Sometimes I’ll walk outside without a coat and freeze my ass off because it's freezing, simply because my "jacket season" doesn't officially start until next month.😁
I am obsessively focused on details. When I clean a shirt or my sneakers, there can't be a single speck of dust left on them. I won't miss a single stray thread. I wipe down my computer mouse every single time someone else uses it. When I write a text or an email, I check it multiple times to ensure it's written perfectly...
There's so much more, really. I can't even remember all the different rules and habits I have... there are just too many.
I often wonder how interesting it would be if the whole world operated by my rules. I don't see this as a problem within myself. Besides, nobody else sees it anyway; it’s all just happening inside my head. Could this be some kind of OCD or something similar? I don't know. What do you guys think?

That is almost certainly OCD. On the bright side, it seems like the specific type you deal with is easier to manage than most. Just keep an eye on your stress levels and your overall quality of life so things don't escalate—though that isn't a guarantee, and I truly hope it stays manageable.

Jason Booth25 said:That is almost certainly OCD. On the bright side, it seems like the specific type you deal with is easier to manage than most. Just keep an eye on your stress levels and your overall quality of life so things don't escalate—though that isn't a guarantee, and I truly hope it stays manageable.

The stress is hitting hard :/
Setting OCD aside, my anxiety is also through the roof...
What kind are we even talking about? What are the different types out there?
Honestly, I didn't even realize I had OCD until about six months ago when I started wondering if that was what was happening. My thought is that it might be better to just stop overanalyzing it entirely, because dwelling on it just creates more problems... 😁

crimsontinker7 said:The stress is hitting hard :/
Setting OCD aside, my anxiety is also through the roof...
What kind are we even talking about? What are the different types out there?
Honestly, I didn't even realize I had OCD until about six months ago when I started wondering if that was what was happening. My thought is that it might be better to just stop overanalyzing it entirely, because dwelling on it just creates more problems... 😁

I have pure O, which is that type where you don't see any obvious compulsions because mine are all mental. I've actually pushed most of those compulsions away because I just couldn't live that way anymore, though the anxiety still lingers in a smaller way. Dealing with anxiety is really just part of the OCD cycle—you perform those compulsions specifically to try and dial down the anxiety. It doesn't make much sense to dwell on those intrusive thoughts or hunt for some deep meaning in them, because there truly isn't any. If you can manage it, though, try to resist doing the rituals or at least scale them back, because every time you give in, you're just feeding the OCD. Maybe I'm being overly cautious, but I want to warn you; my OCD was manageable once, but then things took a turn for the worse and it became completely unbearable.

So I’ve been doing some thinking, and it’s possible that a chunk of my anxiety actually stems from OCD... For instance, whenever I'm feeling down, a certain song usually cheers me up. But then, it’s like this intrusive thought takes hold—this conviction that the song *has* to work for me every single time I listen to it. Even when the track has become totally played out and loses its effect, I feel this crushing obligation to play it anyway. If I don't listen to it every day—say, right before heading to high school—I get this overwhelming certainty that my entire day is going to be a total disaster. Naturally, the worry and the panic start creeping in... This happens with all sorts of trivial things, too. It feels like pure superstition, completely senseless. Sometimes I realize how ridiculous I'm being. I’ll tell myself, for example, that my performance at school can't possibly depend on whether I'm standing or sitting on the subway 😁 However, I still feel that pull to do it. I mean, I know I should be able to control it, but I honestly don't know if it's even possible to just stop thinking about it and ignore the accompanying dread...

People say OCD can be triggered by stress or depression, but that hasn't been my experience. I remember doing strange little rituals even as a toddler, back when I was only three. I had those same types of rules and habits, and those constant "undoing" compulsions. I don't do the undoing stuff nearly as much now. I'm not entirely sure, but I suspect something happened during my childhood, around the time I started stuttering. I think that might be the root cause of all my diagnoses 😁
Thank God it’s all stayed relatively manageable 🙂

It might actually help if you understood what happened during that third year... maybe talk to your parents or something. Deep down, the cause and the cure are already there 😉

Mark Palmer said:It might actually help if you understood what happened during that third year... maybe talk to your parents or something. Deep down, the cause and the cure are already there 😉

Mama was pregnant at the time. She ended up being hospitalized for a few days, and she told me I was crying incessantly while she was gone. During that same window, they sent me away to the coast with my grandparents for a month. My grandma told Mama that I became impossible to deal with—just constant whimpering and never satisfied. She mentioned one night there was a massive thunderstorm and I absolutely lost it. But again, nobody knows for certain why it all went down like that... After a while, Grandma noticed I started stuttering. She kept correcting me, telling me how ugly it sounded and that I needed to speak properly. Mama says when I finally came home, I was completely broken. I just wasn't the same kid anymore...

Maybe it stems from that fear of losing your mother... regardless of the pregnancy or whatever else. It’s almost like you're a kid thinking this might be the last time you see her. Hmmm. Your situation is certainly an interesting one... though I truly hope things don't spiral out of control and that everything turns out okay. 🙂

Mark Palmer said:Maybe it stems from that fear of losing your mother... regardless of the pregnancy or whatever else. It’s almost like you're a kid thinking this might be the last time you see her. Hmmm. Your situation is certainly an interesting one... though I truly hope things don't spiral out of control and that everything turns out okay. 🙂

As if I'd know about something like that, since nobody even told me where she was headed. All I saw was her leaving, and then she hasn't been seen for over a month.

crimsontinker7 said:As if I'd know about something like that, since nobody even told me where she was headed. All I saw was her leaving, and then she hasn't been seen for over a month.

It honestly makes my blood boil when kids are treated like they’re too dim-witted to handle the truth, so people don't even bother trying to explain anything to them. 🙄
I mean, if someone had actually sat him down and explained where Mama was going and why, he probably would have grasped the situation. He wouldn't be sitting there this anxious and worried, and things would look a whole lot different right now.

Hey there! Just wanted to jump in here and share my two cents... I honestly feel like I’m reading a mirror image of what the author is going through. There are so many similarities. I’ve always had these little mental rituals that I play out in my head—you know, those little patterns we create for ourselves? But lately, things have shifted from just being "rituals" into actual physical tics. It’s getting a bit intense. I can usually manage to keep them under control when I’m out in public—just play it cool, right?—but once I’m home alone, it’s a different story. I’ll find myself blinking uncontrollably, making weird faces, or shaking my head just because I can't seem to stop until my brain finally tells me everything is "okay." It’s exhausting. Honestly, I feel like I'm losing my mind a little bit because I'm just not sure how to handle this anymore. Even as I'm typing this, a tic just hit me because something didn't feel quite right! My immediate reaction is to visualize a perfect scenario in my head to "fix" the feeling, and then—bam—the tension breaks. Seriously, people... if anyone out there actually knows what this is or how to deal with it, please help! Thank you!

Lawrence White16 said:Hey there! Just wanted to jump in here and share my two cents... I honestly feel like I’m reading a mirror image of what the author is going through. There are so many similarities. I’ve always had these little mental rituals that I play out in my head—you know, those little patterns we create for ourselves? But lately, things have shifted from just being "rituals" into actual physical tics. It’s getting a bit intense. I can usually manage to keep them under control when I’m out in public—just play it cool, right?—but once I’m home alone, it’s a different story. I’ll find myself blinking uncontrollably, making weird faces, or shaking my head just because I can't seem to stop until my brain finally tells me everything is "okay." It’s exhausting. Honestly, I feel like I'm losing my mind a little bit because I'm just not sure how to handle this anymore. Even as I'm typing this, a tic just hit me because something didn't feel quite right! My immediate reaction is to visualize a perfect scenario in my head to "fix" the feeling, and then—bam—the tension breaks. Seriously, people... if anyone out there actually knows what this is or how to deal with it, please help! Thank you!

Yeah, I get sucked into those tics pretty easily too, haha.
It’s usually because I get that nagging feeling that something isn't quite right... But they eventually die down after a while.

crimsontinker7 said:Yeah, I get sucked into those tics pretty easily too, haha.
It’s usually because I get that nagging feeling that something isn't quite right... But they eventually die down after a while.

Man, I had some brutal tics back in high school. Now, thank God, it's just standard OCD.🤣🤣

jbt.. what even is this.. haha.. I honestly think we’ve lost our minds 🙂 .. I was actually thinking about booking an appointment with a therapist just to sit down and talk—you know, to see what they’d make of all this... and if they can even pinpoint why I feel this way. Though, deep down, maybe we just need to wrap our own heads around it first? But then again, if more people realized how much this affects them, maybe they wouldn't feel so alone. Who knows? Maybe they're just like us—hiding it all behind a mask
!

Lawrence White16 said:jbt.. what even is this.. haha.. I honestly think we’ve lost our minds 🙂 .. I was actually thinking about booking an appointment with a therapist just to sit down and talk—you know, to see what they’d make of all this... and if they can even pinpoint why I feel this way. Though, deep down, maybe we just need to wrap our own heads around it first? But then again, if more people realized how much this affects them, maybe they wouldn't feel so alone. Who knows? Maybe they're just like us—hiding it all behind a mask
!

I don't know a single soul who doesn't deal with this.🤷

And I'm not exactly going around counting every living thing just to make sure everything adds up to an even number!🙏 🤣🤣

crimsontinker7.. I used to be just like you—I honestly felt like all that repetitive stuff was totally unnecessary.. but now? Now it feels like I'm constantly getting hit by these little setbacks every once in a while.. it’s almost like something is slightly off, so I find myself having to step up and fix things 🙂.. you know what I mean?! does that kind of thing ever get under your skin?

It’s a nuisance, a total distraction. Right now, I’m practically twitching every twenty seconds just because I have headphones clamped onto my head 😁 And honestly, the irritation is starting to set in...
What really gets to me—as I touched on earlier—is when I’m reading or watching a movie and I feel this compulsion to repeat every second or third word I encounter. Then, I’ll get stuck on one specific word and end up obsessively repeating it twenty times in every possible way. It drives me absolutely insane, but I can't help it; it's like an impulse I can't override. I just have to say that damn word 😁
I think I might be on the verge of a complete meltdown, haha

haha... what a quiz! Honestly, you explain things so well that I actually feel kind of cool knowing I deal with the same glitches too, haha!! It’s wild! Sometimes I just freeze up for maybe 10 or 15 minutes—it's like my brain turns into a total computer crash...!! I remember back in the day, when I was out grabbing a drink and would head back to my desk, I'd find myself setting things down and then picking them right back up again, like ten times in a row... man... talk about a total system error!!

Lawrence White16 said:haha... what a quiz! Honestly, you explain things so well that I actually feel kind of cool knowing I deal with the same glitches too, haha!! It’s wild! Sometimes I just freeze up for maybe 10 or 15 minutes—it's like my brain turns into a total computer crash...!! I remember back in the day, when I was out grabbing a drink and would head back to my desk, I'd find myself setting things down and then picking them right back up again, like ten times in a row... man... talk about a total system error!!

Yeah, that's exactly it. 🙂
It doesn't happen all the time now. Mostly, I can manage those movements without much trouble. But occasionally, I'll move something five times in a row and put it right back where it was for absolutely no reason. It's like this overwhelming urge, some kind of force... like you aren't even in control of yourself

I read somewhere that a few hundred years ago, people thought anyone with OCD was possessed by the devil, so they'd perform exorcisms on them regularly 😉
And even as recently as the early 60s, doctors were "treating" these people with lobotomies and electroshock therapy...
I know for a fact that everything just gets worse once I start obsessing over it 😁

Someone mentioned just "chilling out," and honestly, maybe you should try being a little wild instead. Just break a few rules once in a while and see if you actually get punished; I bet you'll realize those "mistakes" don't actually matter, and the only thing that really mattered was the satisfaction of doing things perfectly in the first place. Like, take that sandwich of yours—try throwing the deli meat on all crooked and messy. You'll see the sandwich isn't any less delicious, it won't poison you, and it certainly won't give you crooked teeth. I guess all that effort to make it symmetrical was only for your own sake while you were making it.

I’m saying this from experience, because when I was a kid, I had this habit where every time I scuffed my sneakers against the floor, I’d feel like I’d somehow "damaged" them. I felt like I had to walk backward just to "fix" the scuff. It wasn't even noticeable, but it became this weird compulsion. Then one day, I realized sneakers are built to handle a little wear and tear. So, the next time it happened, I just stomped even harder in the same direction, and seeing that my shoe didn't fall apart was a total epiphany (🤣). I haven't done any of that nonsense since.

Yeah... I’ve been scrolling through the forums and noticing a lot of people seem to deal with this exact same thing! It’s almost identical to what I’m going through—but honestly? It seems like it doesn't bother them nearly as much as it does me. For me, it’s incredibly frustrating!! It feels like I'm constantly trapped in this loop where everything just feels *off*—like nothing is quite right—and then I spend all my energy trying to fix it. I even tried acting out and being a bit reckless once, just to see if letting go would help... but after a little while, I always realize I haven't actually cleared everything up, and then that nagging feeling starts eating at me again, telling me that what I'm doing isn't okay!! It’s exhausting, truly. Does anyone happen to know what a decent therapist might cost these days?