OCD... well kind of.
 

i was surprised to read in the paper yesterday that when David Beckham goes into a supermarket he has to buy 20 Pot Noodles, no more and no less 20 on the button! and Steven Gerrard has to wash his hands 15 times a day.

I have to dry my hands with a specific towel and drive the house nutz when i cant find it and throw a pure spaz attack when its in the wash in which case my hands have to dry naturally, i'm also a bit odd about masturbating in the shower - and my friend, this is a good one, MUST flush the toilet before he steps out of the shower - this makes for great humour when he stays in my house and has a shower. i.e. the toilet is a good distance away and his struggle to flush with his feet, about as firmly as you can get in a wet shower and his body dangerously streaching the whole length of the bathroom to reach the flusher

do any of you good people have some sort of funny thing or ritual that must be carried out in order for you to live some sort of god forsaken normal life?

I used to live with a guy who would happily eat on semi-clean or dirty plates/ knives, but would clean the forks for about 30 minutes before eating with them.

Oh, and there's a chap down the road with a garage full of newspaper dating back about 15-20 years. He's building a shed for more storage. He is quite, quite creepy.

wow, that is kinda freaky.

I have a friend who brushes her teeth 7 or 8 times a day.

beckham also has to have his fridge stocked with an even number of pepsi cans arranged in a square, if there are any left over they go in a cupboard.

My girlfriend checks she's set her alarm every night about 4 or 5 times

I've never been diagnosed, but I am pretty sure I am OCD.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a psychiatric disorder, more specifically, an anxiety disorder. OCD is manifested in a variety of forms, but is most commonly characterized by a subject's obsessive (repetitive, distressing, intrusive) thoughts and related compulsions (tasks or rituals) which attempt to neutralize the obsessions.

-wikipedia

I get both of those. I do have those kinds of thoughts, and I will compulsively close doors and turn off lights, etc.

ok, here are a couple.

i have a light switch in my bathroom that has three switches: one for lights, one for the vent, and one for heat. i usually turn the first and second on simultaneously with a flick of the side of my left hand, and if i somehow fail to turn them on (or off) simultaneously i have to turn them on, off, on, off, on, off, on, off, on, off -- five times, and if i screw up on one of those i have to start over until i get it right five times in a row. i just discovered yesterday that i smashed the switch partially into the wall by doing this.

also, i can't touch doorknobs in public places with my bare hands -- i always have to use the sleeve or bottom of my shirt to open it. and i can't touch the flusher in public toilets either -- i have to kick it (or use my elbow, in the case of a urinal).

let's see . . . i can't set alarm clocks or microwaves to multiples of 5 minutes/seconds, unless they have no such option (my new microwave only works in multiples of 15 seconds, which drove me mad for months).

when i turn off the television i have to set it to channel 3, then push up to channel 4, then turn it off.

i have to rinse out anything that held food or drink (except water), even if i'm going to throw it away.

i could go on, but i can't think of anything else now.

It's actually a lot more sensible to use your elbow/ feet for public toilets. I hate wearing t-shirts in an office for this very reason (no sleeves for handles).

I used to have OCD with washing my hands. I did it so obsessively that I got dermatitis- really dry skin that itched, flaked and broke so that kinda kickstarted me into being normal again.

i don't have any, you weirdos!

no toilet habits?

when i exercise i have to do the same number of everything. i look at everything clockwise before i touch it and other general stuff like that.

I think I've told this one before, but insofar as speed allows, every word I speak/think, I type out imperceptibly with my fingers. I also simultaneously count the letters in the word to a 5, 7, 10, or 14 beat rhythm. This has lent me the absolutely useless ability to instantaneously know how many letters are in nearly any given word, on mere sight.

If I'm locking a door, I must turn the lock until it can go no further and hold it there for 5 seconds. I do this with oven knobs as well.

If I'm setting an alarm, I have to stare at the time for 5 seconds, and hold the switch in the 'auto' position for same.

I have to be chewing gum every waking moment.

I have to apply lotion within thirty seconds of washing my hands. If I wait longer, I have to wash them again.

When I tinkle, I have to wipe not once, but twice.

I wash my hands alot at work. Probably once every 10 minutes or something. I brush my teeth more than 10 times a day. I have to drink coffee when I'm smoking or I won't smoke. I wear socks at all times. I iron my t-shirts and jeans. All of my cds are in alphabetical order(all 300+ of them) and seperated by official releases and pirated disks. Everything in my room is labeled.

I'm not that bad.

Everyone has it! I live on 4th floor and when i'm using stairs to get to it, I always count stairs, but i'm using different language for each floor. And i've been doing that for years, but only few months ago I realized that was some kind of ocd becouse my exgirl had it big time! On the street, she counts women wearing orange clothes. While crossing over pedestrian zones, she walks only on those white lines and when she was making salad, she was putting stuff in it in alphabetical order. But all in all, she wasn't weird. A lot... So, I really think that everybody has ocd, but you need someone else to point at it. Or, test yourself: http://psychcentral.com/ocdquiz.htm
my score: 10

...and you can alwasy use something based on clonazepams & benzodiazepins to make ocd "go away".

and if someone lives on 8th floor or higher i have to use elevator. lack of diffrent languages...

what about when you take a shower or go swimming?

Huh....I don't really have any weird habits like the above. I am starting to think that I'm the weird one considering the amount of people with odd OCD things.

I have got a friend who won't eat anything that's red though.

NO, i have no OCd, im cool and you all suck mad ass at like.

however my half sister has it really badly and cannot function at all without medications.

i dont have anything like that.

i won't get out of bed in the morning if its 7.01, i have to wait untill 7.05, but then if i fall asleep and wake up at 7.06 i have to wait untill 7.10. it goes on like that.
im also a neat freak, everything has to be in its correct place or i can't concentrait or do anything or sleep.

i used to be alot worse, whn i was 11 i had an actual proper OCD, everything had to be equil, so if i did something on one side of my body liked waved my arm in the air i had to do it on the other side so that i would be equil.
that was fucking annoying, but i couldent stop doing it. i still do it sometimes, like if i tap one foot on the floor 4 times i do it with the other one too, or if i turn around in one direction i will turn around back in the other direction after so that it is equil. im no way near as bad as i was though.

Under no cirumstances do I ever swim. I take them off to get in the shower but they are the first clothing I put on once I get out.

You wash yr hands you turn the page, you turn the page you wash yr hands.

The only weird thing I have is I don't like using other peoples bars of soap, I think it's gross. So I have my own bar of soap at home and have to force myself to wash my hands with other peoples when I'm away from home.
I don't even think it's that weird.

that's odd; i'm exactly the opposite. i won't get out of bed on multiples of 5 (assuming i have an accurate digital clock in view).

i also won't eat anything that turns my tongue a different color, and if i do so without knowing it will stain, i spend the next several hours trying to brush and rinse it off my tongue. (i just started eating blueberries a couple weeks ago when i discovered that fresh blueberries wouldn't do that like the kind in pies.)

thank god for some sanity!

Says the boy in makeup and a naval uniform.

dude if some rich gay chinese guy paid for you to go to paris and dress up as a sailor while he took photos, you'd do it.... wouldn't you?

I thought that was a volunteer gig for you.

nah, i got paid. why don't you dress up as a sailor and post some pics for us here?

I did, but you still owe me that pack of cigarettes.

you never sent me the photos we agreed on!

for the sailor photos and the mangina though i'm sure we can make an arrangement.

I do the typing thing as well...certain words and phrases moreso than others. One of those is whenever anyone starts sentences with "The right thing to do..." and then I have to at least envision how the entire sentence looks being typed on a keyboard. There are other phrases, but this one came to mind, because my mom is always beginning sentences that way.

I will also for the most part refrain from engaging in activities if I foresee that particular activity ending in death or injury. Most of these are the result of hearing about someone else dying in the same manner, but others are just ridiculous. I won't drink from glass soda bottles while riding in a car because I think that if I do, we will get in a wreck and if I'm not killed instantly, all of my teeth will be knocked out because the crash would've happened while I was taking a drink from the glass bottle.

My dad always leaves the newspaper and other mail on the stove. I move the stuff whenever I see it this way.

Excessive hand-washing. Especially after petting the dog, which is all the time.

I have a cell phone now, and my brother was calling someone on it once, and instead of pressing the "End" button and then closing the phone, he just skipped right to closing the phone. Every time I see someone do this, it makes me cringe, and if it's at all possible I have to check the phone to make sure it really has been "hung up," even though I know it has and I'm just being stupid.

When using a calculator, I have to press the clear button at least four times before I can punch in more numbers.

The windows in my room have to be opened at the same level. Usually they stay closed because it is particularly hard to do this.

There are more, but most of them are so similar because they involve checking things multiple times to make sure that they were turned off, or whatever it may be in each case.

EDIT:
One thing that resulted in me getting made fun of in math class was when I had to trade homework papers with a friend of mine to grade, and she saw that I had written the most basic of formulas in the margins of my paper (I think the one she pointed out read 9 x 5 = 45). In math, I have to write everything out.

I'm now looking at that online OCD test, and apparently re-reading things is bad. This, in general, is very bad.

I have tons of OCD things. I've become tired of stressing about it and embraced it.

Usually if I do something like scratch the right side of my head, I have to do the left. Then I have to start with the left first and then the right. Then do that whole process inversed. And I keep doing that until either I lose track, or it runs the risk of interfering socially. Though that's almost completely gone. It used to drive me up the wall because I couldn't stop.

I can't set things like the TV volume or alarm clock at anything other than multiples of five, the opposite of the other person that said that.

Someone mentioned walking on the lines of a crosswalk. I always do that, but never thought of it as OCD until I read that. I walk on cracks too, or in between them. Whichever suits me at the time, I guess. Never thought about it.

When I read I always have to stop at the beginning of the first new paragraph of the page on the left, unless it's would severely ruin the flow of the passage. Then I have to keep reading. I've lightened up on that, too, though.

I always have to wash my hands periodicly when handling a book. The feel of certain kinds of paper with any amount of sweat on my hands sends chills down my spine.

Sometimes I can't stop playing Tetris in my head. Dunno if it's OCD, but that's fucking obnoxious. My mind always tries to get it to come out in a completely flat surface. It never does.

The absolute worst one, though, is sometimes, if it crosses my mind, when I look at a digital clock I get a really strong urge to keep looking at it until it changes. So I feel stuck sitting there staring at the damn clock trying not to blink. I fucking hate that.

There's probably a few more, but I can't think of them.

whoa, i do the same thing. and invariably the clock won't have a second counter and it'll be at the very beginning of the minute when you start staring . . . or at least it will feel like it.


yeah, i have this weird habit of sticking my fingernail in between my teeth when i'm driving and i always feel incredibly apprehensive about it because i think that if i ever crash my fingernail will go into my gums and cause massive bleeding or lost teeth or something.

Exactly. And now that I'm thinking about it I have to avoid looking at clocks.

The volume on the TV absolutely cannot be set at 13.

I do the clock thing too. It's annoying, and I do it with analog clocks as well (watching an entire rotation, and if I don't look away right when the seconds hand hits the 12, I have to watch it all over again).