OCD

Szia! Hogy vagytok?

What? You say you do not speak Hungarian? Oh. Well in that case:

Hi! How are you guys?

I am doing surprisingly well. Seriously you guys, I have to thank you for every single one of your supportive comments on my last – and very short – post.  Before I published it, I was feeling so guilty. It sort of seemed like I was giving up. I tend to give up very easily when things in life become just a smidge too difficult, and I definitely didn’t want that to be the case with blogging. I also felt very bad for the sake of all of you. I always put a crap ton of pressure on myself in every aspect of life, blogging not excluded. I had this idea that I had to do a long, in-depth, philosophical post about my life, my ED, or my views on recovery every single night. I thought that in order to make friends, attract readers, and keep people coming back, I had to be consistent. I thought that if I didn’t, you’d stop reading or liking me.

I thought that my posts had to be grammatically and structurally flawless. I believed that every single paragraph…no, every sentence had to be 200% cohesive and interesting. I have always been a perfectionist, and I had this mentalitly that by posting like I had been, I was being the perfect blogger. But honestly, I didn’t have time for all of that. Blogging was just becoming a burden and a chore, not a creative outlet. It was no longer fun. 😦 

I think it’s true for all of us that we always want what we can’t have. Yesterday, I “couldn’t” have the freedom to skip a night of posting, so all I wanted to do was quit blogging. Today, because I didn’t feel the pressure to write, I actually wanted to. Funny, this human brain of ours, idn’it?

But anyway, I did have a topic to this post. If I’ve bored or confused you with the previous 3 paragraphs, just look at the title again for a little refresher.

Yup, obsessive-compulsive disorder. I think we all have it to a certain degree. Though in some of us it is more severe than in others, we all have some quirks, rituals, or idiosyncrasies. For me, I think my OCD is pretty darn bad. I am not on any medication for it; that hasn’t even been brought up. Medicine to help with anxiety, which would in turn help with my ED, was a huge topic for discussion about 2 months ago. Now that my weight is up and my mood is better, I think it’s out of the question. Neither my parents nor my doctors think I need it, and that is just fine by me!

But the OCD…now that’s a different story. I have difficulty putting my reasons into words, but I refuse medication of any kind that people try to force upon me in order to help with the ED. I have been OCD for a while now, but it has gotten much worse since the ED started. So, no medication for OCD  for me, but thankfully. I sometimes think it’s pretty bad, but no one else seems to think it’s severe enough to warrant it.

I thought it would be fun (maybe more fun for me than for you) to go through as many of my OCD tendencies as I can think of. One of my tendencies is that I love being organized, thus, I love lists. How ’bout I make one right now? Then I’ll elaborate on the ones I feel I need to. 🙂

• I love lists (duh!) – I think organization is so important. I have a great memory, but when the information is too much to store mentally, I must make a list. You might say, “Sure, everybody makes lists.” But I don’t mean a shopping list, or a to-do list. I mean lists of useless information that I feel like I have to remember. An example would be my list of things to do on the computer. It might be to read x, y, and z’s blog on my google reader. Well, if I’m already in the reader, I won’t read some blogs and forget to read the rest. But I feel the need to write it down anyway, just to be sure.
• I love all other forms of organization and alignment – When my pantry or fridge gets too cluttered, I’ll devote the afternoon to reorganizing it. It is definitely a major anxiety-relieving coping mechanism for me. I don’t know whether or not it’s healthy, but I do it. Another would be that I number my pointe shoes. When they get worn out to the point (pun intended ;-)) that they’re unusable, we call them dead. So anyway, I number all my dead pointe shoes, from the first pair I ever had to the ones I just retired. For whatever reason, I have to keep them in order or else I just don’t feel right. Oh, and all the cereal boxes or cans in the pantry have to be in a line and/or facing the same way as well. I love order!
• I often check to make sure the front door is locked – this one usually isn’t bad, but it can be sometimes. Once I was home alone and in the shower. I had a bit of a freak out when I thought the door was unlocked and heard someone come in. I shut off the water, jumped out naked, and ran downstairs, sopping wet, only to find out that the door was indeed locked.
• I always walk up or down the stairs starting with my left foot. If I accidentally start with the right, I’ll stop in my tracks and switch feet. 
• I always eat yogurt and oatmeal with one spoon and soup with another. In my book, spoons are not interchangeable.
• My favorite bite of banana is the top (I get excited about it), and I hate the bottom. I literally cannot eat it, and always throw it out.
• I’m obsessed with symmetry – if I leave 2 pencils and 1 eraser on my desk, the eraser has to be in the middle of the 2 pencils.
• I constantly check to make sure I didn’t lost my cell phone, house keys, Ipod, etc, even though I just checked and had it two minutes ago.
•  I usually check a least 3 times that I put my phone on silent before ballet class.
• I always pick out certain pieces of the Kashi Go Lean cereal and eat them at the end of the meal.
• I hang everything in my closet in the same direction. If it’s not facing the right way, I must change it.
• My pillows have to be in a certain diretion – I have 2 pillows on my bed. The outside, or the side with the opening in the pillow case, must face outwards towards the edges of the bed. (Thanks for the reminder on that one Ash!)
• I can’t watch the screens on my ipod and cell phone go dark – say I’ve just used either one and set it on a table face up. The screen is lit and will stay like that for a few seconds if it’s my cell, and 60 seconds if it’s my itouch. I either have to then turn it face-down before the light goes out, or look away. If I happen to glance at it and see the screen go from being lit to dark, I have to press a button to turn the screen back on, then either turn it face down again, press the lock button (which makes it go dark faster) and then look away, or look away until I know for certain that the light has gone out.
• Perfectionism? – Is this one even OCD? I don’t know. I do know that I have this need for everything to always be perfect, either myself, or the people and things around me. If my dad make a grammatical error, I correct him, because grammatical errors are not perfect. If I keep messing up a step in ballet, I get angry, because when I mess up, I’m not perfect. (I know I’m never “perfect”, but when I mess up at something, I’m even farther from perfect than I was before) When people drive either too passively or aggressively, I lose my patience because they are not driving perfectly. When my mom forgets something and asks me again, I get mad at her because she wasn’t perfect enough to remember. In Black Swan Natalie says this line, “I just want to be perfect.” Yeah, me too, and it’s something I really need to stop wanting.

Wow, is this a long post or what? And no pictures or anything. How boring is that? All of my posts seem to be either all pictures (the birthday recaps) or all words. Ah well, I’m sure I’ll find the balance some day. 🙂

 

Qs~

Do you have any of the same OCD obsessions, compulsions, or rituals that I do? Do you have any that are different from mine?

What’s your blogging schedule like?