- Date posted
- 4y
- Date posted
- 4y
You're in the best place to work on this... welcome to the Just-Right fam! Here's your swag bag 🛍 💭📐📊⚖️🌌 I'll have to come back to commiserate, because I was a bakery mgr for years, did a culinary degree, the whole shebang. So I 1000% see how you got where you are - it's a legit occupational hazard, and definitely not just you.
- Date posted
- 4y
(Also, this is my public accountability post to not engage in reassurance, because I just got knocked flat with the urge to really go there... extremely rare for me so I clearly have unfinished business around this myself 🥯)
- Date posted
- 4y
Sorry in advance for long posts here... I worked on improving my nearly identical situation for a long time, and a lot of quirks weirdly specific to food&bev aren't OCD but can readily evolve into it over time if circumstances are right. This also means it can be really hard for other people to relate to, and a challenge to improve when your environment can be triggering by default.
- Date posted
- 4y
Hmm. I'll go with the "occupational hazard" part I mentioned first, because triggers and external validation are both baked into the job (hurr hurr) in a way that is much more difficult to avoid than in other kinds of work. I say this because it can make sticking with positive changes more difficult and frustrating at first, but you'll also have more opportunities to practice so over time it will even out. Triggers: you already covered that part. Copious physical objects to manage, time/date routines, and being forced to navigate social situations around them too. External reinforcements: Uhhh sanitation/food safety protocols? People can't really survive in F&B with contamination OCD, so the issue here is we're explicitly taught precision as a best practice (even in just the throwaway crash course for food safety permits, let alone more serious training). Cold holding, hot holding, rotating stored items properly, good lord all the labeling rules, and of course imperative to heat XYZ to at least 160 (if you're Canadian, sorry I don't know what your magic number is). And having it drilled into you that the consequences of not following these are major things like people getting sick or even landing in the hospital, black marks from the health department, or even the business being temporarily shuttered (so, livelihood of everyone working there)... this is a big reason most not-so-serious people wash out of production work, and the rest of us left standing are often a little more... touchy about Enforcing. Efficiency: speed matters because "you're not getting paid to stand here". Burning/overproofing things because you had to spend time hunting for equipment = wasted product, time, $$. Economy of movement is important for speed too, but even more for health/ergonomic reasons, since you're on your feet doing repetitive strenuous movement all day. Oh, and don't forget to lift with your knees, not your back - you don't have time to call out sick because you hurt something, and who would cover your shifts anyway? I could go on, but all this is to say that people who settle into production jobs have continuous external validation for walking right up to the line of being obsessive in all kinds of different areas. In places with several full-time people in the back, it's pretty common for each person to have their "thing" that they care about more than everyone else, so it... distributes the load of protocols/routines that could easily become compulsive responses. If you're the only/primary person in the back (or everyone else is already burned out), you have to care about and Enforce all this shit more than almost everyone else in the store... so unfortunately, becoming an asshole is also an occupational hazard. Not an excuse, mind you, but you can see how it can be a slippery slope when you're on your own (or feel like it).
- Date posted
- 4y
@JoyousEffort (jfc I should just write an ebook haha)
- Date posted
- 4y
@JoyousEffort Not really related but joke's on me, I guess... I just realized that the mantra drilled into us at my first job is pretty fertile OCD soil. "You got time to lean, you got time to clean 🤨" sigh 😅
- Date posted
- 4y
I couldn’t appreciate all this more. It feels incredible to know I’m not alone. And even more incredible that you relate almost so identically to me with this issue.
Related posts
- Date posted
- 21w
I've been having a really tough time lately with a recent workplace interaction that occurrd today, and my mind just keeps replaying the events over and over. It feels like an endless loop, and I'm finding it incredibly hard to let go. I'm trying to figure out if this intense replaying is more about my OCD, or if it's a typical reaction to a stressful situation that's being amplified by my OCD tendencies. The specific details of the incident involve a colleague engaging in a racially insensitive discussion that I tried to disengage from. Despite my attempts to steer the conversation away and remove myself, the situation escalated with direct confrontation and accusations. This led to significant emotional distress for me. Later in the day, the same colleague misunderstood another conversation, making baseless accusations and publicly confronting me in a very aggressive way. I kept quiet throughout, just a bit of muttering. The emotional toll of these interactions has been immense. Now, my mind is stuck. I can't seem to stop dwelling on every word, every gesture, and every imagined alternative outcome. Hoping I'm not viewed as the "angry black woman" which is such an affair narrative why can't I state grievances of racism, without this narrative. * how do you manage the relentless replaying of stressful workplace interactions? What are your go-to coping mechanisms when your mind gets "stuck" on these loops? * Have you found any specific strategies helpful for navigating interpersonal conflicts at work when your OCD makes it difficult to process and move past them? * When you're feeling emotionally vulnerable due to work stress, what helps you prevent these situations from turning into prolonged rumination cycles? Any advice or shared experiences would be incredibly helpful. I'll be so grateful for any assistance. I just feel like I'm not good at life.
- Date posted
- 20w
Hey, so idk if I have ocd, I would like to think I’m a very self aware person but I don’t wanna self diagnose at all, lmk what you guys think. So pretty much my whole life since I was young I remember having irrational fears im sure it was all trauma induced but when I was a kid I thought my father was poisoning me until I asked him, he started crying and was so shocked that I could ever even think that, my parents broke up when I was legit fresh out the womb, mom worked two jobs and disciplined me, dad let me do whatever on the weekends and got me snacks so I was obsessed with him so obsessed that it was mandatory for me to kiss his picture 20x everyday before school. Growing up I always felt followed by cameras or like someone out there was recording me waiting for me to do something embarrassing to expose me in front of the whole world and my life was over 🤣🤣 I thought my abusive ex bf was stalking me through my I phone camera after we broke up and it would truly stress me out, it made me believe that it was the reason he never reached out again bc I probably looked ugly in the camera he was stalking me through. If I fall out with a friend Ill over analyze everything to see if I did anything wrong and god forbid while I’m self reflecting I realize I did something wrong I feel like an evil person, verbatim the people I fall out with is bc they’ve done me wrong in some way and it has to b something hurtful or repeated mistakes for me to really stay away for good, so I’ll beat myself up for making mistakes with another person who’s made the same amount of mistakes if not more and in most cases I always fall short, and this when I question if it’s ocd or I’m just to self aware and see the ugly in me bc I’m not perfect and it’s just makes me feel so unsettled but again that’s a normal feeling and the next step is to forgive yourself and do better moving forward, not obsess over it like your trying to convince yourself you’re a good person. I’m also hot tempered and will say hurtful things when I’m mad I’m definitely a crash out in the way, you push my bottoms way too many times and I will shred you, and I’ll say things ik will hurt you and that’s just so low, then the anger goes away and I have to face the guilt, which makes my “ocd” 100x worse, it almost feels like I have to do everything right to not trigger it yet again I don’t have the self control to do it all right, I actually have a lot bpd tendencies again not diagnosing but I’m just trying to understand my brain. I worry about dying, getting a terminal illness. uti turning into kidney infection then into cancer kind of thing, knowing that life in general can b tragic is so scary to me, like what will be my story? What will be my life experience?. I believe that people see right through me and discuss it amongst each other, I always tell myself I am not that important but I can’t seem to shake it off sometimes. When I would break up with my ex I would have pre written paragraphs ready to b send if he ever decided to reach back and I would do this to make sure I didn’t forget a single thought, that every point i felt I need to prove was there, and that bothers me bc do I want win an argument or fix the issue. All of these feelings make me feel so pathetic and embarrassed people move on with their lives and I’m still stuck on something that happened 3 yrs ago. Then I’ll get manic get a tattoo, change my hair, go out clubbing do what I can to b the sexy young girl that I am and it helps in the moment but it worsens my mental after the euphoria is gone. I’m currently staying home, not going out, have only 1 friend so I feel like ocd progressively got worse now, I don’t remember it getting this bad in a while. lmk what you guys think don’t judge or think I’m embarrassing I’m actually so cool and if have to convince you I’m cool I will LMFAOO no but fr help
- Date posted
- 20w
Hello, I’m new to this app. I’ve always had an anxious brain, and I’ve had coping mechanisms for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, from as early as I could spell, until I was probably early teens, I would constantly write words in my head along to the beat of music. It’s such a vivid memory because I never stopped doing it. The word had to perfectly match up to the lyric and I loved that it kept my brain busy. I grew out of that, but felt like good context. My anxiety increased drastically around ages 17-19, and I began therapy. I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety and panic disorder, due to having a panic attack nearly every day at that time. I overcame that as well, and now the panic attacks are every now and then, but the anxiety is constant, and some recent symptoms have led me to believe I might have some form of OCD. Maybe not. I’m trying to understand myself and get better so I joined this app to make sense of things. Lately I’ve been having really intense intrusive thoughts. I’m really embarassed and they make me feel like a bad person. Thoughts pop in my head seemingly out of nowhere. It will be an image of me harming myself or someone else in a really bad way. (Trigger warning) for example the other day I couldn’t shake the image of me putting a knife through my own forehead, although it’s not something I want to do. Or I’ll imagine someone killing me. I imagine my loved ones dying often. The thoughts feel so out of my control it’s insane. I hate them. Another persistent issue that isn’t as new is replaying social scenarios. I’m a hairstylist so this one is difficult since I meet a bunch of new people every day. I obsess over how I act and if people like me. I will impulsively say things all the time and they will haunt me for weeks. I question even my closest friends and family who show their love. I find myself so angry and numb and like I have so much built up emotion and a busy mind always. While doing my job I spiral really badly if any little thing goes wrong and it’s embarassing. I know there’s more but I can’t think of it now. I just want to feel better and like I’m not constantly battling my mind.
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