So a long time ago (about 12 years) I was diagnosed with OCD. At the same time though I was diagnosed bipolar DID and BPD as well so I ignored the OCD, BD and BPD, thinking that was far from who I am.
I'm back in therapy now and my drs are certain I have OCD, without a doubt, I guess it got bad this year because even I can see it slightly.
I went through an agorophobic stage this past year, it was bad, and during that time I started to notice some things about me that mAy now be so "normal" after all.(please don't take offense to the normal, of course OCD people are normal as well)
I noticed things like my overwhelming obsessive thoughts, repeating thoughts and I obsess constantly, I want to stop thinking about these things but the thoughts keep pushing back in.
I have a lot of things that make me feel more comfortable. I didn't recognize it as anything different until my t said it wasnt so common.
I k ow everyone is cautious when cooking raw chicken but my kitchen is a circus when I'm cooking chicken. I have to run the water the whole time so I don't have to touch the knobs, any time I touch anything that may have had raw chicken on it I wash my hands, the hand washing is where it gets unusual. I clean the kitchen after the cooking but the whole time I cook and clean the raw chicken I'm running to the kitchen to wash my hands. When I do this though I wash my hands, then grab the dish soap I just used to wash my hands, I place the soap in the sink where I proceed to wash my hands again , but this time when I'm done washing my hands I wash the bottle of dish soap too, then I wash my hands one more time. For a while I was washing, hands bottle hands bottle hands bottle on and on but eventually I decided hands bottle hands would be sufficient.
For the last two weeks my apartment has been spotless and I've been working on lining and centering things, I can't tell you how many times I walk by and adjust the picture frames to straighten and line them up, eventually I pulled out measuring tape. I've been moving furniture to straighten it out, organizing everything...
Now I'm not always like this at all, picking specks off the floor all day, constantly sweeping, scrubbing walls, organizing, straightening... It's only happened a couple times before.
It started when my father in law was supposed to come over to drop off a dresser. I cleaned all day then his arrival got pushed back a day, I was happy with that it gave me time to clean some more.
Then it got pushed back four days. During those four days I kept seeing things that needed to be cleaned, base boards, light switches, dusting, carpet. I got on my hands and knees and scrubbed the carpets with a soft bristle brush. When his parents got here the house was spotless. When they left I still got the annoying nagging "that frame isn't straight... That painting needs to be moved over a couple centimeters" thoughts and continuously clean still. I literally spend 8 hours a day every day cleaning my apartment, not including the hour before bed doing dishes, laundry, any time a piece of laundry ends up in one of the many baskets we have, I take them to the laundry room.
The cleaning isn't alwAys there, it comes in phases like everything else. I get these nagging thoughts until eventually a new nagging thought pops in and a new obsession takes over. I learned long ago I can't watch the news or politics, I go into a depressing obsession when I do that.
I have the skin picking too, so bad I do it in my sleep and have a lot of scars. I used to pull my hair out (never ate it though) but stopped years ago, now I only tug on my hair when I'm overwhelmed.
So enough about me, I was hoping someone could share their experience, do you have phases of obsessions too or do they pretty much stay the same? What are the thoughts like, do you have any "rituals", and is anyone else a slob when not in a cleaning phase? Any info on OCD or shared experiences? I don't know of anyone that I know that has OCD, what's it like for you?