I agree with the below - as someone not involved in the situation looking at it objectively, this is all fear and illogical and most definitely OCD. A quick story from my life.....I graduated from college over 20 years ago. For our senior project we had to list how many hours we spent (on average) doing work related to the overall team (we were building a hybrid electric vehicle). I think we were supposed to spend 4 hours a week on average, and I had calculated something like 3.2 hours. We had to turn in our time sheets a little bit prior to the end of the semster, and I wrote something along the lines of "I have averaged over 3 hours per week and will be closer to 4 by the end of the semester." I think by the end I averaged something like 3.4 hours, and was terribly guilt ridden. Guilty because my statement was unclear. Would the phrase "closer to 4" be interpreted as above 3.5, as in closer to 4 than 3, or would it be interpreted as "I raised the average from 3.2 to something higher, which would make it closer to 4." If it was the former, then I felt I would have deceived my teachers.
Of course, nothing ever came of it....no one on the team went to the professor and questioned my time averages (which by the way, were majorly undervalued anyhow b/c I obsessed on cutting time out if I felt I wasn't directly "researching."
I actually wrote a book about my life with OCD and what God has taught me through it all. Here is a snippet - another similar experience:
"The school had recommended that we read for a certain amount of time each day. When we returned home, I made my way to my brother’s room and turned on the lamp before I lay down on his couch and started reading, loving the suspense and problem-solving on each page. But then, the cycle began.
“Shoot, I forgot to check exactly what time it was when I started reading. It’s 11:05 a.m. right now, and I’ve probably been reading for five minutes. So, I’ll assume it was 11 o’clock when I began.” I looked down and started reading again. I got about one or two sentences farther and looked at the clock again. “It’s 11:06 a.m. already! So, it was probably not 11 o’clock when I started. It was likely 11:01 a.m.—maybe even 11:02 a.m. I’ll just use 11:02 a.m. to be safe. No, if I want to be totally safe, I should use 11:03 a.m. That will account for the interruptions I just had. I started
reading at 11:03 a.m.”
I looked down to start reading again, thrilled by every word on the page.
“Mike, Marie is making a snack; do you want one?” my brother yelled from downstairs.
“Sure!” I yelled back.
“Like what?” he asked. I thought about it for a minute and then gave him a response. Then, I got upand quickly went to the bathroom before making my way back to the couch.
“Great, I wasn’t reading for the time that John asked the question. And I thought about what I wanted for a minute, plus the bathroom break.”
I looked back at the clock; it read 11:17 a.m.
“Well, I started at 11:03 a.m., but I need to revise that to at least 11:04 a.m., so that when I finish reading, I can just subtract the time from the start time and know how long I’ve read. That’s way easier than subtracting the end time from the beginning time, and then trying to subtract out all the breaks. But wait, 11:04 a.m. could easily be cheating. What if the conversation with John plus the bathroom break took three minutes? To be safe I should up the start time to 11:05 a.m. No, it could have taken longer. To be absolutely sure that I’m not padding my reading time, I will up the start time to 11:09 a.m. That allows five full minutes for the conversation with John and the bathroom break.”
I felt completely dejected as I returned to my reading. I knew deep down that my break took a minute tops. But I had already shaved off three minutes from the start, plus another five.
I knew I was robbing myself of time I should have accounted for, but I didn’t have any other option. The alternative was to use an earlier start time, but the idea of being guilt-ridden for potentially lying about my time was nowhere near worth it.
I eventually stopped counting altogether seeing that we didn’t have to officially report anything to the school."
The title of my book is "Waging War Against OCD - A Christian Approach to Victory." You can see more details at WagingWarAgainstOCD.com - full disclosure - it is wrotten from a Christian perspective.
