AGDee |
05-26-2009 11:11 PM |
OCD is one of those spectrum types of disorders, where people fall somewhere on the continuum of either so severe that it affects every aspect of their lives to so minor that nobody would notice. I have some tendencies. I have rules for eating m&ms. I dislike having two different colors of m&ms in my mouth at the same time yet, I prefer to eat two at a time, one on each side of my mouth. If I get stuck without pairs at the end of a bag, then I can eat colors that consist of each other. Like, I can eat a red and orange because red and yellow MAKE orange, so there is already red in the orange. I know, weird! I am capable of eating different colors at the same time, but it will bug me. I like things that are symmetrical. If things are asymmetrical or off kilter, it bugs me. I don't like my food to touch on my plate, like meat touching veggies. And, similarly, I usually don't care for things like casseroles, stews or soups because everything is tossed in there together. Somehow though, it's ok for Mexican food and Italian food (like lasagne) for all of it to be together. Why? I don't know. When I'm feeling stressed, I clean. It helps me feel like things are under control if everything is neatly in it's place. There IS a place for everything. My co-workers tease me about some of this stuff and that's cool. I think it's funny too. I'm not so OCD that it affects my life in any way and if I don't follow my own rules, I don't have panic attacks, just a nagging feeling that all is not right. You could compare this to the people who can never throw anything away and their houses end up condemned or who wash their hands until the skin is raw and they bleed. Or the ones who pull out all of their body hair.
My brother has some strange ones too. He has a serving spoon with a yellow handle and one with a green handle. If he's serving corn, he uses the yellow spoon. Green veggies get the green spoon. It's a small thing, but he always does it that way and he doesn't think it's "right" if you do it differently. Those are the kinds of things that are minor and don't really affect your life.
Haven't seen the show, probably won't. After so many years working in mental health, that show and Intervention sound like watching "work" to me and I don't feel a need to engage in that!
|