Ocd as an advantage? Weird ted talk

[Guest OCDhavenobrain]

That is just black and white thinking. If it was true nobody would overcome OCD...  It would mean that if you once overcome it there would be no risk of it getting back in.

[dksea]

On 28/09/2019 at 20:44, OCDhavenobrain said:

That is just black and white thinking. If it was true nobody would overcome OCD...  It would mean that if you once overcome it there would be no risk of it getting back in.

I disagree.  A limitation is a limitation, a disorder is a disorder.  Yes, absolutely you can still live a fulfilling and rewarding life in spite of them, you can even learn how to adapt your life around them, and yes even learn lessons from that adaption, but that doesn't make them an advantage.  A deaf person can't hear.  That is a limitation, it reduces the information they receive, it prevents them from experiencing a part of the world around them.  Yes, they can adapt and in doing so perhaps improve other areas beyond what other people might do, but they still can't hear. 

OCD is not a benefit.  Yes one can adapt to it, one can deal with it, one can manage it, and (insert deity here) willing someday we will even cure it, but it doesn't provide an advantage, it doesn't give me abilities that are better than the average persons.  Overcoming a limitation, a hurdle, an impediment doesn't change that impediment.  If a tree falls in the road and blocks traffic, sure you can drive around it, or you can wait until its cleared, or you can decide to stay home, but the tree didn't help traffic, it didn't improve the flow, it didn't speed things up.

Meanwhile, recognizing that SOME ways of thinking or reacting to the world that are different from the normal ways might be advantageous does not mean that ALL differences from the norm are.  Neurodiversity is fine, recognizing that our typical way of thinking might not be the only good one is great.  And of course its a good thing to treat all people with dignity regardless of their mental or physical differences or limitations.  But like all opinions are not created equal, all mental differences aren't either.  Some are advantageous, some are merely different, and some are disadvantageous.  One should not assume differences are necessarily bad, but that doesn't mean they might not BE bad.  

Imagine you are the CEO of a fast food burger chain.  You are currently successful but you want to make sure your business stays successful, so you ask your staff for new ideas.  One person recommends expanding the menu to offer non-meat burger options.  After all the world is more health conscious these days, its a good idea to hedge your bets and not remain stuck on only beef burgers, even though that's been successful so far.  Its different, maybe a little risky, but it has potential.  Another person recommends you start selling lawnmowers at your stores too.  This idea too is different, its also really bad.  It doesn't fit with your current model, your staff would be ill suited to the task, the inventory would take up valuable space.  Just because something is different doesn't mean it can't also be bad.  OCD is a different way of processing information.  Its also a bad way of processing information.  Any "advantage" you can get from OCD you can get without it too.  You can learn to be focused without it, you can learn to be detail oriented without it.  In fact, a person who is detail oriented WITHOUT OCD is better off, because they can step away when they want, they can know when its appropriate to be detail oriented.  They aren't constantly having to fight with a flawed way of thinking.

OCD is bad, and the world would be better off if it didn't exist.  If there are people who want to live that way, fine that's their choice, but the overwhelming number of OCD sufferers whose lives are devastated and derailed by OCD represent the vast majority.  Even if this one person has somehow found a better life because of OCD, it doesn't come close to outweighing all those whose lives are worse off.  If you give a pill to 100 people and 99 have a terrible reaction and 1 person has a good one, you don't release that drug, because its a terrible one!  And with OCD that number of negative reactions is far higher.

[ThreeTimesGuy]

I detested much of this video and found myself wishing that she had banged her head on the monkey bars, not her arm.  It's extremely difficult to obtain decent help for OCD, government non-funding restricts respite in a mental health ward to people with psychotic illnesses.  I can read all day about Bi-Polar Disorder, Schizophrenic spectrums, autistic spectrums and eating disorders.  Yet, if OCD (not OCPD) truly affects one in a hundred people then 700,000 people are suffering from OCD in the UK, sometimes with other complaints and it's still used as a kind of catchment as in 'I'm a bit OCD'. 

The lack of research into the illness, the extreme treatments available for it and their success and failure need to be explored and safeguarded.  And does OCD transcend into psychosis?  If so then this woman is proof of a delusion, not an anxiety disorder.  My own OCD has improved my arithmetic as I have to  calculate numbers every few minutes. The flip side is and someone has already mentioned this that I don't know who I am or what I can achieve and not being able to ever drive, having a criminal record, having abused drugs and alcohol to quell the compulsions at least has left me in a position where if I make a friend then there's a new worry, a relationship, a new worry, a job and so on.  I stay safe and shut-in, or did, but refuse to anymore!

This woman  may well have OCD but inviting it in as she has done is so dangerous; it's all part of a North American culture of 'I can deconstruct my mental health  problems and nurture them'. Well, good luck!  She hasn't even considered that she may have OCPD  traits or even vertigo because a doctor has told her she has OCD and we too, in the UK, except all too readily what our GP's and so-called specialists say and we become what they dictate.  A low iron count on one blood test, I must be anaemic and need ferrous fumigate everyday for the rest of my life!

Instead off encouraging OCD to manifes itself in a positive manner (because it doesn't work), why aren't we striving to get to the roots of why we suffer this and that it needs to be regarded as a serious mental health problem?  A psychiatrist or two or a thousand could do with looking at this site and attempting to empathise with the pain that it generally causes.  This gifted and supported individual isn't holed up in a flat somewhere in the midlands, heartbroken at the naivety of the police, the criminal justice system, nurses and Doctors all over the country as well as the general public and their mis-representations.  It reminds me of the birth of 'care in the community' when newspapers began to demonise the psychotically ill for manslaughter or murder.  We're not understood either and deplorably, sceptically, I  can see this trend to ignore those suffering from OCD depleting even further if we don't shout loud enough and band together.

What's really wrong here?

 

Edited October 1, 2019 by ThreeTimesGuy