Is this OCD or my personality?

[Guest imthinking]

After reading an article or having a conversation with someone it takes me sometime to shift my mind to refocus my attention on something else. I thought I was just considerate to other people or a "deep" thinker kind of person but now ( after reading the four steps and how the caudate nucleus and the putamen "the automatic transmission of the brain" are malfunctioning in OCD people) I sometimes wonder whether ocd is partly behind this.

The thing is this helps me in my studies so once I concentrate on the task at hand (which takes sometime) I'm virtually shut down to the outside world.

[Guest lizinlondon]

I am like that too. I don't know what the answer is though. Maybe it is a bit of OCD. I can catch myself doing it and have to move myself onto the next topic to think about or I distract myself with something. I wonder if it is OCD or if other people have it?

[Saad]

I have found since I got awareness that I had OCD, or since my diagnosis for definite, I find myself thinking much like this. Perhaps this is just me but I now feel I overthink more things and my diagnosis has actually made my questioning worse, like "i'm just using OCD as an excuse", but I generally consider that I overthink things either because I am self aware of my OCD. That's my personal experience anyway, it really could be either way. Perhaps you should look back prior to your diagnosis and see if you thought similarly to me.

[Guest lizinlondon]

I have always been like this. Maybe it is my personality or maybe I have always had a bit of OCD. I guess ruminating on this could become OCD.

I have an OCD habit of questioning my OCD too, like "do I really have OCD or am I doing this on purpose?", "could I just stop having OCD tomorrow morning when I get up?". Bizarre.

[Guest imthinking]

I have always been like this too. Diagnosis didn't make a difference. The reason I think it's not OCD is that I don't get involved in any compulsions and the thoughts are not disturbing or unwanted, they just seem like a reflection of what has happened.

It's similar to OCD in the way they stay in my mind for a bit though.

[Guest lizinlondon]

Yes you are right looks like it is a personality trait. I have learned something new about myself today!

[dksea]

I think its pretty normal to get caught up in a topic or idea sometimes, especially enjoyable or interesting ones. I think you're right that sometimes this focus can have some similar aspects to OCD, but I personally wouldn't think the two are significantly related. I base this on two observations.

First, from my own personal experience. I take medication (an SSRI) to help with my OCD. I can go for months at a time without experiencing any significant OCD symptoms, yet at the same time I haven't noticed any significant change in my ability to get wrapped up in things. Maybe its watching TV, playing a game, reading a book, working on a project at work, etc. I would assume if it were significantly related to my OCD that the reduction of OCD symptoms from the medication would simultaneously also alter my ability to focus on other things.

Second, considering the current understanding of the parts of the brain involved with OCD, its not simply changing focus that's the problem, but also the anxiety and fear aspect of it. Since these other thoughts and activities don't involve that same set of factors, I think its less likely they are related.

One last thing, OCD seems to affect people of all different personality and interest types. If our ability to focus/not focus on tasks were tied in to OCD I would expect that such behavior would have been observed across large swaths of OCD sufferers and be included in the diagnostic criteria for OCD. I'm by no means an expert but I can't say I've ever seen anything to suggest that there is a link.

Anyway that's just my observations/thoughts. I'm thinking that its just a personality trait, nothing to worry about.

[Guest imthinking]

Yes. When the topic or experience is enjoyable or interesting, it takes time to give my full attention to something else once it is over e.g. a nice movie.

These observations are thoughtful. Thanks for sharing