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League_Girl
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29 Dec 2017, 3:30 am

Has anyone ever been told they have a condition and you thought you knew what it was only to find out you have totally misunderstood it?

For years I thought OCD was just symptoms of autism but they don't fit into autism so they are given this label for their special interests and routines they have and disliking change.

I thought OCD also was analyzing situations and having a hard time moving on which is common in autism when something upsets you.

I thought OCD was constantly day dreaming and being in your fantasy world and always thinking about your interests than focusing on the teacher and your school work. I thought these were what intrusive thoughts were.

I thought OCD was obsessing about your special interests and always thinking about them and spending too much time with them and thinking about it all the time and looking it up online always.


Then I find out as an adult what OCD really is and it totally confused me because I was told these things were OCD I am just describing now. Now I wonder if there had been misunderstandings about my symptoms and I thought they were saying this was all OCD and we were all on different pages here. I was a child then so because everyone was saying I have OCD and being told it was part of Asperger's and seeing it being mentioned every time i looked it up, I thought I understood it. I even thought doing the same things over and over was OCD and disliking messes and always wanting a clean house. I just didn't think OCD was a bad thing and it as just part of who I am. I remember finding it weird when my mom said OCD was a good thing because it's something that can be worked on and I was thinking why would I want to work on my obsessions and liking a clean house. That is what we called special interests then. I just figured my mom didn't like me being obsessive so she wanted to make it less because it's not normal.


So I question it now after learning what it really is and it was not what I always thought it was. Either there had been a misunderstanding between me and everyone or they all misunderstood it and I was totally misinformed.


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Daughter: NT, no diagnoses.


naturalplastic
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01 Jan 2018, 9:11 am

It's probably both. You misunderstand, AND your mom (or whomever) also being confused and feeding you harebrained notions.

There is a common confusion that is caused by the word "obsession".

Aspies are supposed to have "aspie obsessions". But then there is the completely different condition called "obsessive compulsive disorder" that has the word "obsessive" in its name. Trouble is that OCD "obsessions" and aspie "obsessions" are totally differently things. OCD obsessins are negative fear based obsessions . Aspie obsessions are more like normal hobby type interests, but are more extreme, are pleasurable, even almost narcotic like and can be escapist.

The way I like to think of it is what if you're "obsessed" with doorknobs?

Which kind of obsession is it?

If you're obsessed with doorknobs because you wash and spray disinfectant on the doorknobs of your home several times a day because you are afraid of germs, then that is "obsessive compulsive" type obsession. Its negative and based upon an irrational exaggerated fear of contagious disease.

In contrast if you one day looked at a door knob and though "how cool!", and began to collect surplus doorknobs, filled drawers with your doorknobs, and read books about the history of doorknobs, and began to bore people at parties by monologuing about the history, evolution, beauty, and infinite variety of....doorknobs, then that would be an "aspie" type obsession with doorknobs.



League_Girl
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01 Jan 2018, 1:49 pm

I certainly never feared messes because I wasn't afraid of germs and stuff. I just didn't like messes. My mom would get upset coming home to a clean kitchen, did she have OCD? Think about it. My aunt was the same way about her house, wanting it to be a palace, was she OCD? She had pretty much the same rules I had for my family about a clean house. It was not hard keeping it clean and picking up after myself as my family claimed. My mom acts like I had ridiculous rules like they couldn't take anything out at all or leave a book out while going to the bathroom because they were reading it. Also when my mom told me how I would pour her coffee out because she had left it on the table while she went potty, I thought in my head that sounds like a TOM issue when she said I would have just taken it with me if I had to leave the room. Also how was I supposed to know someone was drinking out of it?


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Chronos
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19 Jan 2018, 4:43 am

League_Girl wrote:
Has anyone ever been told they have a condition and you thought you knew what it was only to find out you have totally misunderstood it?

For years I thought OCD was just symptoms of autism but they don't fit into autism so they are given this label for their special interests and routines they have and disliking change.

I thought OCD also was analyzing situations and having a hard time moving on which is common in autism when something upsets you.

I thought OCD was constantly day dreaming and being in your fantasy world and always thinking about your interests than focusing on the teacher and your school work. I thought these were what intrusive thoughts were.

I thought OCD was obsessing about your special interests and always thinking about them and spending too much time with them and thinking about it all the time and looking it up online always.


Then I find out as an adult what OCD really is and it totally confused me because I was told these things were OCD I am just describing now. Now I wonder if there had been misunderstandings about my symptoms and I thought they were saying this was all OCD and we were all on different pages here. I was a child then so because everyone was saying I have OCD and being told it was part of Asperger's and seeing it being mentioned every time i looked it up, I thought I understood it. I even thought doing the same things over and over was OCD and disliking messes and always wanting a clean house. I just didn't think OCD was a bad thing and it as just part of who I am. I remember finding it weird when my mom said OCD was a good thing because it's something that can be worked on and I was thinking why would I want to work on my obsessions and liking a clean house. That is what we called special interests then. I just figured my mom didn't like me being obsessive so she wanted to make it less because it's not normal.


So I question it now after learning what it really is and it was not what I always thought it was. Either there had been a misunderstanding between me and everyone or they all misunderstood it and I was totally misinformed.


I find that most people don't understand what OCD actually is. People often think having OCD means the person is a neat freak, or a control freak, or, such as you did, confuse OCD with obsessive interests. OCD is none of these things.

As I've described in another post, OCD is comprised of two parts. "Obsessions" and "compulsions". The obsessions in the typical sense. A person with OCD is not obsessed like a stalker would be, or obsessed like a collector or someone with a profound interest in something may be. The "obsessions" are actually often irrational fears and unwanted, disturbing thoughts, and sometimes psuedo-sensations. The "compulsions" are rituals or actions one takes to rid themselves of the anxiety caused by the "obsessions". For example, many people with OCD are hand washers and will wash their hands until they are raw, even if they have just washed them. The reason for this is, they have a fear their hands are contaminated, and to them, their hands often do feel dirty. This is the "obsession". To stop this sensation, they engage in the ritual of washing their hands. Only they may finish washing their hands and their hands continue to feel dirty or contaminated, or they did not do it the "right way" so they do it again, ad infinitum.

Some people are checkers. They will check the stove before they leave the house to make sure it's not on, and then walk away, only when they walk away, they may become consumed with doubt and anxiety because they might not remember that they checked the stove. So they go back and check it again and walk away again but then they may have doubt and anxiety because maybe they didn't check it well enough, so they go back and do it again. If they can consciously acknowledge that the stove is actually off and to their liking, and retain this thought as they leave, they may be able to escape, but for some people that's not good enough, because when they touched the knob on the stove to make sure it was all the way off, they didn't touch it in the right way. The universe is now off balance and they get a profound sensation that something bad will happen if they don't fix it. This is called "magical thinking" The person who suffers from this knows that they are being irrational but have such a profound and overwhelming sense that something bad will happen if they don't touch the stove in the right way, that they often cave and go attempt to touch the stove in the correct way. Maybe they need to make sure they touch with with their right hand three times, or maybe right left right left in some sequence or some number of times. The ritual can become very elaborate if left untreated.

Some people with OCD get disturbing, intrusive thoughts and will make up some ritual to get rid of them. These thoughts are often counter to the inherent moral character of the person and can be violent or inappropriately sexual in nature. They may get images of stabbing their loved ones to death and then become consumed by a fear that they will do it even though they know they never would, and their solution to this is some "abracadabra" type ritual. This is kind of interesting because what is actually abnormal are the nature and intrusiveness of the thoughts and the fear of the thoughts and not the ritual. People have been making up rituals to "fix" things since the dawn of humanity, outside of the context of neuropsychiatric illness.

Another interesting thing about OCD is the homogeneity of the obsessions and compulsions within and across cultures. A person in the U.S. with OCD may have the exact same obsessions and compulsions as a Yanomami tribes person in the middle of the Amazon, or at least very equivalent ones. If a person in the U.S. is afraid that if they step on a crack in the sidewalk, they will break their mother's back, a person in the Amazon may be afraid that if they step on a stick, they will break their mothers back.

An astounding number of people in the west with OCD who have contamination fears are petrified of botulism, rabies, and prions.

Why? It seems that there is something about the neuropathology of OCD that fears the exotic and uncontrollable above more mundane things.



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19 Feb 2018, 10:11 pm

Chronos wrote:
I find that most people don't understand what OCD actually is. People often think having OCD means the person is a neat freak, or a control freak, or, such as you did, confuse OCD with obsessive interests. OCD is none of these things.

As I've described in another post, OCD is comprised of two parts. "Obsessions" and "compulsions". The obsessions in the typical sense. A person with OCD is not obsessed like a stalker would be, or obsessed like a collector or someone with a profound interest in something may be. The "obsessions" are actually often irrational fears and unwanted, disturbing thoughts, and sometimes psuedo-sensations. The "compulsions" are rituals or actions one takes to rid themselves of the anxiety caused by the "obsessions". For example, many people with OCD are hand washers and will wash their hands until they are raw, even if they have just washed them. The reason for this is, they have a fear their hands are contaminated, and to them, their hands often do feel dirty. This is the "obsession". To stop this sensation, they engage in the ritual of washing their hands. Only they may finish washing their hands and their hands continue to feel dirty or contaminated, or they did not do it the "right way" so they do it again, ad infinitum.

Some people are checkers. They will check the stove before they leave the house to make sure it's not on, and then walk away, only when they walk away, they may become consumed with doubt and anxiety because they might not remember that they checked the stove. So they go back and check it again and walk away again but then they may have doubt and anxiety because maybe they didn't check it well enough, so they go back and do it again. If they can consciously acknowledge that the stove is actually off and to their liking, and retain this thought as they leave, they may be able to escape, but for some people that's not good enough, because when they touched the knob on the stove to make sure it was all the way off, they didn't touch it in the right way. The universe is now off balance and they get a profound sensation that something bad will happen if they don't fix it. This is called "magical thinking" The person who suffers from this knows that they are being irrational but have such a profound and overwhelming sense that something bad will happen if they don't touch the stove in the right way, that they often cave and go attempt to touch the stove in the correct way. Maybe they need to make sure they touch with with their right hand three times, or maybe right left right left in some sequence or some number of times. The ritual can become very elaborate if left untreated.

Some people with OCD get disturbing, intrusive thoughts and will make up some ritual to get rid of them. These thoughts are often counter to the inherent moral character of the person and can be violent or inappropriately sexual in nature. They may get images of stabbing their loved ones to death and then become consumed by a fear that they will do it even though they know they never would, and their solution to this is some "abracadabra" type ritual. This is kind of interesting because what is actually abnormal are the nature and intrusiveness of the thoughts and the fear of the thoughts and not the ritual. People have been making up rituals to "fix" things since the dawn of humanity, outside of the context of neuropsychiatric illness.

Another interesting thing about OCD is the homogeneity of the obsessions and compulsions within and across cultures. A person in the U.S. with OCD may have the exact same obsessions and compulsions as a Yanomami tribes person in the middle of the Amazon, or at least very equivalent ones. If a person in the U.S. is afraid that if they step on a crack in the sidewalk, they will break their mother's back, a person in the Amazon may be afraid that if they step on a stick, they will break their mothers back.

An astounding number of people in the west with OCD who have contamination fears are petrified of botulism, rabies, and prions.

Why? It seems that there is something about the neuropathology of OCD that fears the exotic and uncontrollable above more mundane things.


Do you have OCD?



Chronos
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23 Feb 2018, 10:26 pm

ElleGaunt wrote:
Chronos wrote:
I find that most people don't understand what OCD actually is. People often think having OCD means the person is a neat freak, or a control freak, or, such as you did, confuse OCD with obsessive interests. OCD is none of these things.

As I've described in another post, OCD is comprised of two parts. "Obsessions" and "compulsions". The obsessions in the typical sense. A person with OCD is not obsessed like a stalker would be, or obsessed like a collector or someone with a profound interest in something may be. The "obsessions" are actually often irrational fears and unwanted, disturbing thoughts, and sometimes psuedo-sensations. The "compulsions" are rituals or actions one takes to rid themselves of the anxiety caused by the "obsessions". For example, many people with OCD are hand washers and will wash their hands until they are raw, even if they have just washed them. The reason for this is, they have a fear their hands are contaminated, and to them, their hands often do feel dirty. This is the "obsession". To stop this sensation, they engage in the ritual of washing their hands. Only they may finish washing their hands and their hands continue to feel dirty or contaminated, or they did not do it the "right way" so they do it again, ad infinitum.

Some people are checkers. They will check the stove before they leave the house to make sure it's not on, and then walk away, only when they walk away, they may become consumed with doubt and anxiety because they might not remember that they checked the stove. So they go back and check it again and walk away again but then they may have doubt and anxiety because maybe they didn't check it well enough, so they go back and do it again. If they can consciously acknowledge that the stove is actually off and to their liking, and retain this thought as they leave, they may be able to escape, but for some people that's not good enough, because when they touched the knob on the stove to make sure it was all the way off, they didn't touch it in the right way. The universe is now off balance and they get a profound sensation that something bad will happen if they don't fix it. This is called "magical thinking" The person who suffers from this knows that they are being irrational but have such a profound and overwhelming sense that something bad will happen if they don't touch the stove in the right way, that they often cave and go attempt to touch the stove in the correct way. Maybe they need to make sure they touch with with their right hand three times, or maybe right left right left in some sequence or some number of times. The ritual can become very elaborate if left untreated.

Some people with OCD get disturbing, intrusive thoughts and will make up some ritual to get rid of them. These thoughts are often counter to the inherent moral character of the person and can be violent or inappropriately sexual in nature. They may get images of stabbing their loved ones to death and then become consumed by a fear that they will do it even though they know they never would, and their solution to this is some "abracadabra" type ritual. This is kind of interesting because what is actually abnormal are the nature and intrusiveness of the thoughts and the fear of the thoughts and not the ritual. People have been making up rituals to "fix" things since the dawn of humanity, outside of the context of neuropsychiatric illness.

Another interesting thing about OCD is the homogeneity of the obsessions and compulsions within and across cultures. A person in the U.S. with OCD may have the exact same obsessions and compulsions as a Yanomami tribes person in the middle of the Amazon, or at least very equivalent ones. If a person in the U.S. is afraid that if they step on a crack in the sidewalk, they will break their mother's back, a person in the Amazon may be afraid that if they step on a stick, they will break their mothers back.

An astounding number of people in the west with OCD who have contamination fears are petrified of botulism, rabies, and prions.

Why? It seems that there is something about the neuropathology of OCD that fears the exotic and uncontrollable above more mundane things.


Do you have OCD?


Yes.



ElleGaunt
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24 Feb 2018, 9:03 pm

I too am at the intersection of autism and OCD.