General Symptoms of OCD
The General Symptoms of OCD (obsessions)
- There are intrusive recurrent and persistent thoughts, images or impulses causing marked anxiety or distress.
- The thoughts, impulses, or images are not simply excessive worries about real-life problems.
- The person attempts to ignore or suppress intrusive thoughts, impulses, or images, or neutralize them with some other thought or action.
- The person recognizes the obsessive thoughts, impulses, or images are a product of his or her own mind, and are not based in reality.
The General Symptoms of OCD (compulsions)
- There are repetitive behaviors or mental acts that the person feels driven to perform in response to an obsession, or according to some set of rules that must be applied rigidly.
- The behaviors or mental acts are aimed at preventing or reducing distress or preventing some dreaded event or situation; however, these behaviors or mental acts are not actually connected to the issue, or they are excessive.
Additionally symptoms of OCD include the individual coming to the realization his/her obsessions are unreasonable or excessive. Moreover, the obsessions or compulsions must be time-consuming (taking up more than one hour per day), cause distress, or impairment in social, occupational, or educational functions. The OCD may be accompanied with feelings of depression and / or anxiety. Some form of emotional or mental disruption is noticed.
It is advisable some form of OCD treatment is used to help overcome these symptoms, since the general symptoms of OCD do not usually go away on their own.
These are only the general symptoms of OCD. For a more in depth look at OCD see specific signs of obsessions and compulsions
Thanks for your thoughts they are very useful. Anxiety becomes a nasty pattern in the mind, of negativity, self-deprecation, etc., and using highlights begins to shift that pattern. It needs to be planned for, scheduled in. In the creativity literature these days, daily creativity is a newer concept, and I think this component can add to making shifts from the usual ruts by engaging in simple yet creative acts.
I am wondering if I have OCD, I like things to be out away in a certain way for example the cutlery it drives me nuts that the spoons would not be separated according to its size, the forks separated according to the style. Pots and pans out away according the size from bigger to smaller but organized one inside the other. I have told the kids a million times of how to organize those things and they never do it right and it’s frustrating that no one does it the way I like.
Elizabeth, there is not a lot to go on here. While you may have OCD: you may also just have obsessive tendencies; maybe you need to control the situation to feel comfortable, etc. If you think about these things a good portion of the day, you have redundant thoughts about pots and pans going in a certain order, this would be pointing to OCD. But let us assume you just have a high need to be in control or have some obsessive tendencies, you will want to make sure you don’t take on too much stress, as these tendencies can lead to full blown OCD
If it is bothering you, see a local health professional in your area, one who can do a proper eval on you to see if you might be leaning towards OCD