What is OCD?
OCD ,Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, is an mental disorder that makes your life hell. The predominant features of Ocd symptoms and signs are doubt and guilt.
In the past OCD was not so popular and very few knew about it. But today the disorder spread so rapidly ( it is not a contagious disease ) that the world had to wake up and take necessary measures to protect ourselves from it. The first requirement in fighting any illness is recognizing it’s presence. So, we need to know how to identify the symptoms of OCD.
Here are 7 ocd signs :
1.hand washing :
from our childhood we were taught to wash our hands before meal with detergent to prevent disease causing germs from entering our body.
It’s quite natural.
But when it becomes excess, that means washing hands 20 to 30 times a day, then we may need to review our habit.
some people do not shake hands with others, from the fear of getting contaminated. If you are spending lot of money on anti septic lotions, hand sanitizers then there is probability to have OCD.
2. Checking :
It is quite natural to check cylinder knobs, windows, doors while going to sleep or going away from home. but while watching a movie in theater and a little doubt enters into your mind whether you turned off the gas knob or not, and you could not concentrate on the movie any more, and start thinking about it, then you may have OCD.
3. Counting, reading certain words, writing :
Some Ocd sufferers do every activity in a set of numbers. for example an OCD sufferer is very fond of number 3. He does everything in set of threes, that means if he had to mix two spoons of sugar in tea, he mixes 3 spoons.( cleverly he takes one full spoon, one half spoon, another half spoon. ) if they had to write 22, what they do is, they add a zero before that and write three numbers as 022.
They may not like a number, so they constantly try to avoid that number.
while walking on tiles floor some people keep one foot in each box of tiles carefully. They never touch the line between two boxes.
some people avoid some words and use alternate words instead of them, without any particular reason.
4. organization, symmetry :
some people suffering from OCD may have this organization habit. For example ,they try to keep everything on their table in a specified manner like keeping a pen and pencil perpendicular ( 90 degrees ) to each other. When this organisation is disturbed by other person, they quickly change their position to as usual. They strongly feel any change in the order may cause harm to them or their loved ones.
5. Fear of violence :
Some suffer constantly from the fear of violence,
that is fear of,
1. harming themselves,
2. harming others.
OCD sufferers are afraid of harming themselves or others intentionally or unknowingly. Some of them try to keep away from knives, blades and other harmful objects.
some OCD sufferers check their car tires to verify whether they have unknowingly hit any one.
6. Unwanted thoughts of religion, GOD and other people.
Some people get blasphemous unwanted thoughts about GOD and religion. Unable to control this, they feel ashamed and guilty.
This could be a serious issue. since many people ask the help of GOD while suffering from OCD. At this time if they have these kind of unwanted thoughts about GOD, instead of getting help from GOD, they feel guilty and morally weakened. They worry, they may be punished by GOD.
7. Hoarding :
Some OCD sufferers collect trivial things which are not useful to them anymore. These collections include news papers, pens etc. Whenever any other person finds it and advises to get rid of them, they just smile and conveniently divert the topic and keep their collection forever and decide not to show any other person any more.
Many of us collect little things which remind us sweet memories from our childhood or college life. That can not be called OCD since every small thing is associated with a beautiful memory.
Here in OCD, we don’t find any such memories.