Hi all,
For some time I think that I have being suffering a form of OCD or OCPD. This has being on going for a couple of years and is quiet hard to put into words. Even though I know a lot of the time my thoughts are irrational I can’t convince myself otherwise and the episodes go on for months and reduce my productivity and motivation a lot! It results in me spending hours sat aimlessly replaying scenarios over in my head trying to search for a solution or a conclusion to whatever thought it is that I’m having.
Over the years the thoughts have varied but are usually along the same lines of not being in control of something. Usually it’s a materialistic item or a certain situation. See below a couple of examples:
Example 1:
When I purchased a house with my partner I was over the moon and should have been enjoying the experience but during a routine visit to the solicitors it was highlighted that an area of the driveway on our property actually belonged to the next door neighbour. However, the previous owner of our property had paved over this area so it looked as though the entire driveway was ours.
For months and months I pondered over this small section of driveway. Replaying scenarios in my head on how to take over ownership of the part of the drive that wasn’t mine. I played over scenarios where my neighbour would knock on my door one day and want to use this area of drive for something (which he would definitely be entitled to do) I even thought about building a wall which would completely ruin the driveway just so that I could have a border around my area of land. Eventually this subsided after about 8 months and now I couldn’t really care less about the small section of driveway. I don’t know how I got over it and now although I’m fine, for that entire 8 months I must have lost countless hours sat aimlessly thinking about such a trivial thing!
Example 2: (This one is currently on going)
I am quite possessive over paperwork, I like all of my documents neatly arranged in a folder - car insurance documents, life insurance documents, house related documents including deeds etc. My reoccurring obsession in this instance is hard to explain but it is basically a thought that because the documents don’t have solely my name on them but those of my partners aswell that they aren’t actually just my documents. If my partner requested them to be in a communal place as opposed to in my files then she is entitled to do so. I replay different scenarios where I lose control of these documents altogether. Eg: if we separated and I no longer had access to these documents because I had to move out of the house or if I had to put all of my other documents in a communal place with the house documents. I like to know that my documents are filed in a way that I want them because I know that if I take a document out to that it will go back in exactly the same place once I’ve finished with it. I know this is a very bizarre thought process and has no real depth to it but I have been replaying various scenarios in excess of a year. I have kept it to myself for so long but it is affecting absolutely everything I do, my attention span has reduced so much because my trail of thought always reverts back to possession over my documents.
From a young age I recall always having these type of obsessions and I frequently would replay in my head things such as ‘what does my life depend on’ without ever finding a real answer to it. My thoughts frequently come back to this phrase and I feel that it could be linked in some way as if it’s engrained into my thought process.
I know that in the grand scheme of things with everything that’s going on in the world that these are ridiculous problems to have. I am entirely grateful for everything that I have in life but these thoughts are taking over my daily life.
