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OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) is a disorder characterized by constant thoughts that produce anxiety. The afflicted believe the anxiety can be reduced by repetitive behaviors and/or compulsions. Constant washing of the hands, flipping light switches hundreds of times, opening and closing doors and containers relentlessly, and the list is long. Sometimes this disorder is often confused with people who are not truly OCD sufferers but rather are overly meticulous and perfectionists. This is often labeled OCD Personality Disorder and there are many related conditions.
Sometimes we use OCD to describe a boss who picks on us relentlessly, a coworker who is particularly neat and tidy, or a neighbor whose lawn is something one would see in Sunset Magazine. We most often label this disorder incorrectly because people who suffer from true OCD are often paralyzed by it and can barely function. People like the picky boss or fussy neighbor are often simply quirky or just odd. Or they have just a little OCD! Sometimes it’s in a good way like the person who maintains a lovely garden on a daily basis yet actually participates in other life activities. Sometimes we describe someone as “OCD perfect” because we ourselves are slobs.
Like most disorders there are many variations and levels of intensity. A wonderful TV show entitled Monk spent eight years depicting a person with severe OCD. Of course Adrian Monk, portrayed by Tony Shalhoub, was beautifully written. Early on in the series I read that many people with OCD loved the way Monk was handled by the writers and the actor.
I know many people with meticulous/perfectionist personality traits. I’m one of them. My behaviors do not rise to the level of bona fide OCD but as I’ve gotten older I have noticed an increase in my desire to have things “right.” And guess what? I know many people just like me.
I do not live in a pristine home environment. In fact, I have cats and dogs and my home is like a zoo on most days. Dog fur, cat fur, dog/cat “accidents,” dribbling of water and food, etc. Adrian Monk could not even visit my home. I also have a severe storage problem and I have way too many things scattered around my house. Over the years each time I’ve moved it’s been to a smaller house. Though I tossed as much as possible prior to each move many things are too important to me to dump.
I begin every day with my first obsession: making my bed. The minute my feet hit the floor I HAVE to make my bed. On days when I have an early morning appointment or something has happened (ants) and I don’t make the bed, I can’t wait until I finish whatever has stopped me from making my bed so that I can get it made. Further, I have to make it a certain way. If I don’t, I see it all day as I pass by the room and eventually remake it. Likewise, though I have way too many things scattered around my tiny home, I make sure on a daily basis that everything is at least neat and tidy. If I work on something and it begins to take on too many spaces I have to stop and put it back in some kind of order. I have to. I don’t just want to. I have to.
The next thing I do in the morning after the bed is made is head to the kitchen and make coffee and pet food. This process takes about 30 minutes. Before I can make coffee and pet food I have to check my entire counter surface for ant invasions. My neighborhood has a problem with ants almost year round. Once I ascertain I do not have an overnight invasion, I do the morning coffee and pet food routine. After that I have to completely wipe down the counters for fear of an invasion while I’m away from the kitchen. After the kitchen routine I hit the bathroom for dressing and teeth.
I no longer have dental insurance so I have a dental routine that would make my dentist envious. It takes about 20 minutes. If I can’t do this for whatever reason I feel a bit of anxiety because I’m so paranoid about keeping my teeth in perfect condition. I believe many seniors do this just because we know that our tooth days are numbered. A dentist can only help us to a point.
After the dental and dressing routine I come into my office and read and write emails to family and friends and check the online news stories. At this point my morning ritual/routine is complete and I have a sense of well-being. Or it’s my first cup of coffee, which by the way, I’m very particular about. If any of these morning routines get out of order I feel out of sorts all day. It’s that sense of well-being I seek so that I can have a productive day. By “productive day” that could mean simply sitting and reading all day or watching movies. But first---the morning routine/ritual must take place. Several times a day I make a trip through the house checking everything out.
It’s weird because I’m the only one here except for my pets. It’s unlikely they will move something but I feel compelled to check out the neatness level just the same. The truly weird thing is I often DO find something I missed in one of my earlier rounds. How can that be? Can we be slightly OCD and also myopic?
My semi-OCD behavior began in my office/marriage/children/divorce/night school years. I was on the run 24/7 trying to keep my life in order. When I realized I wasn’t accomplishing what I needed to accomplish I started being organized with the help of self-help books on the topic, in particular, How to Take Control of Your Time and Your Life by Alan Lakein. Of all the books I’ve read on the topic, and I think I may have read them all, his suggestions work the best for me. As a result I have been able to accomplish many things I’ve always wanted to do in life and all the while raised kids and worked full time and went to night school and wrote a book and bought a house, retire earlier than I thought I would, etc. Without being organized I’m not sure I’d be where I am today.
One way to do this for me was to keep everything as neat and tidy and organized as possible. At work I kept my desk so neat that coworkers often made jokes about my lack of anything to do. When I had something new to do I had to have my desk in order and I would clear it of all other tasks and neatly stack other work in piles far away from my current task. I currently do the same thing. I have a home office and in this office I do a multitude of tasks related to my small craft business, my book writing, and personal projects.
This is a small room and my “stuff” doesn’t fit well in here. Therefore, I spend a good amount of time each day organizing and reorganizing my work area as I go from task to task. I also do multiple tasks per day but just a little on each task. This way though it will take me longer to finish all the things I want to finish in a month or a few weeks, I will finish them because I work on them a little each day. That’s a major principle of Alan Lakein’s book. What struck me most was that if you do not touch the task at all because it’s huge and overwhelming it will sit there and never get done. If you do just 15 minutes on that task a day, without fail, it WILL get done.
I wish I could just launch into a new task without the hassle of completely putting away the other task, but I just can’t do it. Something inside me makes me keep things OCD neat. That’s the phrase we all use today to explain someone’s behavior when they operate the way I do. Yet, if someone who stopped by viewed my office they would think it was messy! It isn’t messy but it is crowded. It’s in perfect order and everything is in its own container and in its own position. It’s organized chaos. It could also use a good dusting.
Oddly enough, because I’m so organized I am also spontaneous. I found it hard to be spontaneous when I had to come back to a mess or a list of things undone so gradually over time I started organizing my life in the early morning hours before work. That way if something came up later in the day I knew everything at home was in order and I could go somewhere. People with any OCD traits, however small, can’t be spontaneous unless they are organized. I have friends who could work all day, go out after work, go to work the next day, go out after work, and so on for many days. Then they spent the weekend entertaining or going out or going away. I’d have to be placed in a padded cell. After many days of their not attending to mail, bills, groceries, and laundry, they would complain for days and days about how tired they were trying to catch up. But then they would start all over again. Procrastinators and OCD folks don’t “get” each other.
I also have issues with food preparation. Mostly it’s because of the anthill I live on but it’s also because I have pets and pet fur and dander floats through the air no matter how often I vacuum or dust. So before I begin meal prep I do a kitchen cleaning. As I prepare the food nothing ever touches the counter tops. Everything is done on cutting boards, different boards for each new food. As soon as the meal is done the trash is taken outside. I am a fanatic with food cleanliness and storage and keeping the kitchen clean. I do this for health purposes but also because of the aforementioned ant problem. This habit has now truly grown into a huge undertaking to simply prepare a sandwich. When I prepare a large meal it’s aerobic.
Errands also produce a certain amount of anxiety in me. When I know I have to run errands I check my ongoing comprehensive list of things I need (lists that I keep in each room so that if I run out of something in my office I put it on the list sitting on my desk otherwise I’ll forget—that’s not OCD, it’s being 64), places to go, and in the order to get there. Sometimes I’ll start on my way only to discover that I’m thirty minutes too early and the store isn’t open (Beverly’s, Michael’s, etc.). For a person who shops from a list this presents a problem. I either have to wait or go to the next place on the list and then come back. That drives me nuts. It also turns an hour’s worth of errands into sometimes two hours. I like to excuse this behavior by saying I try to reduce my trips and use less gas. Yeah, right.
As to shopping, I never ever go shopping without a list. I don’t hop in the car and head to the stores. I also never run out of anything. Now that’s totally OCD and I know it. On the rare occasion I do get close to running out of something I start planning other errands I could possibly run at the same time just to pick up milk. Do I need gas? Do I have to go to the post office? Dry cleaners? Is there anything else I can add to the trip on the way to getting milk? Sometimes I do without rather than screw up my system.
People reading this may think that I’m being silly because what I’ve listed isn’t really all that obsessive or compulsive, just organized. But there’s more and some of it I don’t feel like revealing. It’s not scary but a little absurd and even I know that. But what I’ve sort of glossed over and will now admit is this: it BOTHERS me when my bed is unmade. It BOTHERS me if things aren’t put away and in their place. It BOTHERS me to run errands in a haphazard manner. The result of things like this bothering me is that it makes me overly organized for the remainder of the day. It’s like if one area has failed me that morning then the rest of the day I have to make up for it. And that’s a little OCD in my book. Maybe it’s a lot. I don’t want to know.
www.sharonstrawhandgarner.com
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