The following is a list of habits that may be partly stereotypical to those with OCD, or ones that you might not have thought of when it comes to habits and OCD. Some of these may seem rather ridiculous and the common habits associated with OCD, but this is what I aim to show, that even some of the most ridiculous habits can cause those with OCD pain. Within my show, I will show/use some of these:
- Doing things an even amount of times (associated with symmetry OCD)
- Separating foods such as M&M’s and Skittles into colours
- Obsessing over a colour, object or an idea and seeing this as bad
- Intrusive thoughts
- Separating clothes into colours from an unorganised closet
- Evening objects out e.g. uneven pizza slices
- Straightening a picture frame
- Making sure your trousers are at even lengths, or maybe strings on a hooded jacket
- Correcting parenthesis
- Turning that one slit on the blind that isn’t the same way as the rest
- An obsession with a certain, avoiding this number or solely focusing on this number
- Making sure that the food on your plate isn’t touching
- Alphabetising things, e.g. DVD’s, CD’s, magazines, books
- Arranging items by size, this could be anything from chips to shoes, rocks to t-shirts
- Packets, such as crisps and anything similar to that, opened at the wrong end
- Sometimes it may be seemingly minute as the toilet paper facing the wrong way
- Pills taken out of the foil out of order
- Arranging things in order of number, e.g. arranging M&M’s in order of how many of each colour there are, likewise for Chewitts or Starburst’s
Some inspiration for this post came from this video: