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?

I dont agree that many have OCD kinds of behaviours, since when has doing the housework been equal to having a neurological disorder? OCD is not being clean and organised.

I think you were a lot OCD Working to be fair, it had got to the point where it was seriously distressing you, but it does illustrate just where do you say OCD starts, a bit, a lot, severe, mild, not OCD at all just a neat freak.

I was once told, can't remember who by now that they start to class it as OCD it it takes up more than an hour a day and causes considerable distress.

claw The Cognitive Behavoural Therapists told the children with OCD in my son's group to talk to adults who have ritualistic behaviours. The therapist shared that she couldn't stand on a crack on a pavement near a railway line because if she did she thought she'd go under the train and she was a bit OCD like that but didn't really have OCD.

All of the children found adults with mild behaviours that if multiplied by 1000 could be classed as OCDish, such as rituals when locking the house before leaving, going back to check even after the rituals but they'd never be diagnosed with OCD.

My son found a friend's mum who had to hang the washing out in a certain order and using strict colour coded pegs or she felt something bad would happen. She didn't have OCD but if she said she was a bit OCD when it comes to washing I think I'd have agreed.

Another male friend couldn't go to bed until his family were asleep and he had done the locking up rituals or he would be too scared to sleep incase something really bad would happen to them.

I guess I'm just so used to it that it just doesn't bother me in fact I welcome it to start the OCD conversation.

I think it has become trivialised because of the constant "I'm a bit OCD, lol" as some kind of weird explanation for something minor where none is actually required.I'm starting to think that everybody has it, some just have it to a degree where their lives take on a suffering that others just don't experience.

I hate seeing 'Aspie' as a pet name for Asperger's and seeing references to 'a bit autistic' also. I feel deeply sorry for the parents of children who genuinely do have diagnosed children suffering with these conditions. I don't understand the mentality of people who apply labels to their children without a diagnosis and I can't help thinking that they diminish the condition to such an extent that it seems almost everybody has 'ownership' of one or more of these conditions. There's another 'label' far more applicable to those parents but I'm sure they wouldn't be so quick to use it.

I would say you became obsessed about swine flu, not OCD. Usually people with OCD have lots of different obsessions and compulsions.

Claw that's not the case, people can have one obsession and one compulsion then it can go away, in my son's case as with some other children or adults you can beat one obsession beat that, and another one comes up right behind it, beat that, then another one.

It is extremely common for OCD to manifest at times of major anxiety or change in a person's life.

LyingWitchInTheWardrobe, some people with AS use Aspie as a name for the condition, particularly adults.. and that's their prerogative. I understand what you are saying about ownership, though..

I work with teenagers with high-functioning autism and I do think it's helpful for people who work with people on the spectrum to recognise their own "traits", it enables you to empathise and can be a useful therapeutic tool in the same way that Mitmoo's son was asked to work on the idea of a spectrum. Few people want to feel like a freak or to feel that their experience is completely separate from everyone around them.

THIS IS FROM OCD TODAY website.

ocdtodayuk.org/ocd_introduction.html

Take a moment to think for a minute

Think of an occasion when a mental image has popped up into your mind without sudden warning. This might be senseless but most people are never bothered by these thoughts and they can easily forget about them, but a majority of people with OCD can't get rid of them that easily.

A lot of healthy people can identify with having some of the symptoms of OCD, such as checking the house several times before going out but not to the extent of a person with OCD. The type of anxiety that affects those with OCD relates to an inability to deal with common worries such as germs, death, illness, unfortunate events and injury of another person. The disorder is diagnosed only when such activities take up a lot of time (more than one hour per day) and are very distressing, and interfere with daily life. (e.g. work, friends, school, etc).

_

I realise we all want the best for people who genuinely have OCD, perhaps this site can explain better than me why I don't have a problem with "a bit OCDish".

Workingingwhile The idea as explained to us was to "normalise" the thoughts the children were having, to show them that they weren't so different from everyone else and to give them the confidence to believe they weren't giong mad as many of them felt.

It was a kind of comfort blanket at the first session of CBT and helped them to them work with the children on different techniques and taught us too which I will be eternally grateful for.

Mitmoo, my ds has OCD and there is a big difference for example between "All my kids' plastic toy boxes have to be the same colour or it would send me mad" and if the kids toy boxes are not the same colour, something terrible will happen and its all my fault because they are not the same colour. Then if they are not, you cant eat, you cant sleep, you cant function basically until all the toy boxes are the same colour.

So your ds's therapist might well have had the thought, but it was not debilitating. Also if you are 'anal' about one thing, it makes it an obsession, not OCD.

But no one ever says "I forgot my purse, I'm a bit Alzheimer's" in the same proud tone. I wonder why? Amybe they should

And if I was being harsh I'd say it's because OCD is perceived as the disease of organised, successful, high achievers, while Alzheimer's takes someone and strips away their brain, leaving behind a dribbling, incontinent shell.

Mitmoo "Claw that's not the case, people can have one obsession and one compulsion then it can go away, in my son's case as with some other children or adults you can beat one obsession beat that, and another one comes up right behind it, beat that, then another one"

That is exactly what i said Mitmoo "Usually people with OCD have lots of different obsessions and compulsions"

claw The therapists point was which the children understood, that "normal" people have behaviours just like they do, just not as extreme, that was her point. To find people they know who have similar thoughts to a far lesser degree to show them they are not alone, reduce the anxiety which in turn is one way to reduce the symptoms of the OCD.

All of the children were in the debilitated category the whole point of the homework was to find "normal" people who behaved in a way that could be considered "OCD"ish to show them that they weren't really so very different. The therapists didn't claim to have OCD just behaviours that are similar but mild.

As working said, Few people want to feel like a freak or to feel that their experience is completely separate from everyone around them.

.

Claw I don't understand how you can say one obsession and one compulsions can't be OCD because that also happens, there is no way for either of us to know whether it's usually one, usually multiple or anywhere else inbetween.

It would be fair of working if she had said at that time "I'm a bit OCD", in fact if she posted that she was still suffering the same way I'd be advising her to get a referral to her mental health professional from a GP. She isn't clearly and works with children who are HFA so I wouldn't need to but with that level of distress and time spent it would be worthy of a professional assessment.

"I'm a bit obsessive-compulsive disorder" doesn't make sense anyway...

Claw, I didn't self-characterise as having OCD, but as being sometimes a "bit OCD" and I know enough about the condition to know that I am on the normal end of that spectrum, but somewhere on that spectrum, that it is "in me" to become obsessive and has been since childhood. Only during pregnancy did it really come close to clinical levels and I do wonder if I have been helped by having a good working knowledge of CBT and some past CBT experience so that I have an awareness of how to apply strategies e.g. to challenge my own thinking process. This didn't stop me waking up in a panic several times a night for the first five months of my life imagining finding my baby dead and having really graphic visualisations of screaming, calling the police, burying him etc but I knew enough to know when this was happening that I needed to do something about it.

It's not something I ever really talk to anyone about, I certainly don't use it as a phrase, but I think you can recognise your own tendencies etc without it being disrespectful to people with severe mental health disorders. My cousin, who I grew up with in the same house, has schizoaffective disorder; my father has clinical depression and is an alcoholic; I have an aunt with paranoid schizophrenia and another aunt who killed her baby when suffering post-partum psychosis. Several female members of the family have had severe PND. I have never experienced this level of mental health dysfunction, but I do believe I had clinical levels of pre- and post-natal anxiety which I managed it through diet, exercise and using simple CBT techniques. Next time, though, I am getting a referral to someone rather than letting the midwife fob me off as soon as I tried to bring it up, saying "everyone worries".

I think that StealthPolarBear makes an excellent point. It's all in the perception.

working - I know this is the general get out clause on N but I don't mean people like you - you know what you're talking about and are concerned about traits you are exhibiting. When I have heard it it has (to me) seemed in a "Oh aren't I so organised and tidy" way

Mitmoo, i can see where the therapist is coming from and for children with any disorder, meeting others with the same disorder and finding they have lots in common definitely helps.

But lots of people claiming to be "a bit OCD" simply because they are a bit 'anal' about something, is not very helpful at all and quite patronising.

Yeah, I know what you mean Stealth.

I have heard people say "Oh I must have a touch of dementia" when they have forgotten something and it irritates me but not as much as when people use any of the following - "nutjob", "mentaler" or "thick in the head".

Perhaps they just prefer the 'moniker' of being "a bit OCD" rather than "a bit anal"? I think that for some people, OCD is seen as positive, quite 'trendy' almost, with many people afflicted so they belong to some kind of gang or club.

I was fobbed off too initially working the doctor told me it was a phase and not to label the child, what followed was two weeks of sheer hell, not knowing what to do, a child punching "voices" out of his head and me going from pillar to post to find someone who understood him. I finally found a door opened and they said "whatever it is, whatever he has got, we've seen it before and we can help". I just cried.

I went back to the GP and the school nurse and told them they had to refer him to CAMHS and another agency which they did, then it was a 6 month waiting list with no support. My child then tried to commit suicide because he couldn't cope and the waiting list disappeared and CBT began. Nightmare.

Oh Mitmoo, how horrible! It shouldn't have to be that way.

I've never felt in a gang or club, I have been tremendously fortunate to have had a local CAMHS where they taught the parents in their own group. We all listened and heard each others stories, we all questioned the CBT's as some of their advice we knew would distress our children such as the removal of reassurance or exposure therapies.

We would find things that our children did that we didn't put down to OCD and found most of them did it, such as checking sell by dates in fridges before they'd eat anything. It was incredibly helpful as we no longer felt that we were the only parents in the world going through this.