Quit Saying You Have OCD
Wanting to be clean and organized doesn’t make necessarily mean you have the mental disorder
The Official Definition
OCD. It’s become a buzzword in today’s society of self-proclaimed doctors and expert Google “researchers”. But what is OCD? And how did mental illnesses such as OCD & being bipolar become terms of describing certain quirks? Let’s start off with the official definition of OCD based on the DSM V1, which stands for the Diagnostical and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Recurrent and persistent thoughts, urges, or images that are experienced, at some time during the disturbance, as intrusive, unwanted, and that in most individuals cause marked anxiety or distress. The obsessions or compulsions are time-consuming (e.g., take more than 1 hour per day) or cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.
Symptoms
Symptoms2 may vary, since the person having this disorder can have an obsession over one or multiple things/themes, such as:
fear of contamination, especially from objects that others have touched
having doubts and having difficulty accepting uncertainty, having unwanted thoughts of fear and anxiety over the thought
intense stress when things aren’t orderly or facing a certain way
having a strict routine and demanding reassurance that said strict routine was followed
hand washing until skin becomes raw or red
Misconceptions
After reading this, you’re probably thinking,
Well, I don’t have it that bad.
Then my answer to you is then there’s a great chance you may not have it. Because the bottom line is being a perfectionist doesn’t equate to having OCD.
Having OCD means that your quality of life is severely affected, to the point where your personal relationships become strained.
When I was 13, my aunt passed away from cancer. Because my family was living paycheck to paycheck, some of the furniture we had was actually from that aunt who passed away. I found myself walking on eggshells around, her abiding by her strict rules of:
avoiding certain spots at my grandpa’s house and my own house since the furniture from my aunt touched those spots
having to record every single time she cleaned
remember all the times she wiped down and deep-cleaned every single spot
And these are just to name a few. I haven’t even begun on what I had to endure if I accidentally broke one of her rules. She had so many rules that sometimes a few slipped from my memory.
Having to deal with this during my teen years on top of shielding my younger brother from gaining a full understanding of what was going on so that he could continue growing up and being a kid, having to explain what was going on to my dad in easy-to-understand terms, as well as keeping it under wraps from extended family was what I had to face when my mom had OCD.
So when I hear people say “I have OCD,” I ask them to elaborate, but I kid you not, most of the time I find out that they just like to clean and be clean, with no signs of that mentality negatively altering the relationships around them.
Having it downplayed to just perfectionism, isn’t only wrong; it’s insulting.
It downplays the experiences and the trauma that comes with having OCD, or any mental disorder, such as being bipolar. It invalidates the realness and the consequences of having the disease, not just for the afflicted but for the people close to the afflicted as well.
And saying that “there are different levels” of OCD when really you just like to clean and be clean doesn’t really help your cause either.
Yes, there are different severity levels. But being clean and liking to be clean, being a perfectionist, and still being able to maintain positive relationships around you DOES NOT even constitute having a “light version” of OCD. There’s just no such thing as a version of OCD where treatment isn’t needed.
Diagnosis & treatment
But then say you do suspect you have a light version of the disorder. Try booking an appointment with your physician asap since symptoms tend to worsen over time or when stress levels increase.
If you do get diagnosed with OCD, understand that in most cases, it’s a lifelong disorder; there is no cure. The treatments that are available, psychotherapy and medication, only help to manage the symptoms so that they aren’t overwhelming.3 Other treatment options can be found here.
In conclusion…
Most of the time, when people say they have OCD, it’s out of ignorance of the severity and sometimes debilitating effects of the disorder. I hope that this article can help shed some light on how saying “I have OCD” isn’t exactly something you can flex or throw around to show your perfectionistic tendencies since my intention in writing this is to increase awareness surrounding mental health disorders casually and the consequences it has.
DSM V official full definition of OCD: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519704/table/ch3.t13/#:~:text=anxiety%20or%20distress.-,1.,worries%20about%20real%2Dlife%20problems
OCD symptoms: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/obsessive-compulsive-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20354432
Diagnosing & treating OCD: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/obsessive-compulsive-disorder/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20354438