Experts across the country are warning that America is in the throes of a new mental health epidemic. Over the past decade, psychologists have reported record numbers of those who suffer from being, like, suuuuper OCD – and the figures are only getting worse.
“Super OCD” is not to be confused with textbook obsessive compulsive disorder, which can be characterized by unwanted compulsive rituals and disturbing intrusive thoughts that detract from one’s quality of life. Rather, those who are super OCD report experiencing symptoms that include adherence to conventions of basic human hygiene and really liking their pencils to be sharp.
“It’s a nightmare,” said Amy Smith, whose harrowing journey to acceptance began when she took an online quiz that one time which gauged her reaction to disturbing images like crooked pictures and floor tiles that don’t match up.
“When I see something that is uneven, it kind of bugs me. Almost no one else feels this way; I am very unique,” Smith confessed. “I’m able to forget about the uneven thing as soon as I look away, but for those few seconds the mild displeasure is overwhelming.”
Jane Lee first suspected she was super OCD after she spent a leisurely afternoon alphabetizing her collection of cookbooks. Her fears were confirmed when a co-worker wore mismatched socks to the office and she felt compelled to look away.
“I’ll be out with friends and everything is going fine, and then something will happen – someone will drop a slice or pizza or spill wine down my shirt, so I’ll say ‘better clean that up.’ And everyone will just go silent,” Lee said. “It’s like the elephant in the room.”
Lee experienced the stigma associated with the illness firsthand when her cousin Jen, who has conventional obsessive compulsive disorder, suggested that Lee was not, in fact, super OCD.
“For some people mental illness means debilitating panic attacks and uncontrollable, repetitive actions, and for others it means preferring your jackets face the same way in your closet,” Lee said. “It’s a spectrum.”
Psychiatrist Dr. Frank Black studies the disorder and deems himself a pioneer in the field. According to Black, super OCD is still considered a fringe issue, with many health professionals unwilling to classify it as “something that exists.”
“Some of my colleagues would define mental illness as that which ‘interferes with people’s lives,’ but I think that’s a narrow-minded way of looking at things,” he said. “I had this one patient who would sometimes double-check that he’d locked his car. The seconds it took for him to do that are seconds he’ll never get back.”
Black has dedicated his career to developing treatment strategies for patients like Amy and Jane, and he hopes other brave sufferers will continue to come out of their immaculate closets and seek the therapy they need.
“If I can help even one person hang their blue sweaters next to their red sweaters, I know I’ll have done my job.”
Tags: health, Holly Tousignant, humor, mental health, ocd
A+ Amazing, thank you.
“Ohhh I HATE it when my silverware isn’t sorted by type! Or my socks aren’t mated! Ugh, it just makes me insane, I’m super OCD.” Shut up, no you’re not, stop aggravating actual people with OCD.
“When I see something that is uneven, it kind of bugs me. Almost no one else feels this way; I am very unique,” Smith confessed. This so perfectly encapsulates the issue that I feel compelled to print it out and staple it over my monitor screen next time I read “37 Signs You’re Super OCD” and number 11 is, like, “You know you’re OCD when you hate having your books stacked every which way on the shelf. Ugh! So distracting!”
I started reading this thinking “what could possibly be worse than the OCD I have/had/no longer struggle with thanks to medication?”
Absolutely. I have people close to me who struggle with actual, clinical OCD, and this joke-y “OMG, I can’t stand it when people stack big plates on top of little ones in the cabinet instead of the other way around, I’m SO OCD YOU GUYS” thing really bugs me. That ‘interferes with people’s lives” criteria is very real.
Relatedly, people who lose track of their train of thought in the middle of sentence, or are kind of disorganized who are “uggghhh, so ADD”. Like, NO, you can actually get shit done/live your life normally/think clearly/etc. It’s obnoxious to make “Ooh shiny!” jokes when you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Well, that’s my rant for the day.
I’m only bothered by the “sooo ADD” folks when the same people start going “you take adderall? *scheming eyebrows*”
Hell nahh, did you not just hear yourself talking about how fake your ADD is
Yeah, definitely. It makes people who actually take those drugs to, you know, live a normalish life look bad that there are so many people who openly abuse their/other people’s prescription drugs.
It seems like every other week there is an article in the NY Times about how someone abused Adderall/Ritalin/etc. for academic/career/recreational purposes and it messed up their life, or the overdiagnosis of ADHD in children (particularly boys)… and those are valid concerns, but it doesn’t negate the populations of people who really do benefit from treatment and who are not lying to/trying to manipulate their doctors.
I’ve been treating (under the supervision of my psychiatrist) my OCD with Adderall for the past few years. I wasn’t really sure about it at first, but it lets me focus on things I want to, rather than the obsessions. I’ve found it really helpful, moreso than just an SSRI by itself.
Blergh yes! I actually have ADHD and it’s extremely annoying. Makes it hard to tell people about it, because they expect me to be a hyperactive toddler all of a sudden, when really it’s more like it’s really difficult to get started or finished anything. I’m really great at middles.
“really great at middles” I love that description
Yes. Perfect.
Yes! Middles! Also, while I can remember the exact outfit I wore on Independence Day the year I was 7, I can’t remember what someone said to me five minutes ago. (Best part of having what some friends of mine call “The Forgetting Shit Disease” – you take medication to control it, but you have to *remember to take your medication*. BEST.)
I wonder if it’s comorbid with the waves of super gluten intolerance washing over our great nation(s).
ETA a plural. The Toast is global!
As someone with celiac disease, I was at first a bit annoyed with a lot of people suddenly coming down with “gluten sensitivity,” but then a ton of my favorite restaurants starting having gluten free menus, and someone took the time to make actually good gluten free beer (Omission and Estrella’s Daura).
Good with the bad, I suppose.
Still, couldn’t help but laugh at Seth Rogen’s definition of “a gluten” at the beginning of “This Is The End.”
I am very sympathetic to persons with actual gluten intolerance but I can’t imagine pretending to need to eat gluten-free for my health. I love bread. But I know there are people that do it…
My sister and my BFF are gluten-free and it’s made a massive difference to their health and general happiness, but I absolutely agree, it’s such a pain in the arse for them I couldn’t imagine doing it just to be ‘special’. Who has that kind of energy?
I wish it was a choice for me. It’s been almost 12 years, and some of my favorite things in the world can’t be properly done gluten free: sourdough bread, croissants, baklava.
Granted, it turned my entire life around (before the diagnosis, the best my doctor could fathom was “pretty bad mono” that just didn’t seem to end), but I do miss croissants.
Replying super late but I’m another celiac and I’ve tried so hard to replicate puff pastry for croissants. So hard. They’re what I miss the most! When will glutino make a puff pastry for me, so I can stop butter blocking and trying to make croissants with sorghum. When.
I was discussing this with my sister recently– she avoids gluten, and says that not eating it makes her feel much better. She hasn’t been tested for celiac and freely admits that her sensitivity may be psychosomatic– could be some kind of stress response as opposed to an actual digestive intolerance– but the diarrhea is real enough, so.
(I tried eating gluten-free for 2 weeks & it did nothing except give me an enormous craving for Wheat Thins.)
Late to this thread, but it could be fructan and not gluten. She may want to try a low FODMAP diet if she is still having issues.
The diarrhea, even, could be psychosomatic – my gut flips its shit when my anxiety disorder decides it’s time to have “fun”.
Yeah, I’d like more and more people to come down as ‘gluten sensitive’ – the food choices in just the couple years since my husband was diagnosed celiac have multiplied exponentially, and I don’t want to go back to the old ways when this fad diet moves on.
As a fellow celiac beer-lover, be really careful with both Omission and Estrella Daura. They both actually make the beer with barley and claim to somehow remove the gluten, but they determine the gluten levels using tests that don’t work well on beer due to the malting process (the same tests show a number of regular beers to be “gluten free” as well). More accurate mass spec. analysis showed that barley-based “gluten free” beers still contain gluten–I had to look all this up after polishing off a couple of six packs of Omission pale and IPA over a week and trying to figure out where I’d been glutened. I’d stick to non-barely based beers. (source: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/pr2008434)
I am picturing the doctor as Frank Black from Millennium.
I’d forgotten about this other (wonderful) Frank Black connection!
I am scaring the pants off myself with a Millennium marathon as I type. It bloody terrifies me.
I have been meaning to do that for years now. I’m glad the show still retains the dark edge I remember—nothing quite like a mid-to-late-’90s Chris Carter scare.
I rewatch The Curse of Frank Black every Halloween. It is never not perfect/terrifying
I saw that on Sunday when I spent the entire day on the sofa in front of it. Am now on the last one of season two.
Wait, so Frank Black has time to be a mental health physician and put out a new Pixies album? Man is a miracle.
My cookbooks are sorted by cuisine, please.
As they should be (I also order mine in vague geographic relationships so the Mediterranean countries hang out together and the Tex-mex and the mex-mex have friends).
NO! Don’t put your sweaters on hangers! You’ll stretch out the shoulders! Sorry, I’m just super OCD about this!
Folks. One of the pencils in the lead photo is not as sharp as all the other ones. Ugh, I’m sorry. I wouldn’t even point it out, but I’m like suuuper OCD and it’s like, a compulsion or something.
Oh my goooooood I hate everything now.
My ex thinks/was never really officially diagnosed with ADD, but I’m like 90% he just thinks human beings are supposed to have some kind of insane amount of focus? Like he’d be like, “I can’t focus on a task for 20 minutes!” and I’m like, “that is PERFECTLY NORMAL DUDE.”
Whenever somebody tries to get all up in arms about the internet and how it’s ruining our ability to focus, like “people used to be able to spend hours at a time reading or illuminating manuscripts” or whatever, I like to point out that hyper-focusing (which can be a symptom of real ADHD, actually) would actually be an evolutionary disadvantage, because you would want to be able to pay attention to lots of different parts of your environment at once. Like how your eyes are always moving so your brain can fill in a full picture of what’s around you, and if you hold them perfectly still you get blind spots.
Uh, didn’t those monks stop illuminating manuscripts at least every 20 minutes to draw farting cats or rabbits with guns coming out of their asses or something else in the margins?
(Also, the idea that humans, especially small humans, should be able to focus for longer than 20 minutes at a time is doing horrible things to our public schools, which expect 8-year-olds to sit still for hours.)
My ex was diagnosed with ADD and he definitely had some unrealistic expectations of what life would be like once he got on ritalin. He was telling me about how he was now going to be able to write so many books so fast, and how he had set alarms to remind him to eat because he was sure he was going to be so focused on writing he’d go days without eating and I had to break it to him that that was probably setting himself up for disappointment.
It has been a few years now, and to my knowledge he has still not written a single book, and from his Facebook photos it doesn’t look like he’s been skipping a lot of meals, either.
Yeah mine was saying this stuff even before any meds, and the average adult attention span is 20 minutes tops. I think these expectations that people can focus on one thing for hours and hours (I’m not entirely sure where it comes from?) really does lead to a lot of overdiagnosis.
I think people get the expectation because you CAN focus for hours… on something that is fun and varied and stimulating. Meds don’t make dull and unrewarding work any better. (I have ADHD and for me it’s mostly hyperfocus. I take meds so I don’t spend half the day wrapped up in interesting but unimportant things.)
I do this hyperfocus thing… Only never realized it could be a thing! Procrastination via interesting but unimportant things I can’t seem to pull away from. There are mess for this?
I feel like I’m in limbo a bit — I just found out that my biological family is really prone to ADHD, and I have a lot of the symptoms (to the extent that it impacts my life pretty significantly) but I don’t want to self-diagnose. At the same time, I’ve found it nearly impossible to find a doctor to talk to about it — I’m insured, but it seems like no psychiatrist who treats adult ADHD accepts insurance, and the one or two clinics that do have months-long waiting lists.
Grr, healthcare.
Not necessarily recommending this route but….if you just want to see if meds help you, in my experience literally every psychiatrist on the planet will right you a script if you mention once that sometimes you have trouble focusing. Along with scripts for various anti-anxiety medications. In different dosages and forms.
Source: the multiple scripts I have shredded the day after an appointment when I realize I don’t need to be pepped up – just the antidepressant please!
Not only ARE you not OCD, you don’t HAVE OCD. And you’re not “very unique,” either. That’s impossible. A thing is unique, or it is not; it’s an absolute quality.
These are the same idiots who say, “I’m celiac.”
“I’m celiac” is a lot easier to say than “I have celiac disease,” and gets the point across more easily. It’s not correct, but it’s effective.
I POSSESS FEELINGS OF OFFENSE BECAUSE OF YOUR PERMISSIVE GRAMMAR.
I bet you also think we should let the poors speak in public.
Ugh, as someone who is actually diagnosed with actual OCD that ranges from under control to genuinely life-disrupting depending on all sorts of factors, this is one of my hugest pet peeves. Yeah, sure, you are annoyed when all your shoes aren’t pointing the same direction. I can’t get any sleep because I become convinced every five minutes that I need to get up and empty my bladder again, and sometimes my brain is completely consumed by unstoppable thoughts of either killing myself or loved ones, but yeah, I’m sure your super OCD is just agonizing.
“I can’t get any sleep because I become convinced every five minutes that I need to get up and empty my bladder again”
Ah! I have OCD and used to have a serious problem with this, and never twigged it was an OCD symptom! Thanks for shedding some light on that.
Yeah, I actually had all kinds of tests done on my bladder and kidneys and tried a whole bunch of other stuff before we finally figured out that yep, it’s just OCD messing with my life again and there’s nothing actually wrong with my bladder. It sucks, because I can know that rationally and still not stop myself from getting up a couple dozen times a night.
same, dang. i would love it if i could trade my actual ocd for the kind of SUPER OCD! everyone else apparently suffers from. like, take my intrusive thoughts, please! it’ll make you so quirky and unique when you have nonstop bizarrely specific violent and sexual fantasies! it’s like a fun game, seeing how long you can last before the fear and guilt and shame makes you flip out and have a nervous breakdown!
I cannot even begin to like this enough. Oh my gosh. As someone in the mental health field, it angers me so much. I know people who have considered suicide because they can’t control the thoughts. It’s not okay to equate that with “Oh, I have to make sure pictures are straight!” Yes, there’s a continuum, but if it’s not impacting your life, you’re not on it.
“Super OCD” is the new “Alot.”
I know but like, you guys, I’m SOOO bipolar because I just felt sad in response to a sad song but then like, a couple minutes later I read this article and I was laughing, oh my god, I need to be on some serious meds LOL.
*seethes*
Thank you, thank you, from the bottom of my obsessive-compulsive heart.
(I am actually doing self-therapy right now by posting this comment, because it will be comment number 55 and fives are to be avoided at all costs. I realized the irony of being prevented by my OCD from commenting on an article about OCD and decided to consciously make myself do it anyway. Deep breaths)
Woooooo go Chandra!!!!
Thanks.
At the exact time I posted that, there was a bad accident on the highway (which I heard about an hour later) involving a truck, and I couldn’t get a hold of my girlfriend (who drives a truck and was planning to be on that highway that day), and I nearly had a full-blown panic episode until she finally texted me back. I’m generally pretty good at keeping my compulsions and rituals under control, but this is the kind of coincidence that makes it so hard to do. WHY U MESS WITH MY HEAD, UNIVERSE?
Thank you, thank you, from the bottom of my obsessive-compulsive heart.
(I am actually doing self-therapy right now by posting this comment, because it will be comment number 55 and fives are to be avoided at all costs. I realized the irony of being prevented by my OCD from commenting on an article about OCD and decided to consciously make myself do it anyway. Deep breaths)
Wow these comments are all over the place. Gluten, ADD? What was this article about again? Oh yeah, OCD.
I’m confused by this line:
“I’ll be out with friends and everything is going fine, and then something will happen – someone will drop a slice or pizza or spill wine down my shirt, so I’ll say ‘better clean that up.’ And everyone will just go silent,” Lee said. “It’s like the elephant in the room.”
Now I’m the most non-OCD person in the world. My books are piled all over the place. My pictures are not level. My house and my life is a total mess, and I don’t really care that much. But even I would clean up a dropped pizza or spilled wine. Wine can set if you don’t clean it up quickly. I’m not sure that this is a sign of OCD.
Now gluten, that is another matter. I think that I am anti-gluten sensitive. I feel terrible and get depressed if I stay away from gluten too long. If I get a bagel in the morning then I feel great all day. If people want to avoid gluten, give it to me! Then we’ll both feel better.
Okay, I read the article a little more carefully and now realize that the author may have not been 100% entirely serious, sort of like my ‘anti-gluten sensitive’ comment. I need to get out more.
*Clapping gleefully*
Yeah, I actually had all kinds of tests done on my bladder and kidneys and tried a whole bunch of other stuff before we finally figured out that yep, it's just OCD messing with my life again and there's nothing actually wrong with my bladder. It sucks, because I can know that rationally and still not stop myself from getting up a couple dozen times a night.
Oh, and another thing, as an actual, real-life OCD-er: I absolutely LOATHE that “joke” about having CDO, not OCD, because it’s got to be in alphabetical order haha I’m just so crazy OCD like that! Yeah, see, I’m a librarian, we like things to be organized and some of my obsessions do tend that way, and yet I don’t give a fuck about things being alphabetized outside of necessary situations like libraries or filing systems. OCD DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!
Oh, and another thing, as an actual, real-life OCD-er: I absolutely LOATHE that "joke" about having CDO, not OCD, because it's got to be in alphabetical order haha I'm just so crazy OCD like that! Yeah, see, I'm a librarian, we like things to be organized and some of my obsessions do tend that way, and yet I don't give a fuck about things being alphabetized outside of necessary situations like libraries or filing systems. OCD DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!
Thanks.
At the exact time I posted that, there was a bad accident on the highway (which I heard about an hour later) involving a truck, and I couldn't get a hold of my girlfriend (who drives a truck and was planning to be on that highway that day), and I nearly had a full-blown panic episode until she finally texted me back. I'm generally pretty good at keeping my compulsions and rituals under control, but this is the kind of coincidence that makes it so hard to do. WHY U MESS WITH MY HEAD, UNIVERSE?