#Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

[texaschainsawmascara]

[wafflclaws]

"I like pathetic men!" Until I'm a big crybaby. Until I'm insecure & controlling. Until I'm needy. Until I wait for you like a dog, every time you're busy. Until I constantly want your attention or to be near you.

Until the thought of you even being away from me, causes me to breakdown and lose it.

[smoov-criminal]

i was recently diagnosed with OCD, and we seriously need to change the way we talk about the disorder. the average time between onset of OCD symptoms and beginning to receive treatment is over a decade, and i suspect at least part of the reason why is the way we talk about OCD societally, or rather the way we dont talk about it.

no, OCD isn't the "clean freak" disorder. you dont have to check that your door is locked 17 times in order to have OCD. the actual symptoms of OCD are as varied as any other disorder, but it seems that only the most palatable or easily digestible symptoms get talked about regularly.

no one wants to talk about mental compulsions (ex: ruminating on past and potential future situations with "what ifs"), and how they can be even more severe or disruptive than visible ones.

no one wants to talk about the extremely distressing intrusive thoughts that can happen, let alone the fact that intrusive thoughts dont start and stop with violence. yes, this includes bigotry and pedophilia, and no, people with these thoughts are not bigots or pedophiles. intrusive thoughts play on your fears, not who you actually are.

the reason no one with OCD is talking about their symptoms and experiences is because we're demonized for having them and harassed for expressing them, and that shit is unacceptable. we fucking deserve safe places to discuss our symptoms without fear of it being misconstrued and used against us (or just straight up being verbally assaulted, or worse). thought crime isnt fucking real. your thoughts do not make you a good or bad person, your actions do.

[awfullybigwardrobe44]

Important distinction for OCD that no one seems to realize:

If you are enjoying the obsession/obsessive topic, it’s not OCD.

I have spent hours upon hours obsessing about cosplay projects and having the time of my life. This was NOT my OCD.

I have had times of my life where all I could focus on was a fun school project. It was so fascinating and it was all I wanted to think about. This was also NOT my OCD.

OCD comes with distress/anxiety/dread. Not just “I feel like I can’t focus until my desk is tidy,” either—it’s usually excessive/unreasonable dread and sometimes panic, depending on the severity of your OCD.

OCD isn’t fun. OCD isn’t enjoyable. If there’s any sort of enjoyable factor to your “OCD,” it’s not OCD.

Doing compulsions brings RELIEF sometimes, which is why we do compulsions in the first place (and get stuck in cycles of doing them). But that’s the only positive feeling in the OCD experience, and it’s also one that you ultimately have to deny yourself in order to find lasting healing.

[idolizesuicide]

I only like being alone, when it's with you. Us together in silence, where the rest of the world can't reach us. Just us, together, only us.

[wheelie-sick]

people seem to forget that even people with contamination OCD are often not clean....? and in fact their OCD can make things dirtier....?

it seems counter intuitive but contamination OCD can result in really, really dirty environments.

hi I have contamination OCD and one of my biggest obsessions is mold! I go to extreme lengths to avoid mold! and I just spent an hour cleaning real, not imagined mold out of my bathroom! how did that happen!? how did it get that bad!? it's really simple! my OCD made me avoid mold which meant avoid cleaning the mold which meant the mold got worse which made it harder to clean the mold.

the increasing distress at the mold meant very little until it got me to the point of breakdown where the mold was finally bad enough that my avoidance of it was a weaker force than my need to get rid of it.

I do this a lot.

I bounce between obsessively getting rid of anything that could possibly be moldy or get moldy in the next week and avoiding disgustingly moldy food because I can't touch it. usually I'm doing both. the mold causes me distress but the distress of dealing with it once it's there is greater than the distress of having it there. I solve this by obsessively preventing mold to the point of self destruction.

I have a completely disrupted relationship with food and my environment that makes things infinitely worse for myself because I'm constantly operating in both directions. my environment gets worse while I further restrict myself and destroy myself to try to prevent it but I can't just.... fix my environment? because that would involve interacting with mold.

I live in mold hell 🙃 help

[joe-spookyy]

rip scott summers you would have loved an obsessive compulsive disorder diagnosis

[me-you-and-my-medication]

How it feels when I'm stuck ruminating

[autopsyfreak]

‘letting my intrusive thoughts win’

shut the fuck up.

you’re referring to impulsive thoughts, intrusive thoughts are undesirable and often horrific for the person experiencing them. you dyeing your hair randomly is not an intrusive thought.

if i let my intrusive thoughts dictate my actions, id be in jail for a long fucking time.

[joint-hurty-juice]

Life-changing OCD hack is learning that you can literally call poison control to check if you fucked up and took medications wrong in a way that could kill you instead of having a panic attack while reading reddit and quora threads for an hour. They won't even be mad at you. Like obviously don't do it every day or something but genuinely you can do this if you need to

[somesecretpie]

Greetings bugs and worms!

This comic is a little different than what I usually do but I worked real hard on it—Maybe I'll make more infographic stuff in the future this ended up being fun. Hope you learned something new :)

If you are still curious and want to learn more about OCD, you can visit the International OCD Foundation's website. I also recommend this amazing TED ED video "Starving The Monster", which was my first introduction to the disorder and this video by John Green about his own experience with OCD.

The IOCDF's website can also help you find support groups, therapy, and has lots of online guides and resources as well if you or a loved one is struggling with the disorder. It is very comprehensive!

Reblog to teach your followers about OCD

(But also not reblogging doesn't make you evil, silly goose)

[housegoblin]

let's get burgers 48 "air conditioner"

[wafflclaws]

Tell me that you love me with a knife to your throat. Because you are so god damn pathetic & you're nothing without me. Just like how I'm nothing without you; nothing if I'm not yours.

[smoov-criminal]

OCD symptom i struggle with but don't see talked about a lot: inability to trust your own memory and/or perception.

as an example: i put my headphones in my bag. i say im sure they're in my bag, but what if i imagined putting them in my bag? i have to check, so i stick my hand inside and grab them. but then i have to check *again* because what if i just so happened to have another object shaped and sized exactly like my headphones that i just forgot about? so i have to pull them out of my bag and look directly at them to fully confirm they were in my bag

this is a fairly benign example but this also happens with other worse scenarios for me and it's. not fun

[goodluckdetective]

Look, this is what moral OCD is like for me:

I walk past a piece of paper. I don’t pick it up because I had a long day at work and it’s very cold outside. This then becomes my internal monologue:

I didn’t pick up that piece of paper, I should have. Don’t I care about the environment? It’s not my trash, I shouldn’t have to pick it up. But also that’s how these things happen right? We place the blame on others as our environment degrades. It was just a piece of paper, it’s not like it can do that much damage. But also how do I know: I’m not an environmental expert. Maybe stray paper scraps are killing the frogs. You’re literally killing the frogs. You should look up how many frogs die a year so you know how shitty you are-No stop it.

I care about the environment, and I recycle and I joined green activism movements but is that enough? I could be doing more. I should be doing more. I should donate my entire check to charity. But isn’t it self serving to think that my one check could help that much? Do I really think I’m that important, how self entitled and-no stop it, reset! You are obsessing and if you fall for it, you will not eat dinner. Let it go.

Okay it’s just a piece of paper. It’s okay you skipped it this once: it could have had something dangerous on it. Yeah that makes sense. But also, that means I’m putting my own safety over trying to help the environment, which is very selfish of me. I’m just one shitty person: god how could I be so self absorbed. I should have picked up the piece of paper. I’m so selfish, and shitty and-no, no, stop it! This is not helpful. It’s fine.

It’s been a long day and I’m cold, that’s not a crime- no that’s being selfish again, you’re making excuses. You’re just a lazy piece of shit who doesn’t care about others, and selfish and God the fact you’re thinking this much about one piece of paper shows how selfish you are, you care more about if you’re a good person than anything else, you’re a piece of shit, you’re a piece of shit, YOU’RE A PIECE OF SHIT.

I get home and open up Tumblr. The first post I see says “if you don’t reblog this post about the environment you’re as complicit as an oil billionaire.” I close my computer and resign myself to looking up the state frog populations until I go to bed.

I don’t eat dinner.

The amount of frogs that die a year is somewhere from 200 million to over 1 billion.