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

[kickingking]

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?

AgentZigZag - that's why I mentioned context :) , although people using it flippantly doesn't really bother me. (Today, anyway ) So IMO, she's not unreasonable or reasonable, I can see both sides.

Elastic band - depends. Depends on how bad it is, how vicious the twang is, whether the ritual gets disturbed by one of the cats. Am now just about to go to bed, and know I will have to mentally wrestle with myself to stop check check checking. It's creeping up again so I really want to nip it in the bud... it's bloody exhausting.

Just reading more of the thread and realise that I suffer from intrusive thoughts too! Have done since I was about 8. It's horrible and I wish I could make it stop, sometimes I feel like such a bad person because of it. For example I could be talking to someone and be thinking 'i fucking hate you' when I don't! makes me' really edgy.

I didn't realise other people had this too, that makes me' feel slightly better I'm on 40mg of fluoxitine which have helped with my anxiety but I still get these bloody awful thoughts!

i started a similar thread last year actually, but it was beuse eery woman i worked with in the office claimed to be OCD it was just a euphamism for 'look at how clean i am,,im so clean i bleach my desk and my cup and my telephone' freaky shits

I have a friend who cannot pass through a doorway without touching the frame with at least one hand. With certain doors she has to touch both frames, with both hands, which can mean juggling about the bags and boxes she is holding, but if she doesn't touch the frame she physically cannot walk through the doorway. She says she is a bit OCD and I would agree with that as she doesn't have any other compulsions. She is a teacher so this can be quite restricting, especially when she is walking through the school with a class of kids.

Perhaps it's not 'a bit' of OCD - more like a sliding scale of severity? My DS2 has Asperger's and his psychiatrist said he was the top of the scale in his diagnosis, meaning the most severe. He also said that everybody has what most people would call autistic or compulsive tendencies - it's a matter of degree. So, I've got a thing about how the dishwasher is loaded (have to re-do it if not done 'properly') - but the top of the scale would be full blown OCD that impinges on your ability to function in everyday life.

I truly don't think that people mean to belittle OCD mainly because we do all have those tendencies - but I agree that many people don't realise th eimpact severe OCD has on someone's life.

I think saying you are a bit OCD can be a good thing. My reason for saying this as I've said on another thread is that my son has had CBT for over a year and we were lucky enough to be in a test area where they took the parents and family into a separate room and the chilren in another and taught the family how we reacted would have a massive impact on the children.

For example if the fear was they were going to be sick and sought reassurance for that hundreds of times in a day they taught us how to withdraw that reassurance with the children knowing why we were doing that. They also taught us exposure therapies.

During the children's first session their homework was to go out and find adults who were "a bit OCDish" in their behaviours to talk to family and friends. The idea was to normalise the behaviour, so that they didn't feel so different and realised most people do the things they do to a lesser extent, thereby reducing the anxiety.

For that reason alone I have no problem with it.

I agree that as it's a spectrum disorder you can be a bit OCD. However I take tha point that it's often referred to out of context by people who just like to say how tidy they are.

When I was having a rough time earlier this year I had a thing about counting - it didn't intrude in my life too much but I was conscious of it and how it related to my anxiety.

Some of my friends get v upset when I refer to DH as a bit autistic because they think I mean it flippantly and just decided this myself. The reality is that a number of people working with people with autism have commented on it and we have both seriously discussed it a number of times. However, he has become increasingly good at learning how to 'blend in' and had learnt a number of social rules even if they make no sense to him. Other things we just adjust life around. However it's a grey area - DH could have mild ASD or these traits could be a response to his upbringing - it's hard to decipher so I am always wary of proclaiming it other than with people who get it and know him well.

Doesn't bother me in the slightest. To me it is no different to someone with a headache claiming to have a migraine etc.

It's a term. It isn't offensive. And surely if it bothered you that much, you would challenge the person using it?

FWIW, I have suffered from OCD as a teenager.

It annoys me a bit (I said on another thread) because SIL has really, really bad OCD and seeing how it affects her daily life cannot be compared to liking things tidy.

Agree with you, OP, I think some people like a bit of embellishment and a bit of a label achieves that, gives the comment gravitas.

My partner has OCD. Things like she always has to sleep with the same pillows. If I make the bed and put the pillows back in the wrong order then she can't settle and wont sleep. She must have a shower in the morning and only in the morning. If she's looking down at the ground when she's walking then she can't step on a crack (that's annoying since we have crazy paving in our front garden!)

However, we also joke about it. Things like if I go on a mega tidying spree then we joke it must be DPs OCD being contagious!

Using it as a form of boasting to say "look how tidy my house is" though I don't think is on.

of course you can have a bit of ocd ,everything is on a scale.low end or high end.

It's not "a bit of OCD". It may be mild OCD but it's still OCD.

The thing is, it's not people who are on the OCD spectrum saying they have a few ITs, or feel really uncomfortable when they post a work document with out checking it 7 times (and it has to be 7, 6 is too few and 8 is too many), that's fine in my view as they are on the OCD spectrum.

It's people appropriating a MHI to make a joke of, like saying 'Ooh, I would never go out without mascara on, I'm OCD like that'. They would never say 'I'm always taking my DC to the doctors, I'm Munchausen's By Proxy like that.'

OCD seems to be the joke mental health illness, the person who has to have the pepperpot facing the right way or their world caves in, let's laugh at them and their funny little ways.

Little do they know how terrifying it is to be trapped in a world where every tiny thing can have huge repercussions, I mean if you don't turn the pepperpot round, that means that your OH picks it up wrong and drops it, breaking their toes, then they won't be able to go out to see their friend which means that their friend won't speak to them and it did seem important that they met up tonight, what happens if they were really upset and instead of being able to talk it over with OH they go and commit suicide? It will be all your fault because you didn't turn the pepperpot round.

Us OCD bods really control the world but no-one realises that by OCD behaviours we avert catastrophes every day

yabu and seriously uptight. It's just speaking, just talking, just communicating. STop over-nanalysing and finding fault unnecessarily with speech.

'Us OCD bods really control the world but no-one realises that by OCD behaviours we avert catastrophes every day'

I really love that

Although it does reveal one of the worst things about OCD, that you're spending huge chunks of your life on something completely futile.

I don't know about you Truth, but they don't make me feel any better, or divert that feeling of impending doom.

And I think there's a massive difference between using mental illness to belittle someone directly or imply that because they have mental health issues they must be a criminal, and a lighthearted description of a behaviour that does happen.

AZZ - It never assuages the feeling of dread, in fact the more I give in the more the feeling grows. So now I work on not doing XXX in the first place, which makes things better. It's just a negative feedback loop in essence.

If only that would work on my trich though, never seem to stop that.

I work in a psychiatric unit and we have people in all the time with OCD - doesn't stop my consultant psychiatrist boss from laughing at what he calls my little OCD problem.

I can't imagine some other illnesses being made fun of in the same way.

"Oh I dropped the pepperpot again! I must be a bit arthritic or have had a mild epileptic fit! Ha ha ha!"

(OK so not such a great example as sadly people laugh at "epis"... but you get the general point, yes?)

Dd who is 14 has severe OCD which takes over her life, stops her socialising, concentrating, making friends.
I have it mildly, and have noticed it getting worse, possibly with the stress of hers. It makes me feel "safe" and restores order at times when life in the house feels chaotic.
Friends and family do not tale it seriously... They think dd is fine, as they rarely see her at her worst..she is very careful to hide it from anyone else but us. But you try going through hellish mealtimes every day when she washes her hands repeatedly, dissects food to check it's cooked and snatches food from her brother and bins it because she thinks he's going to be sick.

hellish I so understand, my ex would ask "what letters have they given him this week" and I'd say "he's ill" he still doesn't get it years later. My son is still a nightmare to feed, he no longer handwashes but will examine his food minutely and I have to reassure him that it is OK. My son also went through the fear of being sick but for him it was his own sickness.

It makes it harder when people don't understand but with OCD the sufferer knows they are "off kilter" with the rest of the world so internalise around other people but externalise when they think it is safe such as at home.

My son's lips would go dry as he'd panic doing rituals when he wrote dots on letter he wrote and got stuck doing sentences having to write and rewrite it until it was perfect so people wouldn't notice. His teacher thought he was defiantly refusing to work and wouldn't accept he was under CAMHS for a reason.

At home he'd scream and try to punch the voices out of his head which we now know are thoughts.

Truth your posts are interesting, when my dd was born I had repeated thoughts that her pram would roll into the road or on one walk along a river -the river, when I was pushing it. At the time I put it down to be being an anxious first time mum but I remember it being horrible as it was a very vivid image

I think ocd is another form of severe anxiety and I have def suffered from that in the past.

yes the word is bounded around too often because it is not really understood. some psychologists beleive that most people will suffer from it at some point in their life and it is often made worse when they are anxious. not every sufferer life is controlled by it but they may have bouts where their life is consumed by irrational behaviour or thoughts