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?

Well done Mumof Two is not easy to get these obsessional behavours under control without expert help. Congratulations.

jazzchickens I do know that my cousin who has been really bad with ocd for about 15 years def has eating disorder. He is, I would say, controlled anorexic, in that he has never been hospitalised, but worries obsessively about weight, even though he is really skinny.
I do think there is a control issue at the heart of both OCD and anorexia.

Jazzchickens Yes, I had an eating disorder from the age of 13. Am a fat bastard at present due to medication and misery, but I could still tell you the calorie content of pretty well much everything under the sun.

Am currently on a strict diet but I have to be careful because I love control, especially as outside of my body, there is no little or control for me!, and know how easy it would be to slip back into not eating and taking 150 laxatives in one go. Spent from 13 to mid-twenties knowing I was grotesquely fat. When in actual fact, when I fell pregnant with DC1 I weighed 7st10lb, and I was a size zero (which is only the old size 10, a 22" waist :) ) until I was 28.

I constantly ask myself though, for me at least, is there a link between all this and childhood trauma? I grew up with domestic violence. Mum and me fled in the night on more than one occasion. We moved home roughly every 2.5 years (though in same generalish area) Had paramedics come and take mum away, police take dad away, my nan take me away more than once or twice. (My siblings weren't born after I started junior school). Sometimes, I also feel there are memories of something else (nothing to do with my parents) ghosting under the surface. Is my OCD et cetera a coping mechanism for all that? If so, how do I tell it to rack off now thanks please?

I have used this phrase to descibe my mindset after DS was born. I was constantly cleaning, steralising etc etc. I washed my hands so much my knuckles split and bled.
I've since been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and am on ADs, so I'm sorry I caused any offence to any actual OCD sufferers. I shouldn't have self-diagnosed, but in the beginning I was too scared to seek help in case DS was taken away from me.
Ironically, it was only when I felt better I could ask for help.

Lunabelly - your background is very similar to mine. I also grew up with domestic violence and my anorexia started around the age of 13 until my mid twenties. It was never about slimming to look like a model - it was always about control. To me, the bulimia was more frightening than the anorexia as it meant I had started to lose some of the control that I had.

I started to beat the eating disorder when I met my husband and my life became happier. However, I have always had these other OCD tendencies. Certainly not as severe as some other posters have experienced but it's as if I can never really enjoy life to the full because I am expecting something bad to happen. The compulsions/rituals are my protection.

I would say you can be a "bit" OCD if by a bit you mean you have mild OCD. Like you can have mild autism. But even mild autism is clinically diagnosable. You can't self-diagnose. Perhaps I have OCD traits would be better?

I agree that using OCD to describe your towel folding is wrong and offensive to those who are diagnosed with OCD. However this does also happen a lot with other mental illnesses. I suffer from bipolar disorder and even friends who know and understand that seem to insist in constantly saying things like "I had a really manic day" when they had a slightly busy day. I always want to reply "oh really, last time I had a REALLY manic day I ended up being admitted to psychiatric hospital." Never quite dared yet.

The other one is "I'm so depressed that my numbers didn't come up in the lottery - oh I could just kill myself". Sounds innocent exaggeration to some but not so great for those of us who have had serious depression or experience of suicide.

You can, of course, be obsessive or compulsive about certain things. I think referring to it as a 'disorder' is where people should put the brakes on. Being obsessive about, say, the order of things on a certain shelf does not cause anyone sleepless nights. I hang clothes on the line with 'proper pairs' of pegs. Might make me odd but it doesn't make me ill and it certainly doesn't make me unhappy!

People who refer to themselves as having a disorder should be careful what they wish for.

I think claiming to have OCD to boast that your house is tidy is not on. Lots of people think that this is what OCD is and people making throwaway comments about it don't help this misunderstanding.

I have OCD, I have always had it (even as a small child) and most of the time it is under enough control that it doesn't upset my life. The other day I had someone tell me that I was not OCD, I was probably autistic instead because I am not an obsessive cleaner or handwasher and my house is not immaculate. With me it is more rhythmic and to do with numbers and symmetry and checking and ITs.

A good tip out there for any 'checkers' is to give yourself a little pinch (or keep and elastic band around your wrist and ping it) when you have locked the door/turned off the straighteners/checked the windows etc as although your mind can make you doubt the memory of locking/turning off etc, it will remember the pain. A lovely link worker I saw a few times when my OCD was begininng to get out of control taught me this trick and it does work!

I also think you can be obsessive about something ie cleaning, without there being a compulsion behind it.

I think the compulsion part is the centre of OCD, certainly for me. The general feeling that something awful will happen if it (whatever 'it' may be) is not done properly is the compulsion that drives me to check things, line things up and count them properly and all the little things that balance my life properly.

RainbowSpiral What about when people say oh it's really manic in there, for example to describe a busy shop in Christmas period?

you see I wouldn't say "its really manic in there" as that word is too clinically loaded for me. But I might say it's really mad in there, which I guess is also misusing the word mad. So I realise you can take these kind of lines of argument too far.

I refer to my own depression as my madness, because when it's bad, I feel like I'm going mad. I've a couple of friends with differing forms of mental issues; we refer to ourselves at nut-cases and mentalists to knock the solemnity out of it.