Rituals of an OCD-esque style

[asv]

I wouldn't declare myself to be suffering from OCD at all but dont most people have rituals, tics etc that could be classified OCD-lite?  I have in the past/continue to do the following:-

Shoelaces must be the same length before tieing

My record bag velcro fasteners have to tally up exactly, with no extranious "sticking out" bits

I used to have to hang my school uniform up in the order I would be putting it on in the morning (shirt, trousers, jumper)

I used to have to have my dressing gown belt the same length when hanging/before tieing

I cant not open a packet of crisps at the right end, anyone opening from the bottom is evil

My shoes have to be sat next to one another perfectly in line

and I am sure there are others that I will think of.  Its odd cos I look around my office as I write and it is an absolute tip.  Unfortunately, my youngest son is picking up many of the same traits from me, bless him.

Anyone else?

[buttgammon]

I cant not open a packet of crisps at the right end, anyone opening from the bottom is evil

My shoes have to be sat next to one another perfectly in line

I have both of those too. In fact, I have lots of these traits. I have to place the remote controls for Sky and the TV and the DVD player in a certain order (Sky on the right, TV in the centre, DVD on the left) and I have to touch things in a symmetrical order. For example, if I'm in the car and I rub my seat five times with my right hand, I will have to do it five times with my left. And I always count things in multiples of three or four. I think I might be verging on OCD.

[gazzyk1ns]

I know this probably isn't really the sort of thing which the thread-starter intended to be posted in here; but ever since the new £20 notes came out, I've actually been really disgusted whenever I've been given an old one, as if it's somehow now worth less. It's got to the stage where people have noticed, at the weekend I remarked "I wonder how much longer we're going to be able to spend these...?" and a mate replied "Stop asking that. You've said that about three times this week. They'll be around for ages and we'll get plenty of warning, there'll be a period where places won't be able to hand them out any more too."

[Emma Raducanu]

Having to do things in symmetry is definately one of my annoyances. Also, I find that I can not leave the mouse cursor at the bottom of the screen after use; I have to deliberately push it to the top. Some times, when it's really bad I have to place the cursor in each of the four corners of the screen.

[SetToStun]

Next time you have a nice, cold pint, take the glass and rotate it slowly, while wiping off all the condensation, until you find the crown pint stamp. If the glass is plain other than the stamp, rotate the glass onwards so that the stamp will be at 90 degrees to the point from which you will be drinking. If the glass has a decorative pattern, rotate until the stamp is at the closest position possible to the 90 degrees but without you having to drink from a patterned area. If the glass is completely covered in patterns, try to obtain a plain one and start again.

Congratulations - you are now me.

[Ciarán2]

Ha! Where do I start? I did suffer from full-blown OCD and here are some of the shenanigans I'd get up to.

Mild OCD antics (many of which I still do):

Having to get to the bottom of the stairs before the toilet has stopped flushing.
Making everything on my desk symmetrical or at least at right angles to each other.
Counting out on my fingers the number of letters in a word or phrase and then imagining them in different arrangements (e.g. in groups of two or three, arranged so they make up a square and so on...)
Reading words backwards.
Doing things five times to make sure they're done properly (e.g. washing hands, locking doors, turning off the radio...)

More severe OCD behaviours (which thankfully seem completely bizarre and alien to me right now):

Washing soap! (it was too dirty for me to use.)
Counting in fives up to 1,000.
Doing things five by five times (i.e. 25 times) at least. Same kinds of tasks I mentioned above, but very time consuming and if I got distracted and lost count, I'd have to start over again.
Counting the number of times I blinked.
Keeping track of the number of words I spoke.

In other words...I'm mad, me! Or at least, I was.

[wherearethespoons]

For example, if I'm in the car and I rub my seat five times with my right hand, I will have to do it five times with my left.

I used to do that; so if I scratched my right ear with my right hand I'd have to scratch my left ear with my left hand. Luckily, I've stopped it now.

Counting the number of times I blinked.

Bloody hell, after reading that I'm scared I might start thinking about it. That sounds awful.

I've always been bad about my hands, they have to be clean and I will wash them after the silliest of things. As a result I have horrible hands that often bleed. I really need to sort that out.

[mothman]

Clothes-pegs on the washing line have to be colour co-ordinated, or at the very least in some kind of pattern. Well, OK, they don't HAVE to be, but it makes hanging the laundry out more fun.

PCs at work use Novell NetWare. I have to try to get Groupwise logged in and open (not just the notify tool in the System Tray) before the Zenworks NAL (Novell-delivered Application Launcher) window opens, so that Groupwise is first on the Taskbar. It's gotten much more difficult since I got a faster laptop.

[rjshade]

I don't like listening to music unless the volume is set to an even value. Powers of two are best.

[Lookalike Mark Chapman]

Ah yes, well when I'm setting transparency levels (or whatever) in Photoshop, it's got to be a multiple of five - and multiples of ten are best.

I also do the crisps thing - I won't open a bag upside down. The crisps just don't taste as good that way. I once opened a pack with undue care and attention the wrong way, and ended up giving the whole tainted bag to some other poor soul

I used to have weird desk symmetry issues as well - oh, and when I was little, if I didn't count every single car that drove past ours, then the car I missed would have a horrible accident and it would be my fault. I think that power has since been revoked, as I was abusing it.

[waste of chops]

PCs at work use Novell NetWare. I have to try to get Groupwise logged in and open (not just the notify tool in the System Tray) before the Zenworks NAL (Novell-delivered Application Launcher) window opens, so that Groupwise is first on the Taskbar. It's gotten much more difficult since I got a faster laptop.

OCD-be-gone!

[non capisco]

I used to have to look at the 'BIG DAVE'S GUSSET' graffiti near Waterloo East every day when it was on my train route, as if it was bad luck not to.

That's the second time I've mentioned that graffiti on this site today. Its devilish magnetic powers are apparently undiminished.

[A Passing Turk Slipper]

I'm pretty bad with this kind of thing. Have to brush my teeth in a certain way five times before I finish, just in general I have to do things in certain orders, I sometimes get it into my head that I have to regulate certain things eg the way my steps tie in with the pavement blocks, when I practise my juggling I HAVE to finish on a certain trick which is normally fucking brick so I end up throwing for at least a half hour longer than I normally would just trying to catch a single trick. I think I can snap myself out of a lot of it but it doesn't actually bother me that much that I do little things like that. I have a few weird habits, my flatmates are always on at me because I rock around in a circle when I sit, or just back and forwards, if I play guitar it happens too, (although it helps me concentrate so I quite like it), it does make me look mentally unhinged though. Hahaha, as I wrote that I realised I was doing it pretty excessively. What does that rocking round in a circle mean?

[mothman]

PCs at work use Novell NetWare. I have to try to get Groupwise logged in and open (not just the notify tool in the System Tray) before the Zenworks NAL (Novell-delivered Application Launcher) window opens, so that Groupwise is first on the Taskbar. It's gotten much more difficult since I got a faster laptop.

OCD-be-gone!

I know there are ways around it; I do it for fun!

[hencole]

I use to suffer really badly as teenager to the point that I almost couldn't walk down a street or play ball games anymore eg. If i dropped a ball and it went trhough some railings I couldn't jusrt collect the ball from behind them it had to come back the way it went through. As someone who played tennis regularly this was nightmare.
My main problem used to be touching things a certain number of times. This would range from 3, 4, 5 to sometimes in the high teens if I was unlucky. Not only that, but the touch started to become dependent on pressure as well.

Recently I thought I didn't do any of these things anymore, but thinking about it I've just do them without even thinking about it most the time. A lot of the OCDs have become PC using related invloving moving and clicking the mouse a lot.
The only one that I still have that is really irritiating though is re-reading, or in the case of DVD re-watching a couple of lines over and over again for perhaps 5 minutes.

The strange thing is I am not superstitious at all, though I probably was somewhat when I s younger, but I still can't shake it even now.

[hencole]

eg the way my steps tie in with the pavement blocks, when I practise my juggling I HAVE to finish on a certain trick which is normally fucking brick so I end up throwing for at least a half hour longer than I normally would just trying to catch a single trick.

I used to do both of those, thankfully both of them I've retrainined completely. Your right the juggling one was annoying if you were learning a particualrly hard trick.