Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

It's not an enormous secret that I suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. My subtype, for anyone who wants to know, is "Symmetry and Exactness Compulsions". This means that to allay worry and anxiety and stress, I shift things, including my body, things near me and things relative to me. Frequently it involves symmetry, or at least the alignment of things to a specific structure.

I do it incredibly precisely; when struck by the urge to move my mouse in a specific line, my compulsion requires pixel accuracy, and while reading or watching something I require flawless attention, and symmetry requires precise alignment. Obviously the human body cannot support this level of precision full-time, which is fine, since I don't do it full time. "Whenever the mood strikes me" is an apt way to put it; when I feel the compulsion, I do it. I'm very habituated to just trying to execute whatever silly thing I feel I must do, since the alternative certainly feels much worse; it tends to be anything from specific consequences (usually silly and impossible or improbable, but negative and often scary) to generalized feelings of dread and worry.

I worry a lot. Any and all anxiety and worry is taken by OCD, an anxiety disorder, and multiplied manyfold over to reach a level totally out of proportion to what it is. It is frequently unrecognizable in the end, or adds to the obsession I have in my head at the time. To keep this down, compulsions are created and hopefully executed, though failures simply add to the anxiety and stress thanks to their usually negative consequences for failure (in my head, of course, but still negative nonetheless) and continue on with making more compulsions. This makes stopping the cycle devilishly tough to defeat and incredibly draining; the activities take up huge amounts of time as well, causing both problems with keeping a schedule up (try adding five to ten minutes of useless action to everything you do and see how much it piles up) and problems with energy, consuming surprisingly high amounts of calories (lose 5 pounds on the OCDiet!). Oh, and the exertion wears you down too. Good luck with those eyes straining themselves and those joints you'll be pushing every bit of precision out of to complete every compulsion!

But otherwise life is great.

90% of all blogs go unread, you know...

Where do I begin?

My name is not really relevant. Perhaps a later post will contain it, but this one will not.

I was born in the late 1980s in a hospital in Michigan, USA. I do not know the exact time of day, though I am assured it was not a bad day to be born, even if my mother had to be cut open to retrieve me safely. Fortunately I do not recall those events, though my mother assures me it was painful and worth every moment of it to ensure I was delivered successfully. I apparently fought my own battle to live, wailing and pounding tiny fists and being carted off immediately to be taken via helicopter to a more complex facility where my various health issues could be treated. I survived (I have been told my issues would have killed me not even a decade ago) and was given over to be taken home in my mother and father's care.

It is now a few months over 21 years since then. The wailing little baby now sits up in bed, types in a blog post creation form and may in fact be beyond the point of "mature". Time, actions and words will tell.