Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is an anxiety disorder where you experience recurrent obsessions and compulsions. But what are the symptoms of OCD?
Obsessions are:
- Thoughts, images, or ideas that won’t go away, are unwanted and cause extreme distress. If you have OCD, you might worry constantly about becoming contaminated with a deadly disease, that you will do something terrible like scream out an obscenity at a funeral, or that something horrible will happen to a loved one. Other common obsessions include repeated doubts such as believing you may hit someone with your car, a need for order such as becoming upset if kitchen plates are not arranged perfectly, aggressive or disturbing ideas such as thoughts of murdering your partner or child, as well as sexual and religious imagery such as disturbing pornographic images or visions of a graphic crucifixion.
- Accepted as coming from your own mind, but often feel impossible to control.
- Not simply worries about your everyday problems.
- Distressing enough to cause you to try to get rid of the obsessions with other thoughts or actions, like compulsions.
Compulsions are:
- Behaviors that you feel you must carry out over and over. For example, if you are obsessed with contamination, you might wash your hands over and over again; if you are worried about a family member dying in an accident, you might count up to a certain number again and again or carry out a particular action such as folding laundry until it is done perfectly to prevent such a disaster. Other common compulsions include cleaning, counting, checking, requesting or demanding reassurance, and ensuring order and symmetry.
- Aimed at getting rid of your anxiety or to stop a feared situation, such as death of a loved one, from happening.
- Unrealistic solutions to the problems they are supposed to prevent. For example, it is unlikely (if not impossible) that folding laundry in a particular way or counting up to a particular number could ever prevent the death of a loved one. This type of thinking is called “magical thinking,” as it often defies logic. If you have OCD, you usually recognize that the compulsion has little to do with the actual event, but feel an intense need to carry out the compulsion anyway.
Source:
American Psychiatric Association. "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed., text revision" 2000 Washington, DC: Author.
