I Know You Have Had It...!!!

Check these things guys: while walking through the college corridor, you make sure that you walk through the tiles on the left side only.... while climbing the office staircase, you can’t help counting the steps every single time..... after locking your door while going out, you have to lock and unlock it atleast thrice, otherwise you just cant leave the place.... after folding your blanket every morning, you keep it exactly at the same place on the bed..... everyone of you have or had such kind of things atleast once in your life...right????

Dahlings..!!! these are mild or different versions of what is called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or OCD. Now dont start thinking that you are a freaking psycho! Such things happen with almost or literally everyone. But to what level is the question. Now before we start dissecting ourselves, dont you guys want to know what this OCD is??? I know the answer is an emphatic “ya baby!!!”

Researches and statistics say that this condition usually happens after a peculiar or unique incident in someone’s life or family. My own researches have proved that the most common cause is a death in the family. After such happenings, a person develops certain beliefs and almost all his thoughts and actions are related to that belief from then on. One develops certain obsessions... and to overcome those obsessions, he has to compell him to do certain weird things. I know now you are confused enough to turn into a psycho just by reading me. Dont worry my sweet ones... just to make the water crystal clear, let me put it through an example... my own example....

My grandma passed away when i was 12. On the night of her funeral (‘cremation’ to be ritualistically exact!), i had a dream in which my freshly dead grandma appeared and beckoned me to go with her and aslo urged me to call my family along. Gosh...!!! the old woman was not ready to leave me even when she was in the other world. But guys, it was not at all a joke then. And started feeling that i am the saviour of my family and they are under constant death threat. i quite involuntarily..without any kind of plans assumed that each finger of my right palm is a family member of mine – thumb my mom, inderx myself, middle my father, ring my younger bro and little my youngest bro. If i accidentally touched a wall or a table with my right thumb, then i had this feeling “ohh my gawddd.. something is gonna happen to ma mom... she might die!!!” so, to overcome this obsession, i touch that wall or table with all my other fingers so as to neutralize the effect of my mother’s ‘immediate danger’. I will wind up my personal case history with one more example. One day while i was cutting my nails, i accidentally cut my ring fingertip. Suddenly i thought “holy goodness!! My bro is gonna bleed to death!!!” i was so freaked out.. you guys wanna know what i did??? I cut all the rest of my fingertips...!!!

OCD cases are divided into two main groups : ‘washers’ and ‘counters’.

In simple words, washers are cleanliness freaks. They want everything exxxxtttra clean. You know what..?? ma dad is a washer!!! He brushes his teeth for an hour and a half. Then he cleans the bathroom for one hour. Then he cleans the lux soap with pears soap. And then baths with that lux soap for atleast two hours. Cleaners as such dont create any problems for themselves or others but in some cases, it worsens. They slowly start cleaning the floors..windows..celing.... terrace...and at last they imagine that even the air is dirty and try to clean the air....in vain...!!!

Then there are the counters. They need to count everything they see. The flight of stairs they climb, the number of tiles in the room they live or work or go to, the number of people in a hall etc etc.. but it can worsen too. Some of them count the number of pebbles in their courtyard, every single day before they leave for work... some of them have to count the leaves of the tree in front of their home or office before they start to work!!! Without counting them they just cannot do anything else.. how terrible, isnt it??? It is rumoured that the handsome seductive Dracula was/(is???) a counter!!! If he comes to attack you, you just throw a handfull of sand at him..he wont move an inch from there without counting all the sand grains.. but the sad part is that he is so smart that he will count them all in a flicker of an eyelash!!! Intriguing huh???

OCD has always interested me and i have done my own amount of research on it. And believe me there are some real weird and funny yet interesting obsessions and compulsions...

One of my friends, lets call him Mr thinkalottt, has this absurd urge to abuse all the gods while he passes by any temple. He has to stop in front of the gate and imagining the deity in his mind abuse it to the core!!!! His OCD just doesnt stop there. Every day before he brushes he has to blink his eyes many times before he looks at himself in the mirror. This blinking obsession went on to get severe. At last he has to continuously blink before doing anything. He used to say,”i went for a movie yesterday and before the climax started i had to blink my eyes in order to see the climax clearly. But by the time i satisfactorily finished my blinking, the movie was over!!!” Apparently he blinked while he was in his bike at the traffic signal and in order to see the green signal properly he started blinking and all the passengers had to blow the sound horn to push him forward because he was still there blinking and the signal was green for a long time. At last he started the bike with closed eyes itself because his blinking was not satisfactory and he bumped into a car!!! Gosh..so much for OCD...!!!

Psychiatrist have a lot of medications to control your thoughts. But i believe the best medicine to get over our OCD is self-counselling. We have to somehow make us belive that nothing is going to happen if we dont act out our obsessions. And have to try to overcome it. And believe me guys, i have been successful all the times i have really tried.

If you wanna watch OCD on screen, go get a dvd of the movie “As good as it gets”. It gives a wonderful and interesting depiction of the condition. And ofcourse the performance is stupendous.

Though i am over my childhood OCDs, some items still persist. I keep the volume of my tv only in multiples of three. I need to remove the shoes from my left foot first and then only my right foot gets my attention. And i have to count all my favourite pants everyday.....

Thank god i dont feel like counting the leaves of my favourite plant. Because it is a freaking tamarid tree!!!

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_CQdddM_9pfM/TTxEMNMBdOI/AAAAAAAAAA4/RBwj0hfOZMw/s1600/OCD.jpg