Manic-depressive is serious business. No joking matter at all. Well, I mean ppl in a manic episode can do pretty hilar things, but it ain't a funny place to live.
― til the sound of my voice will haint u (Jon Lewis), Tuesday, 24 April 2012 20:41 (1 year ago) Permalink
I had a good friend with whom I have lost touch over the years who had very severe OCD before I met him. It drove home just how debilitating OCD is (I hadn't had any personal experience before) when he explained that one of his compulsions was while driving, he had to stop, back up, and make sure he hadn't run over anyone. He would do this until he ran out of gas. If he didn't check to make sure, he was sure his entire family would be dead when he got home. When we worked together, he was medicated and doing really well, although he said he felt like the compulsions were right there, ready to come back at any time.
I definitely feel off kilter if things are not just so in my physical world, but I cannot even imagine how difficult it must be to deal with actual OCD. Anyone struggling with it has my total sympathy.
― Polly biscuit face (carl agatha), Tuesday, 24 April 2012 21:20 (1 year ago) Permalink
fwiw a&e did an ocd treatment reality series called 'obsessed' that you can watch on netflix if you're interested in seeing different ways it can manifest
― diamonddave85, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 21:24 (1 year ago) Permalink
I used to count gaps between lampposts as my mom drove me to school
I count the gap between Lamp posts
― kinder, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 22:04 (1 year ago) Permalink
hellolife?!
― Philip Nunez, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 23:06 (1 year ago) Permalink
i am making an exerted effort to line up a meeting with a cognitive behavioral therapist to ask some questions, but it is hard to know who to go to and what would be effective. but it does seem like the best feasible option.
― surm, Wednesday, 25 April 2012 00:24 (1 year ago) Permalink
i'm curious what exercises they have you do -- would they work for basketball players wanting to improve their free throws, too?
― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, 25 April 2012 00:29 (1 year ago) Permalink
i bet! sports are definitely influenced by this sort of thing.
― surm, Wednesday, 25 April 2012 00:30 (1 year ago) Permalink
steve blass disease
― mookieproof, Wednesday, 25 April 2012 00:33 (1 year ago) Permalink
Even before I saw the first pitcher named in the last sentence, I wondered, "so is the antidote to play in the outfield instead?"
― pplains, Wednesday, 25 April 2012 00:46 (1 year ago) Permalink
― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, April 25, 2012 12:29 AM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
The link Jon Lewis posted upthread - http://www.sethmad.com/my-ocd/ - talks about some of the CBT exercises.
― Polly biscuit face (carl agatha), Wednesday, 25 April 2012 00:49 (1 year ago) Permalink
yeah, i actually have a friend of a friend who has had steve blass disease, and it is linked to OCD. just one example of how big its impact can be.
― surm, Wednesday, 25 April 2012 01:09 (1 year ago) Permalink
i was not expecting surm to be a friend of a friend of rick ankie1!
― mookieproof, Wednesday, 25 April 2012 01:33 (1 year ago) Permalink
"The link Jon Lewis posted upthread - http://www.sethmad.com/my-ocd/ - talks about some of the CBT exercises."
the exposure therapy was a little disappointing -- i was kind of hoping for something like "visualize a blue undulating polygon with an impossible form" some weird mantra that would reboot your brain or something.
― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, 25 April 2012 01:50 (1 year ago) Permalink
xp it was a really devastating story that this friend of mine told me. she said it was like one day, her friend just couldn't pitch right anymore. bc of obsessive thoughts. he had to quit playing.
― surm, Wednesday, 25 April 2012 14:29 (1 year ago) Permalink
did not know about the IOCDF, somehow
― surm, Wednesday, 2 May 2012 13:40 (1 year ago) Permalink
All I know is that it's self-diagnosed less than ADHD and more than bipolar and that most people doing that don't seem to understand the 'disorder' part. (Which is not saying anything about anyone here, it's just annoying to hear people talk about how they're, like, SOOOOOO manic depressive etc.)
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Tuesday, April 24, 2012 4:26 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
I HATE when people say things like "OMG I'm so OCD" when what they really mean is that they're a neat-nick or slightly weird about certain things. No, dipshit. You're not. You're just an idiot. See also: I'm so bi-polar. Nope, just moody. Ugh.
― wolf kabob (ENBB), Wednesday, 2 May 2012 14:28 (1 year ago) Permalink
I used to count gaps between lampposts as my mom drove me to schoolI count the gap between Lamp posts
― kinder, Tuesday, April 24, 2012 6:04 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
I count the gaps or some times the posts themselves. I count a lot actually and to weird things like click my teeth to signify the counting. I think it's just my way of passing time. I count things like tiles and bricks too. My mom does this as well.
― wolf kabob (ENBB), Wednesday, 2 May 2012 14:31 (1 year ago) Permalink
most ppl when they refer to themselves or other ppl as be being ocd actually mean ocPd
also wrt it being from the lizard brain---it is! someone won the Nobel prize some time ago iirc for identifying the neurological pathway in the brane that is associated with compulsive grooming behavior in birds/rats/dogs/etc (parrots plucking themselves bald, etc). they're all roughly approximate, and may underpin the symptoms of things like OCD. this has implications for things like deep brain sitmulation: one of my instructors had a patient who had been profoundly disabled by his OCD while in college (had been "normal" for most of his life, had a very sudden and steep decline, spent hours at the grocery store trying to choose between cereal that he would then be unable to eat), underwent deep brain stimulation, and is now more or less back to his baseline from a functional standpoint
― catbus otm (gbx), Wednesday, 2 May 2012 14:43 (1 year ago) Permalink
Maybe, yeah, but I also think it's become common to the the point where it's frequently used to describe totally "normal" people who might just occasionally fixate on certain things more than others but not necessarily have any disorder at all.
― wolf kabob (ENBB), Wednesday, 2 May 2012 14:47 (1 year ago) Permalink
At least I've heard it used that way.
deep brain stimulation! sounds scary. is that like ECT?
― surm, Wednesday, 2 May 2012 14:49 (1 year ago) Permalink
I just read something somewhere about how ECT has changed a lot and is being used more frequently again.
― wolf kabob (ENBB), Wednesday, 2 May 2012 14:50 (1 year ago) Permalink
well usually when I've heard it used colloquially it's in the context of someone being super tidy, organized, what have you. this is OCPD. In general (and plz correct me OCDers) ppl with say a hygiene obsession are often not tidy AT ALL because even ~cleaning~ is unhygienic (cf the extreme example of Howard Hughes living in filth). but yeah I guess sometimes it gets thrown around to mean "thinkin bout some things more than others"
at least ("at least") someone with a hand washing compulsion has something other ppl can see and associate with OCD. ppl with a "taboo" obsession and like a compulsion for prayer or something are totally invisible. cf the OCD mother who constantly has unwanted thoughts of killing her child, which she recognizes to be awful and intrusive, and feels compelled to stay away from her baby even though OCDers with homicidal thoughts are safe as milk. the very thing she needs to do in order to assuage her guilt/temper her obsession, is to hang out with her baby all the dang time (exposure therapy, like).
but OCD as "unwanted thoughts syndrome" is not commonly recognized by the public (or even some mental health professionals), and can look a lot like schizophrenia or some other psychotic disorder. which reminds me that yeah, having now spent some qt with patients in the grip of profound mania, I really want to wag my finger at dorks conflating "mood swings" with actual bipolar disorder.
xp DBS is sorta like laser guided ECT: they only "shock" a very very specific part of the brain, versus the whole thing. and yeah, ECT is back in use (or is at my institution), and while there's def not consensus on it, it's shed its bad rep, and can get some very good results for ppl in the middle of mega depression.
― catbus otm (gbx), Wednesday, 2 May 2012 15:03 (1 year ago) Permalink
ECT first became popular because it showed good effects with some patients. The trouble wasn't so much the therapy, as it was the misuse of the therapy. Being effective in a limited set of circumstances was its downfall, when there were so few treatments that showed much promise at all. The old adage applies that "when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem starts looking like a nail."
― Aimless, Wednesday, 2 May 2012 15:56 (1 year ago) Permalink
the lack of discussion on the obsessive streak of the disorder in the mental health community is strange; the compulsions have gotten attention for some time, and of course they are always intertwined, but i believe obsessive unwanted thoughts as a disorder in and of itself (pure o) is only recently getting in-depth attention. maybe because it's hard to talk about. not sure.
― surm, Wednesday, 2 May 2012 16:14 (1 year ago) Permalink
i have heard of very recent instances when a patient went to a psychiatrist with classic purely-obsessive symptoms, and the psychiatrist did not seem to know the research available on the subject at all, and even prescribed medication that agitated the situation.
― surm, Wednesday, 2 May 2012 16:25 (1 year ago) Permalink
(and obviously that patient was me)
yesterday was a particularly bad day. i spent about 2 1/2 hours fixing my hair. with scissors. luckily i don't look like exactly like frankenstein.
― surm, Tuesday, 8 May 2012 13:03 (1 year ago) Permalink
A couple years ago my first therapist suggested that I might have "pure o" because I was (and will no doubt one day again)become fixated on the idea that I'm going crazy. In the past I've also tended to ruminate excessively on and become quite agitated by "brain in a jar"-type fears--things that are basically pointless to think about. Right now I'm in the midst of a pretty debilitating year-long bout hypochondria (which is fun to make fun of but not to experience), which I think might be the same thing but with different content (it's also much harder to function with than existential obsessions, because I feel strongly compelled by the thought that I have some life threatening condition that requires immediate action, and I also have panic attacks with this). In the past when I've been REALLY depressed and stressed out, I've contended with some intrusive thoughts, like what if I harm someone or throw myself out of a moving vehicle on the interstate (I definitely DO NOT want to do these things). Not something you want to admit to the wrong person.
― emilys., Thursday, 14 June 2012 03:07 (11 months ago) Permalink
it's not--i have the same and my parents don't even get it. i'm pretty sure they think i'm a schizophrenic in denial or something.
― een, Thursday, 14 June 2012 03:17 (11 months ago) Permalink
on the bright side, telling someone about it won't actually make it any better, so you're not really missing out on anything
― een, Thursday, 14 June 2012 03:18 (11 months ago) Permalink
Well, I told the internet. And you're right, I still feel terrible!
― emilys., Thursday, 14 June 2012 03:45 (11 months ago) Permalink