OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Behavior) according to an OCD sufferer

Washing hands can be one of the many rituals
of the person with OCD.

I was anxious since I was born. But that anxiety didn’t turn into full blown OCD until I was about 8 years old. Boy, was that a difficult time!

So you’ve probably heard about OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Behavior), right? Those three letters seem to be everywhere! But I also think there is a lot of misinformation about that disorder. Let’s get a few things cleared up before I go on to bore you with my story and how it affected my childhood and life in general:

• A perfectionist does not necessarily have OCD
• Just because you like to be clean and are meticulous about it, doesn’t mean you have OCD
• Being anal doesn’t mean you have OCD. That just means you’re a jerk. 
• Being picky and particular about somethings doesn’t mean you have OCD. 

I feel the need to clarify these things because, nowadays, I hear tons of people saying: “Oh my gosh! He’s sooo OCD!”, when in reality that person is just being a jerk or is a very clean person, who knows? There’s a fine line between the two...

OCD involves something more dramatic, and excuse me for saying this, but OCD also involves a little bit - or a lot - of craziness. I don’t mean to call those with OCD crazy. Far from it! I myself went through it, and on stressful occasions I still revert to some of those behaviors.

When I say crazy, I mean that even the person with OCD knows these behaviors are wrong and off. He knows that OCD looks crazy, and that the thoughts going on in his head don’t really make sense. They don’t even make sense to him! But still, like an addiction, the OCD person goes back to perform the rituals.

Let me give you an example of an OCD thought:

Makes sense? NO!! What does washing hands have to do with car accidents? Nothing, but yet the OCD mind makes a connection to it and it leads the person to wrongly believe that he can have control over the uncontrollable. 

And you know what the worst part is? The OCD person knows how stupid this sounds. They do! But we still have to go back to wash our hands just in case there’s a little bit of truth to that idiotic thought. And every time we do that, the OCD grows stronger...

Some people don’t understand why you have to do things that you know make no sense. Those don’t have OCD. The disorder becomes of your life, and you know have to listen, or else something terrible might happen.

It’s probably not a good comparison, but it could be like the child who is molested. The molester tells the child: “Don’t tell mom and dad or something bad will happen.”
So the child continues with the abuse, even though he hates and abhors it, in the hopes that nothing bad will ever happen to mom and dad. 

That’s OCD. You do the things it tells you to do because you’re afraid of what might happen if you don’t. And even though it’s all in your head, it feels just as real.