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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to think that claiming you have 'a bit of OCD' is not on?

164 replies

kickingking · 05/08/2011 21:26

I have noticed that quite a lot of people have begun to say they think they have 'a bit of OCD' because they are very tidy or particular about something.

Like, "I have to have all my towels hung up just so in the bathroom, I'm sure I must be a bit OCD."
or "All my kids' plastic toy boxes have to be the same colour or it would send me mad - I must have OCD."
or "I'm a bit OCD about folding my jumpers up properly before I put them in my drawers."

I have become convinced that this is a form of women stealth-boasting about how clean and tidy they keep their house.

I have no experience personally of OCD, but I imagine if you really had OCD, it could make your life a bit of a misery.

AIBU to think that claiming you have 'a little bit of OCD' undermines the difficulties faced by those who really do have the condtion, and is just pathetic way to show off about your housekeeping skills?

OP posts:
Laquitar · 05/08/2011 22:01

kicking it is more than good housekeeping Sad it ruins your holidays, your life, even a bbq invitation is problem.

girliefriend · 05/08/2011 22:11

I've used that term before to describe the fact that I am a real 'checker' I have to check doors are locked, gas is off, windows are shut - religiously everytime I leave the house!!! But maybe that is normal?!! Confused

MoominsAreScary · 05/08/2011 22:13

It is thought that OCD can be linked to certain personality traits for example, anxiety, a person who worries about the future, being unable to tolerate uncertainty to name a few. There are different types of OCD and different degrees of severity.

People suffering from OCD are often plagued with intrusive or obsessive thoughts. The most common are concerning fear of germs / dirt or obsessions with symmetry or numbers

Alot of my family suffer from OCD in various degrees, my cousin is severe, me my nana and my son have mild OCD ( meaning it doesn't effect or intrude to much in our day to day life's)

It's a bloody terrible illness when severe

InstantAtom · 05/08/2011 22:15

YANBU. It's a real shame that mental health problems can still be made fun of when other ailments would not be treated so lightly.

TruthSweet · 05/08/2011 22:19

I have OCD but my house is a pit Grin(currently moving the DDs into one bedroom and creating a playroom and have bunk bed mattresses in the dining room, etc, etc) so it winds the crap out of me when people have said things like 'Oh, your house must be lovely' or 'Why isn't your house immaculate, you told me you have OCD?' Angry Especially if it a GP Hmm

Not all OCD centres around things in order, or checking - that is the complusive part of OCD e.g. you have a compulsion to make sure your towels are lined up as it feels incredibly 'wrong' if they aren't/unspecified harm will happen if you don't rearrange them. The feelings can be overwhelming until you do what ever your compulsion is saying.

I mostly have the obsessive part of OCD which means that I have Intrusive Thoughts (ITs are thoughts that interrupt your normal thinking - a bit like a pop up ad when you are MNing) and ruminate/obsess over things that have happened/might happen/will never happen ever in a million years.

What ever form the ITs take they are not wish fulfillment but seem to be a veritable parade of your worst fears. They can be heretical, pornographic (e.g. thoughts about flashing or sexually assaulting someone), violent, socially inappropriate (e.g. screaming in the supermarket), harm coming to loved ones, that you haven't done something when you have or vice versa, etc, etc.

Mine were very nice (I had PND-OCD so were all baby related) - I would see my DDs being killed in a variety of horror film ways, generally graphic car/bus accidents, me letting go of the pram and it rolling into traffic and getting squished, accidentally smothering my baby, etc, etc. Horrible times that I would not wish on my worst enemy.

Oh, can people stop saying 'Epi' as in 'Don't have an epi' when you mean don't get upset. It can upset some people with epilepsy (of which I am one) not all though mind though I am sure, before a million and one people pile in to claim they have seizures and love the phrase....

2shoes · 05/08/2011 22:20

wow thank you for this thread, I always thought I was a bit odd as I am such a checker(and double and treble sometimes ) hearing that others do it makes it normal

AgentZigzag · 05/08/2011 22:21

It's normal to have a strategy to remember to shut the windows/lock the door before going out girlie.

Not normal to check all the windows, lock door, plug sockets, gas is off (if you're just going to the shop) drawers are shut, curtains straight etc, in a certain order, then wonder whether you've done it right, lock door, two steps from door think you must have missed something, go back in, repeat all the checks, then do that 5/6/12 times.

Then if you do make it out you're thinking about the checking all the time until you get back.

jazzchickens · 05/08/2011 22:23

Moomin that's really interesting. I was told by a colleague that I probably had a mild form of OCD.

I am an anxious person who tends to worry about the future more than others. I like things to be symmetrical. I hate uncertainty and do not like surprises.

I could go on.

I never put all of these things together before because generally it's not severe and I get on with my life just fine.

MoominsAreScary · 05/08/2011 22:27

Or thinking something bad will happen if you don't do things in a certain order or a certain way, I can't stop reading until I ether get to the end or to a full stop. If I started reading something crap in a paper I can't stop till I get to the end of a sentence or I think something bad will happen, I sometimes have to repeat things a number of times in my head ( always an even number) or I think something bad will happen.

snippywoo2 · 05/08/2011 22:27

YANBU. It's a real shame that mental health problems can still be made fun of when other ailments would not be treated so lightly.

But there not necessarily being made fun of are they. People making references to having it in any degree is actually making it more acceptable rather than feeling you are some sort of oddball in society with a weird way of doing things.

BobbaFettBountyHunter · 05/08/2011 22:27

I have to pee absolutely last thing at night, even if I pee then stay up for another 5 mins, always have to pee last thing. I put it down to nearly weeing myself when preggers. I actually nearly weed myself in bed. The shame.
I thought you should all know that.

Original poster
kickingking · 05/08/2011 22:28

Laquitar and TruthSweet - that's what I meant in my OP.

I was under the impression that OCD was about much more than liking lining up your jars on a kitchen shelf.

TruthSweet - Sad about your intrusive thoughts. And also a bit Shock as I have experienced something like that too, I just thought I was strange!

OP posts:
RachelHRD · 05/08/2011 22:38

As someone who has suffered very badly with OCD for the last 12+ years it does annoy me when people joke about it or make light of it.

For me it intrudes into my everyday life and the battle with anxiety and intrusive thoughts is pretty much constant. So yes when someone makes light of OCD it does make me :( as it is a truly horrible to live with.

TruthSweet · 05/08/2011 22:48

kickingking - I got your OP, it was just a clarifying one from someone who had OCD as none of the other posters said they had OCD so I thought it might confirm your position. My ITs are mostly better and I think I have gone months without a truly horrific one.

My top way dealing with them was to imagine I had a remote control that could change the channel from Baby Horror Movie to Kew Gardens in the Spring and every time I had a IT I would mentally (ha!) change the channel.

It worked for quite a while until I got told by a psych not to do it too much other wise I could just incorporate that into my OCD and have to change the channel to stop the it coming true as a coping mechanism.

OCD sucks sometimes and I wish it was just a nicely ordered spice rack. I think I could cope with that and my OCD isn't bad really (moderate apparently when at the time I had detailed 'ending it' plans so I never want to have severe OCD Shock).

droves · 05/08/2011 22:54

:-(

Ocd is no joke its horrible .
It stops you socialising properly , it stops you functioning properly , its not cute or funny.
Not just about being tidy , or organised ...sometimes its about hoarding , having a fear that something awful will happen if you throw away empty packets , or if you dont buy 20 bottles of shampoo .

You might have good spells , where its almost under control ...but you will have bad spells too when it cripples your life

Imagine having to repeatedly do the same thing over and over again ,and not be able to do what you should be doing (paying bills , feeding children, ect) because you cant stop doing the compulsion .... If you can , now think about doing that every day for years ....its like being stuck in a twisted version of groundhog day.

Thoughts are "stuck" at times , you go over and over and over the same thing until you drive everyone around you up the wall. It quickly drives those around you up the wall .

a little bit ocd is like saying a little bit alcoholic .... Hmm .

2shoes · 05/08/2011 23:01

it sounds so hard,
I will make sure i never use that term

TotalChaos · 05/08/2011 23:44

Truth - when I was PG my OCD flared up with a vengeance - germ phobia that time round - although I was v. depressed, and spent literally hours worrying about cleaning etc, I only just shaded into the moderate category, which surprised me at the time. Thank god for Prozac. Btw if you haven't read Imp of the Mind, get it from amazon, it is the business re:IT/OCD

MoominsAreScary · 05/08/2011 23:57

After ds2 was born I kept having the same thought over and over again, ds was prem and had to be woken every 2 hours to feed which took an hour so I was realy sleep deprived! I kept having visions of putting him in the washing machine in my sleep, didn't tell anyone at the time though as I worried people would think I was being stupid or a bad mother, it was a totally irrational thought but realy upsetting at the time, alot of my IT have been about bad things happening to my children or loved ones

bandgeek · 06/08/2011 00:02

I say I'm a bit OCD. It's not with cleanliness with me though, it's stupid little things like having to count objects on a chest of drawers at the top or stairs before I can enter the bedrooms or go down the stairs. I also touch wood a lot, often for no reason at all but I feel panicky that something bad will hapen if I don't.

I wouldn't say I'm full flung OCD as it doesn't make my life a misery, and I can see why other peopke say it tbh

mum0ftw0 · 06/08/2011 00:03

I think most people have 'a bit of OCD'.
Such as not stepping on lines when walking on the pavement and if you look down and you have, you think FUCK.
Or feeling that you have to do things to make things 'right', 'just because', like banging one elbow and having to do it to the other one to make it equal.

As for 'a bit OCD' to boast about your tidiness, that's sounds pretty stupid.

mum0ftw0 · 06/08/2011 00:06

My 4 year old is definately OCD, lol

I'll make his breakfast, come back 10 minutes later and he hasn't touched it because I didn't do the routine of asking him to thank me.
He in no way will start eating ever unless we go through that routine first, bless him.
I think that's OCD?

michelleseashell · 06/08/2011 00:26

I have obsessive thoughts about things. I can't get a certain thing which I can't say the name of out of my head at times. I don't even have to see it. Just the fact that it exists fills me with a horror I can't explain.

I also have to have my laundry folded exactly right otherwise it makes me feel a bit ill. If someone tries to help me and does it differently I will go back and fold it up again the way I do it because looking at will give me the creeps until I do.

A few lone bizarre behaviours like that doesn't make ocd but if I kept collecting them, then together they would become ocd. I think it's fair to use the phrase therefore. It doesn't automatically cancel out the fact that full disabling ocd should be taken seriously.

Lunabelly · 06/08/2011 00:39

YANBU and YABU - it's all context Smile

Having been OCD in varying degrees for as long as I can remember, even as a child, I can say that at present I am only a little bit OCD, as opposed to when it would take me over an hour or two to leave the house because I had to check everything over. And over. Again. (Oftentimes it was easier to just stay in) Or couldn't throw the rubbish out until I'd been through every piece in every bag three times. And I know that people suffer far far worse.

Like TruthSweet , I have mainly intrusive thoughts, which also ramped up when PG with DC1 (wish they'd admitted pre-natal depression existed then!) (TruthSweet, it is so "good" to 'meet' someone else who has this, albeit a bad thing).

Having an elastic band on my wrist that I can viciously twang when my brain stops believing my eyes when they tell it that yes, the bloody gas IS off and no, I didn't accidentally kill someone without realising it, or yes, that fecking door IS shut, helps a little. And so on.

The anti-depressants helped at first, as they did depression, OCD and PTSD (but which came first? Wish I knew), but I stopped them as the side-affects were worse than wanting to jump off the pier. Mostly awful thoughts. Yes, they are that bad and that intrusive that I myself would rather take my chances with suicidal thoughts. Most of my 'things', such as an irrational hatred of cold-calling, junk-mail etc stem from my obsessions and compulsions. But I know I have got off lightly!

So don't hate me if I say that currently, yes, I am a BIT OCD, as opposed to other times when I've been a lot OCD. Or if people want to use it to illustrate how shiny their towels are, let 'em. I'm too busy reading through this and every message ten times before I post it, to get upset Sad

Kladdkaka · 06/08/2011 00:49

I'm always saying 'I'm a bit OCD' because I am. My house isn't tidy or perfect. It's a dump because I'm a bit OCD. I spend so long making sure all the ornaments on the fireplace are in perfect position that I never get round to tidying the rest of the room or sweeping the floor. I have 6 bookcases in my dining room. One is all lined up perfectly and arranged by author in chronological order. The others look like they've been ransacked by a burglar and if you take your shoes off your feet will stick to the floor.

But then I'm autistic and obsessive compulsive behaviours are part of the package.

AgentZigzag · 06/08/2011 00:58

Sorry your OCD makes you feel so crap Lunabelly, but I think the OP was saying she doesn't like it when 'I'm a bit OCD' is said in specific circumstances, rather than saying she hates people who say their OCD is in a phase when it intrudes less on their lives than normal.

I've heard of, but never tried, the laggy band on your wrist, did you find it helped at all?