What is your ocd?

I like John Richardson.



He is a funny guy. I could be mates with him, easy. But he is also weird. And he knows it, sort of. He recently did a documentary about OCD which was quite interesting, and funny.

But now (and it's all his fault) I have found myself doing odd little things which I thought were normal - and now I realise they are a bit OCD.

Example. If I accidentally bang my little finger against something with my left hand I will quite often deliberately do it again with the little finger of the other hand "to even it out".

I got loads more of that crap going on, but none of it affects my life the way it does for real OCD sufferers.

Do you have any of those quirky things going on?

Everybody has bizarre thinking patterns - how you react to them defines whether or not its an illness. Some people pay real attention to them and it drives them crackers to the point where they ruin their daily life, others treat them with disregard and they consequently disappear no damage done. Just opting for the latter isn't as easy as a lot of people think.

I've had OCD on and off for a long time, but I grew out of the 'compulsive' side of it, so I don't have much quirkiness to report. There comes a point when you realise straightening your shoes at night isn't going to stop your house spontaneously bursting into flames.

I like to think of things such as lining up the papers on my desk or straightening up my girlfriends phone (when left at an angle) on the window sill just as "the correct way of doing things". (-expression borrowed from John Richardson).

Glad to hear you have overcome most difficulties OCD wise, I know it can really ruin peoples lives if it takes hold.

There was a really, really good documentary on OCD on Channel 4 a couple of weeks ago. I think the presenter was Jon Richardson but I am not certain. I was completely startled by how people with extreme OCD can end up. They get to the point where the condition completely overtakes their cognition. They can't leave the house, they can't do anything. Some of them end up incontinent because they can't bring themselves to go into the bathroom.

There was a lady in it talking about her son. OCD runs in her family. She herself, when she comes into her house after a shopping trip, has to completely change all her clothes in the entrance hallway of her home so she is not contaminating the main part of her home. Then when she puts the shopping away, she has to wipe down all the food packaging before it can go in the fridge.

Anyway she was leafing through this dossier about her son. He went to Oxford and got a double first class degree (which is very rare, it's essentially doing two degrees at once and achieving first class honours in both subjects), and went on to study towards a PhD - it ws in one of the chemical sciences. It was at this point that his OCD kicked in. He got to the point where he couldn't sit or sleep and used to spend all his time pacing around.

She then showed his suicide note. What he did was to go out and buy a liquifier and get a load of yew tree branches (which are highly poisonous) and liquify them and drink them. His suicide note gave a brief apology and said that his close friends and family would understand why, and it finished with a detailed list of who the person who found his body needed to contact, including phone numbers and so on, and what needed to be done for his funeral.

It was so sad, it really struck a chord with me, that story.

There is one specialist OCD in-patient clinic in the UK. The patients there are in such a bad state that they can't be filmed for a documentary. The lady there showed some of the steps she takes sufferers through to try to bring them back to reality. First she will try to encourage them to touch the knob of a toilet door, and then wipe their hands all over their face, skin and clothes, and then just be able to tolerate their conviction of dirtiness for several hours. She progresses them through the bathroom until eventually they have to wipe their hands all over the toilet seat (which is perfectly clean) and then all over themselves, taking small steps at a time to try to bring them back. Even the presenter, who suffers very mild OCD, was really reluctant to do this.

The presenter's mild OCD drives his housemates mad. He will take the ketchip and the HP sauce out of the fridge and pour dribs and drabs out of one of them until the two sauces are at the same level, and then puts them back. He won't let anyone go in his room, or even stick their head round the door, because is room is the one place in the world which is ordered by him, to his exact needs. And he is a mild case.

So when I read on this forum and elsewhere that mental illness doesn't exist...

jayjay23 wrote:
Glad to hear you have overcome most difficulties OCD wise, I know it can really ruin peoples lives if it takes hold.

Appreciated, jayjay.

I've accepted it will always be there - I've never been in the same position as the people largehat talks of, but an anxiety-free 24 hours is to me beyond imaginable. It sounds sad and defeatist, but it's actually the best way I believe people can handle it. Often, the more you try to cure mental illness, the more control it has over you. Psychologists (not that I think much of them!) like to use "don't think of a pink elephant" to illustrate, because most people find it impossible to not think of a pink elephant after being instructed not to do so. The same applies to depressing/anxious thoughts.

That's enough about me. Queue Natasha's "you need a woman".

I watched the documentary described by Largehat, half of me felt for the woman who was wiping down her food and the other half of me wanted to shake her hard to wake her up.

I think a little bit of OCD is in all of us. My personal OCD problem is checking all the lights/electrical appliances are switched off before I go to bed. I'll check them all once, but then I'll have to do it twice more just to make sure.

Mking sure that all my books, cd's and dvd/blu-rays are all in alphabetical order (and if a collection like teh Now cd's then making sure they are always in numerical order) - also triple checking that i have my house keys before I even open the door to go out!

I have to check the back door is locked and the cooker is off before I go out, and I do it at least twice.

One time it cost me a bloody fortune, I was going somewhere about 12 miles away in a taxi. I was almost at the destination and made the taxi driver turn round and take me home again (I told him I had forgotten my wallet) because I had this nagging doubt I had left the oven on at home. I hadn't.

I leave things lying around that have died for awhile in case they are not dead.I check on them once a week.

Angry Dad wrote:I leave things lying around that have died for awhile in case they are not dead.I check on them once a week.

What, like victims of that big shotgun?

largehat wrote:

Angry Dad wrote:I leave things lying around that have died for awhile in case they are not dead.I check on them once a week.

What, like victims of that big shotgun?

I never shot anyone as an adult LH. Pets cant bury them until they look off colour and start to smell. When i was a kid i dug my rabbit up and thrashed the maggots out of it, scared the fuck outa an old lady walking past the railway embankment where i buried it.

largehat wrote:There was a really, really good documentary on OCD on Channel 4 a couple of weeks ago. I think the presenter was Jon Richardson but I am not certain. I was completely startled by how people with extreme OCD can end up. They get to the point where the condition completely overtakes their cognition. They can't leave the house, they can't do anything. Some of them end up incontinent because they can't bring themselves to go into the bathroom.

You mean the documentary I was clearly referring to in my OP? (So I spelled Jon wrong, was that your point?)

jayjay23 wrote:
You mean the documentary I was clearly referring to in my OP? (So I spelled Jon wrong, was that your point?)

No, I don't know if we saw the same documentary or not, because I am not sure if I saw the one you were "clearly referring to". It occurs to me there might have been more than one documentary made about OCD in the history of television.

I have no idea how you spell the 'John/Jon' in 'John/Jon' Richardson. I've never heard of the guy before.

If you actually think I wrote all that about OCD and how I was effected by the documentary just to highlight that you've spelled the name of this guy incorrectly, rather than because it was an interesting subject I wanted to contribute to, then you should make uses of the 'foes' function of the website. Either that, or get a grip.

largehat wrote:

If you actually think I wrote all that about OCD and how I was effected by the documentary just to highlight that you've spelled the name of this guy incorrectly, rather than because it was an interesting subject I wanted to contribute to, then you should make uses of the 'foes' function of the website. Either that, or get a grip.

That "foes" option is bloody useless, I still see Hipster's posts when someone else quotes him.

largehat wrote:

jayjay23 wrote:
You mean the documentary I was clearly referring to in my OP? (So I spelled Jon wrong, was that your point?)

No, I don't know if we saw the same documentary or not, because I am not sure if I saw the one you were "clearly referring to". It occurs to me there might have been more than one documentary made about OCD in the history of television.

I have no idea how you spell the 'John/Jon' in 'John/Jon' Richardson. I've never heard of the guy before.

If you actually think I wrote all that about OCD and how I was effected by the documentary just to highlight that you've spelled the name of this guy incorrectly, rather than because it was an interesting subject I wanted to contribute to, then you should make uses of the 'foes' function of the website. Either that, or get a grip.

You clearly hate me.

Oh and ps. I said in the OP. "John Richardson" "recently" did a "documentary" on "OCD".

I even included a video of him in action.

And then you said, "...documentary on OCD on Channel 4 a couple of weeks ago. I think the presenter was Jon Richardson"

I would say it was a pretty good chance it was the same thing.

jayjay23 wrote:
You clearly hate me.

I hate everyone on this forum who isn't Quent or Michael Bolton.

Thanks.

Oh and you look like a prick in your avtar.

Watch the video at the top. His stand up routine is good and it seems to be quite based on his oddness.

jayjay23 wrote:Oh and ps. I said in the OP. "John Richardson" "recently" did a "documentary" on "OCD".

I even included a video of him in action.

And then you said, "...documentary on OCD on Channel 4 a couple of weeks ago. I think the presenter was Jon Richardson"

I would say it was a pretty good chance it was the same thing.

Jesus, cut me some slack, I read your post at 2.30am, I was half asleep. So what if I was talking about the same documentary? Are you angry because I didn't read your post properly or watch your video clip? Is this a symptom of your OCD?