Re: Pure O
When I was in college I woke up one morning to go to the bathroom to find my roommate duct taping the kitchen drawers shut. When I asked her what she was doing, she said that she was protecting us. If all the drawers were taped shut, she wouldn't be able to get to the kitchen knives and then wouldn't accidentally kill any of us.
Now I knew my roommate wouldn't have hurt a fly. So why was she worried that she was going to accidentally do something to kill us all (We lived with two other girls) ? This is when I learned about OCD. My roommates and I took her into our university's medical center, and to make a long story short, we all received counseling to learn about OCD (obviously she had individual counseling as well), and she and her family went to counseling together. She started medication and she became a lot better.
At first though, I was surprised. I thought all OCD people were neat freaks who were afraid of getting germs on them and had to clean all the time. Yes, there is that sub group of people with OCD, but they're not all like that.
Obviously the intrusive thoughts were thoughts that she'd accidentally harm her friends and family. And frankly, I didn't really notice my roommate having any compulsions. The things the doc said were compulsions were things I thought were really responsible on her part like making sure the doors were locked at night. She progressed to the point of duct taping drawers shut and hiding sharp objects.
She said that for her the best thing was medication. Eventually she will go back to those spirals that you mentioned without meds, so she's stayed on them permanently. Now she's got a couple degrees, married, and has a kid on the way, so it seems to me that she's got everything under control.
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