If humanity is an impurity, "pure o" is a terribly apt name.

...if you don't experience OCD you may not understand what I mean by that. If you do, but not "Pure O"
[which sounds like some kind of new age health and fitness network geared toward women, a solid line up including shows about sexual health and being in touch with one's sexual being, of course...]
…then I don't actually know if you get what I mean, I only occasionally experience OCD manifested as physicals rituals or scrupulous behaviors- they are not core characteristics and there fore do not actually debilitated me. It's like they are the dish and the spoon at the very end, taking advantage of what is already a sort of ridiculous nursery rhyme. They tend to appear when things are already chaotic and make little sense.

I don't know about anyone else, but for me that seems fitting. I *do* rely on routine and familiarity quite a bit- predictability. Like the soothing rhythm of a nursery rhyme. That doesn't mean any of it actually makes sense.

Which tends to shock people.
You have OCD? Why does your room look like you've had the Visigoths for a rager?
...Because not everyone with a diagnosis is a carbon copy of Monk...

But I digress.
Part of my pure o mishmash actually involves, well... It's hard to explain.
But the twisted logic that seems to make sense at the time [wait, no it doesn't, but I still abide by it anyway- whaaa?]
is that I'm not actually supposed to talk about what is going on.

Everything I do is wrong.
Everything I say is wrong.
Everything I think.
Everything I feel.

I react? Wrong. Don't react? Wrong.
There is a right way for everything. And it is not simply that people are judging me, though that is somehow part of it.it is almost as though there is an exact, precise, absolute correct way of doing everything. Everything that a person does. Breathing to blinking to merging on the highway to heart surgery to where you place the pen after signing in at the doctors office.

To do these things any other way goes against the pulse of the universe.
I don't actually have this go through my head specifically, but when the ocd gets very bad, that is how I feel. I feel constantly trapped- maybe similar to someone who has discovered their own fate.

Do you get on that bus or take a cab?
Are things going to happen no matter what you do? You drive yourself mad second guessing the path to your ultimate future.

I imagine it may be similar.

Whatever I do when in this headspace, it is wrong. I try to fix it, but that was wrong too. MAybe more wrong. So I feel worse. But am I supposed to do nothing or try to compensate for all this "wrong" hanging over my head?
I start to have this cycle of embarrassment fueled by a feeling of failure, overlaid with growing fear... that I can't get out of this, people are getting angry with me... I can't tell them what is going on, though. To do so would be demanding of too much attention.
I kind of just start alienating myself out of reflex and eventually I quite literally start to panic and act sort of erratically, which obviously makes everything worse.

Trying to talk about this to someone who doesn't experience it is really difficult.
Describe the color red to a blind man.
The sound of your voice to someone who has never heard...

This is so long. And self indulgent.
I feel if I can start to talk about it, find some people to commiserate with... maybe it's a start.

I don't really no.

When it takes over, I don't know where I go.
I feel stripped of who I am and out of control.
Like a really sick mobius strip: I'm following the fear and its following me, but I can't see it somehow.

Anyway.
Melodrama.
Thanks so much.

Thanks for sharing and sorry you struggle with this. I happened to find this when I was researching Pure O. It gives a free book.

Pure O OCD - The Best OCD Advice I Have Ever Seen

Thank you for the link, lynn P. I found this as well, it is a .pdf. I read it myself and feel it really explains things better than most:

Understanding Pure-O [OCD UK]

Thanks again
Josie

Cute dog!!!WElcome!!!

I don't have pure O, but I know exactly what you are talking about. The whole thought process...the feelings...everything. I am intimately familiar with it but have never seen it on here. Thank you very much for sharing it, it has made me feel a lot less alone in my abnormalities. I hope you keep posting all your questions and thoughts and welcome to P.C.

Lol... sorry... just... are you me, with boobs? Because seriously, most of what I felt brave enough to read, sounded exactly like me, only I don't have the aforementioned boobs, so I assume ... xD

You're entirely welcome to PM me, if you want someone to talk to who'll appreciate this stuff.

Also, well done for opening up like that; I really struggled when I first came out about "Pure O". I'm starting therapy for my OCD on the 22nd. I'm terrified... just blocking it all out and pretending it's not happening.

"Some people have an Angel on one shoulder, and the Devil on the other, but for people like me, the Devil is the only companion."

Tell me about it. I know just how [beep] frustrating it is to try and explain this kinda stuff to someone completely .. ähm.. "unknowing" of it. My brother, bless him, he tries to understand, but I know he struggles a lot. To be fair, though, this is very complex stuff - we can be so creative, enough to create many intricate webs of madness inside our minds.

I've read that people like us are often very creative (and often clever... as arrogant as that might sound... totally not paranoid about that *lies*) so I'm betting you're creative in some way, perhaps into art of sorts.

As it stands, I've spent far too much time on this post, editing it, trying to make it "right", so that I'm saying it in a correct manner, so as not to sound one way, but to sound another, but not like that, but like this, but not quite too much like this, because this might be wrong, or it could be right.. so maybe I have to keep it the original way before I deleted that sentence that seemed like it was this.. but then.. and. then.. and .. and.. and.. so it ****ing continues. Also, "perfectionism" is a problem with me, particularly with what I say/type to someone, so I often take longer than most people. I've seen me spending probably hours on one post, whether it's grammar, overall wording choices, moving stuff around, amending, or God knows what else. It's not too bad if I know the person very well (best mate, for example) but it's still very much there, and it can always go bad if OCD spikes.

I feel like I've typed too much out, so I'm currently paranoid about that. I feel like I've said too much, as in, opened up too much, so I'm paranoid about that. I'm paranoid that someone's going to use this against me, or the mere possibility of it, is enough to unnerve me. I'm paranoid about my English, even though I know, bar the parts that I've not cared to improve, my English is still near-perfect. I'm paranoid that last sentence made me sound like I love myself. I'm paranoid that I've said I'm paranoid about too many things. I'm paranoid that I'm "hijacking" the thread. It really, really does go on, and on, and on, but I don't need to tell you that, do I? You know all about it, I expect.

I've said all this so that you know you're not alone - I think the most important thing for people like us, first and foremost, is to know we're not alone.

OK, I think that's coming up to half an hour on thsi post, I need to let go .... ergh... needs to be perfect... so many errors.. like that cluster of full-stops that's 4 and not 3... ¬_¬ Gets worse when I'm tired. I'm just gonna close the page. If anything, this'll make you laugh, or feel less alone, so woo.

Akuma out.

*makes one more change, then goes*

Akuma:

I really really really [so many more "reallys", it feels like right now that it's useless to try to write all them out here]… needed your response this evening.
In particular this bit:
I do feel alone, quite often because part of the Pure OCD Vortex of Doom kind of makes one feel as though they may in fact know Tyler Durden personally:

1st RULE: You do not talk about PURE O.
2nd RULE: You DO NOT talk about PURE O.

Yes. And I'm not trying to make a late entry into the Crazy Olympics here, but I carry more than one diagnosis. In my experience, the complexity versus "that's not a big deal" reaction ratio is ridiculous in comparison to the other DXs that I have personal experience in discussing with other people.

You get more "so distract yourself" or "get a hobby", than "wow that must be awful and torturous and miserable and alienating and frightening". You even get "stop being such an attention *****" a lot.

Which are all things that you may have been afraid of in the first place.

I've written about compartmentalizing elsewhere, a little bit here. It's how I go day to day for the most part. It's totally messed up.

I relate a lot to what you wrote in the rest of your post. But yeah, writing too much.

Much appreciated. I'll keep it in the back of my mind.
Thanks again.
-Josie

To both JosieGirl and Akuma, wow - thanks for posting what you guys have, talk about feeling alone and then finding others who have some inkling/experience of the type of thing that goes on inside my head, it's so good (not so good that any of us know what this all means, just good that at last someone somewhere understands, and can articulate it too.)

Snap snap snap to the having to get it all perfectly correct, or rather, knowing that there is some universal standard of correctness that everyone else knows, but that I am never able to attain - damned if you do damned if you don't but magnified a zillion times. Throw in feeling that I'm going to be judged condemned and punished for getting it wrong (which naturally, it's ALWAYS wrong) and that's my permanent state.

For me it stemmed from full blown paranoia, but has now after several decades 'mellowed' into what I have only recently recognized as obsessiveness based on extreme anxiety - and the notion of Pure O fits very well. No obvious compulsions for me, but a certain ritualistic bent to my ways of coping with the permanent state of anxiety.

I could go on and on about the different aspects of your set ups you describe, but, well, you've already described the fears on that front...

Thanks so much for posting this and for the links

LL

It sounds like it might be somewhat helpful; I'm glad.
The idea was kind of... the more I can get myself to talk about it in any way, the easier it will be to talk about it and push through that wall that says im not "allowed" to... Which is, I think, a common enough affliction that it can often stop individuals from recognizing that there are others who experience similar things [as is mentioned in the PDF, I think]

I'm glad it's positive for you to see others share about it.