I Want My OCD

I've been hearing a lot about obsessive-compulsive disorder lately. People think it's funny. It actually is very funny, but some folks are missing the mark. There is a shocking lack of education about what disorders of the mind truly entail - what a mentally ill person experiences in a day that makes his or her life just a touch more hilarious than everybody else's. For instance:

Wrong: "I cleaned my house all day today. I was TO-tally OCD! Ha ha!"

Let's look at the desk nook of somebody who has a clinical diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder and see how clean it is. Let's consider how dearly that person's husband wishes OCD meant a person spends all day cleaning the house.

Desk nook, post- vigorous decluttering. Sad. Also note absence of hand sanitizer.

Also wrong: "I hate it when pictures don't hang straight on the wall! I'm sooo OCD!"

This is what a real symmetry compulsion might look like:

- The OCD person, upon stubbing a toe, must stub the other toe so that they tingle equally.
- The OCD person with a physical asymmetry stares at it with an anxious preoccupation. The OCD person becomes distressed when forced to look at Owen Wilson or Alfred Molina.

There is an unacceptable speck in one of these eyeballs. You might have OCD if you spotted it and now you need to wash your hands.


Not acceptable. Not acceptable at all.

- The OCD person who hears only ascending scales played on the piano may experience constricted breathing because what went up has not come back down. People do not understand Newton.

Wrong as well: "I have to count things like 3 times! Could I be any more OCD?!"

Counting is, of course, essential, but it is not about double-checking the numbers. It is a hallowed ritual. A thing not counted is not a thing at all. Consider, for example:

Counting letters in words and words in sentences is an important pastime. The number of letters in a name might be particularly significant for the OCD person. Symmetry of first and last (6 and 6 letters), or an artistic just-off symmetrical (5 and 7), or an arrangement that can be counted in multiples (3 and 6 letters) are all pleasing. Sadly, an OCD person who grew up with the charming 5+7=lucky 12 configuration might one day have to change to a bumpy binomial last name and live forever more with the bitter horror of 5+2+4=11. There is no way to count that. No way in hell or on earth.

Walla Walla Washington has a pleasing configuration of 5+5+10. Nice for counting, nice for symmetry, and alliterative to boot. Fabulous.

The realm of obsessions is verdant but often neglected territory among those who claim that they are sooo OCD. Perhaps this is because obsessions are less obvious to third parties and as such are unknown to poseurs.


Wrong about obsessions:
- Obsession means spending really a lot of time thinking about something compelling.
- Obsession means spending really a lot of time doing something.


What true obsessions might actually entail:
- The OCD person has involuntary morbid visions of his own death, perhaps in a fiery car crash or by falling down the stairs. This may be a constant distraction for the OCD person due to the preponderance of freeways and stairwells in the world.

You might have OCD if you see this every time you start your car.

- The OCD person experiences unbearable anxiety, panic or rage when his moral or ideological paradigm is disrupted. The OCD person might be tempted to tear the arm off somebody who invents spurious religious dogma, like that idiot who won't let him use a pay phone on Sunday because it's 'violating the Sabbath'.

The pay phone bit is a true story. The OCD person had to be physically separated from the Super-Sabbath monger for no less than 2 hours.

- The OCD person vividly remembers every snub and slight and is able to truly, madly, deeply hate people. The OCD person may or may not be discreet about these feelings. Do not cross the OCD person.

Maybe all these cleaning, straightening, re-counting people are drawing on pop culture (the source of all truth and wisdom) to legitimize their self-diagnoses. Be warned that "As Good As It Gets" is not the be-all and end-all of endearing representations of OCD in pop culture. David Sedaris is the supreme comic voice of severe OCD. Aspiring OCD people ought to give Naked a read. Then we'll see if they still think they're TO-tally OCD.