- Date posted
- 5y ago
- Date posted
- 5y ago
Keep posting and share your thoughts and feelings.
- Date posted
- 5y ago
Also will look into taking the 90 minute interview with professional.
- Date posted
- 5y ago
Sounds like pretty classic OCD behavior to me! Treatment for OCD is pretty standard across all themes: CBT, ERP therapy, and mindfulness training. You can learn more here: https://ocdla.com/cognitivebehavioraltherapy Since you’re just figuring this out, I’d also recommend grabbing a book on OCD. There are tons out there to choose from but here are some recommendations: https://ocdla.com/ocdreadings Welcome to the community!
- Date posted
- 5y ago
You are not alone. All of those themes trouble me as well...
- Date posted
- 5y ago
I have EXACTLY the same contamination issues you described, also showering till feels alright and perfectionism that I now getting less. Yes, sounds like you have mild OCD. There are a couple apps or websites you can do a survey to see how you rate (kinda).
- Date posted
- 5y ago
I think you might like this book – "The Complete Guide to Overcoming OCD: (ebook bundle)" by David Veale, Rob Willson. Just $5.
- Date posted
- 5y ago
Have I got OCD? Only a trained health professional can diagnose you as suffering from OCD. The following is a screening questionnaire from the International Council on OCD. 1 Do you wash or clean a lot? 2 Do you check things a lot? 3 Is there any thought that keeps bothering you that you would like to get rid of but can’t? 4 Do your activities take a long time to finish? 5 Are you concerned with orderliness or symmetry? If you answered yes to one or more of these questions and it causes either significant distress and/or it interferes in your ability to work or study or your role as a homemaker, or in your social or family life or in relationships, then there is a significant chance that you have OCD. This test can be a bit over-sensitive to diagnosing OCD, so if you think you might have OCD, it is best to talk to a health professional and get appropriate help.
- Date posted
- 5y ago
Thank you so much for your comment. Extremely helpful. Will definitely look into the book you recommended.
- Date posted
- 5y ago
Here are some key ways in which you can lessen your OCD and improve your life. 1 Imagine how you would like to be different, in terms of how you feel and behave. Picture yourself being this way in your mind’s eye. 2 List all of your hopes, dreams and aspirations. Imagine how being utterly free from OCD would help you towards them. 3 Develop a mental image that represents your OCD when it is trying to force you to carry out a mental or behavioural ritual –a bully, a demon, a computer virus, Nazi propaganda on a radio or choose your own mental image. 4 Develop a mental image that represents defeating your OCD. 5 Find inspiration for overcoming adversity –choose a role model or metaphor that helps you to stick with progress and resist the urges to check, wash, seek reassurance, review or analyse in your mind. 6 Identify someone who you can share (and celebrate) your progress with. Help them to see that you need cheering on in your progress, NOT reassurance or debates over safety etc! 7 List all of the strategies that you employ in your mind and in your behaviour that are maintaining your OCD. View these like bad habits you are going to train yourself out of and do not respond to such urges by giving yourself reassurance or try to suppress such thoughts and urges. 8 Imagine that you have a twin, who is the same as you in every respect, but is free from OCD, and use them as your guide in changing your behaviour. 9 Test out treating your problem ‘as if’it’s a problem of worrying too much or being too cautious. The trick is to do this even though you’re not 100 per cent sure. Remember that looking for certainty is very much the problem, not the solution. 10 Find a metaphor for treating intrusive thoughts as events just passing through your mind. Traffic passing in the street or leaves on a river are just a couple of examples. The trick is to allow your mind to take care of itself, without interfering with or responding to the intrusive thoughts. The flow of thoughts in your mind should be as much left to its own devices as the blood flowing through your veins. 11 Deliberately practice refocusing your attention on to the things you can see, hear, smell and feel in the ‘real’outside world, here and now. 12 NORMALIZE your doubts, images, thoughts and impulses. This means fully accepting that your intrusive thoughts, images and doubts are normal and part of being human. 13 Embrace each time you have an intrusive doubt, image, thought or impulse as an opportunity to accept them willingly into your mind. Think of it as keeping your friends close and your enemies closer! 14 Practice assuming the best. OCD has a habit of knocking your rose-tinted spectacles off so get back to normal by assuming the best rather than the worst. 15 Listen to music that helps you to get into the frame of mind to drive your true values and aspirations straight through OCD and out the other side. 16 Focus on getting better, more than feeling better. Measure your progress in terms of your levels of distress and ability to function across the course of a couple of weeks. 17 ‘OCD loves a vacuum!’As you recover, fill the gaps in your life that your OCD might leave behind with hobbies, exercise, education, friendships, deepening relationships with loved ones or furthering your career. There’s evidence that doing so will help you keep OCD out of your life.
- Date posted
- 5y ago
https://youtu.be/pJp9vlp84Wk Check out these YouTube videos.
- Date posted
- 5y ago
Thanks for your comment! The information you provided is greatly appreciated and will not be wasted.
Related posts
- Date posted
- 24w ago
Hey, I’ve been doing some research on OCD and think I may have it. I’m not 100% sure, but I have a lot of the symptoms. I want to get myself diagnosed, but my parents won’t let me. They agree that it’s very likely that I have OCD, but they think that if I try hard enough, I can get over it. I don’t know what to do anymore or if what I have even is OCD, and I want to be somewhat sure before a I do anything. Right now, I’m a junior in high school, but freshman year was when my “OCD” was the most severe. I think I had (and still do) the symmetry/order subtype and “just right” subtype. I was obsessed with writing things neatly to a point in which I kept forcing myself to erase and rewrite things until all the letters were straight and all the graphs were neatly drawn (typing wasn’t safe either because I use Notability and felt the need to align every text box and make them all the same length). Handwriting was especially a problem in calculus A, and it got to a point in which I couldn’t keep up with the notes, and the homework was taking hours a night because I was obsessed with making my work perfect. Needless to say, I didn’t get a good grade in calculus A and didn’t build a good foundation for future math classes. This makes me really sad because I was previously really good at math and had a bright future in the subject. Eventually, I just stopped trying in calculus A, but by then, I felt burnt out, couldn’t concentrate on anything, kept putting things off, and lost the ability to properly manage my time. I think it may have escalated to executive dysfunction at that point, and it carried over to all my other classes. As someone who was previously pretty productive and good at planning, this was a huge hit on my self-esteem. I was also obsessed with symmetry. If I touched one side of my body, I had to touch the other side in the exact same place. If I was coding something, I would have to evenly distribute touch across each key on the keyboard. It felt like everything was a heatmap, and the colors had to be kept in balance at all times. I also avoided odd numbers because they were considered “asymmetrical”. I was obsessed with routine and had to complete tasks in a certain way, a certain order, and a certain amount of time. Even something as small as combing my hair for five minutes instead of six caused me extreme distress. Writing one word that “sounded off” on an English paper left me unable to keep writing until I fixed it. I had to keep the sound of my phone at a certain volume (6 normally, 10 when exercising, and 12 when cleaning, divide everything by 2 when using a computer) and had to walk a round number (any number that ends in 0) of steps a day. I kid you not when I say that some days I woke up and didn’t want to live anymore. Sophomore year, my mental health improved and I probably seemed overly perfectionistic but not to a point of concern. However, this year, the handwriting issue relapsed in all its glory during physics, and I’m not able to keep up with notes or homework. I feel the same way that I did in calculus A, and I don’t want history to repeat itself. I want to ask my teacher to let me do my homework on paper rather than the iPad (it’s easier for me to write on paper due to increased friction), but I’m scared to ask because I don’t have a formal diagnosis. I don’t know what causes my behavior. I feel like if I can’t do things perfectly, no one will like me. I’ll lose all my friends, and no boy will ever want to go out with me. I know it’s irrational. Literally no one cares what my notes look like or how long I spend on each step of my morning routine or whatever, but I constantly feel like people are judging me and will hate me the second I mess up. There are two more times in my life that I can think of when I displayed symptoms of OCD, contamination OCD when I was 9 and pure/religious/magical thinking/health concern OCD (they all just kind morphed together) when I was 11. I can go into more detail if you wish. As of now, I just want to know my behavior sounds like OCD, and if so, how to more forward. If not, I would love to know what I do have and how to treat it. Thank you so much.
- Date posted
- 21w ago
I have constantly been feeling like if I hit one arm, I have to hit the other and if I set something down and it just didn’t look right or feel right I had to do it again or I had to move it to a different spot in my room I’ve had never been a clean freak, which is mainly what I get told is OCD And I don’t know if I should even have this app. I don’t know if I actually have it. I’m constantly worried that I did something in my past that harmed others and that’s why people don’t like me or I’m constantly worried People are constantly watching me and I don’t know if that’s OCD or if I have it so please tell me I will delete this app and never think of it again if I don’t I just really wanna know
- Date posted
- 10w ago
I've never seen a therapist or been diagnosed, so I went surfing through to find this community. I've seen a lot of OCD symptoms written online. Here is what I experience that I feel may be OCD. If any of you guys agrees, please let me know. I have only ever been able to call my mom by her first name. I have never been able to not do that. She tried to make me call her mom once as a kid but it felt so wrong that I started crying. Everytime I see a wet floor sign, I say "piso mojado" out loud. I have plenty of harsh intrusive thoughts, such as committing acts of violence when I see people not using their turn signals, interrupting performers at a concert. I make myself re-press on my phone alarms 10-12 times each day in the same rythym until it feels fully set to go off. Light switches get flicked off and on, I can't stand not doing it. I have to double-check everything and make myself re-look through the same drawers at work for hours. I love to write, but I never get far because I need approval from others. My head is also always filled to the brim with thoughts which has made writing and things like memory a lot harder. I can't use spoons. I can only use forks for almost everything. I can't stand them. That's all I can think of for right now. Please let me know what you guys think. Thanks!
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