Ever hear of OCD? it's short for obsessive compulsive disorder which is a tendency of people to either do repetitive behaviors or repetitive thoughts. They don't know why they do them and sometimes they can't control what they do and that is the horrible part. An analogy I've heard is a water facet that has been turned on and you can't turn it off - only this time the water is thoughts or compulsive behavior. DS here has a support forum for that.

I have OCD although it appears a far milder case than other people I have met who have not worked in years because they are so bothered by it. at least I have been bothered by it in the past but never lost or quit a job because of it. However, it did create stress in my marriage.

My OCD behaviors started in grade school - 8th grade where it was not full fledged yet. OCD behavior can appear to others as stupid and my first behavior was stupid. It was making periods at the ends of my sentences really huge - not just a dot but a big filled in o shipped blob. But my OCD behaviors really went into high gear in high school - my freshman year - where a had routines I did that took up a lot of time in my life. One particular routine I remember stemmed from the fact one night I saw a spider running around the ceiling in my bedroom. It would come out of a hole and if you went by it it would duck back into its hole. So I created a routine of getting up on top of my bed every night and checking every corner of my bedroom for spiders. Of course I could see everything from the floor but so what? I had this desire to do this routine and I didnt know why. I just knew I had to do it. There were others, of course, like combing my hair a specific number of times and other precise repetitive behaviors. I was so busy with these behaviors and even got very fast doing them but I did not elminate them. I reduced them to less than before but did not totally eliminate them.

Then I met my ex at a job and started dating her in 1990. She wanted a life with me and I still had these routines and so I knew there was no way I could adapt them to a new place I would live with her - so I seriously spazzed out and was depressed as these routines were so much a part of me. So i ended up at a place called Charter Hospital where I stayed for 3 weeks learning I could live without the routines. I left a few thousand dollars in debt but paid it off, got back with my girlfriend, and we got married. you could think that was an investment on my future.

At that time I thought OCD was nothing but doing routines and nobody taught me that there was a second variety called "pure O" See, I had a tendency to worry a lot and I would later find out that worrying can be an obsessive form of a behavior called "checking." If you are bothered by something you have the desire to keep checking whether it is ok. Obsessively worrying is a form of checking something by continuously thinking about it. I guess for me I often can think of a solution to a problem after thinking about it for awhile and maybe one can obsessively worry in hopes that thinking about something continuously will change whatever you are stressing about. But a person doesn't want to continue thinking about it but can't stop thinking about it. And you lose sleep and have to take medicine to keep from thinking about something continuously.

After going to a support group the same year my ex left I learned that there are some ways of coping with obsessive thoughts. The cognitive method is a way of sort of arguing with your obsessive thoughts and, in the end, you are using your intellectual side to challenge your emotional side. You ask it things like "is there any basis for your fears" or "are your fears valid?" and by doing that you can calm your obsessive fears. I have done that a few times after learning about it and become good at it - not an expert by any means but I guess I have to say I know what I am doing.

My big obsessive problem in the past was starting an illogical chain in my mind of what would happen if something occured. For instance, if A happened then I would think B, C, and D would happen as well and I would have the obsessive need to worry about A which I could not stop and I learned was a form of checking. For instance, I could start a chain of thinking like this: "if I get in an argument with my wife, then she will leave me and I will never meet anyone again and I will be totally alone and be said and not be able to function at my job and will lose my job and then not be able to afford to pay my mortgage and end up homeless and then die" That B, C, and D will happen because A happens is not true, but to an obsessive person this doesn't matter because you begin thinking about this stuff you cannot stop. But I have learned how to use the cognitive technique to challenge myself when I begin these illogical thought streams and have learned to interrupt them.

I would later find out that a lot of my fears were the result of my birth order, but I won't get into that here.

so does anybody want to know more about this? I think we all have our "crosses to bear." Some have perhaps one of 100 different maladies. This one is mine. i got nuthin' (except for divorce) and I guess I'm lucky. But having a cross to bear makes it a lot easier to help others carry theirs - which i guess is a gift in disguise.