#moral ocd telling me to overexplain something .

[crittertalez]

oc-tober 6! decided to have the text in the image because i wanted to do little doodles. simplified id in alt and ill include a full transcription under the cut :]

SURPRISE I'm doing Speckle for yet another day (no one is actually surprised). So why did THIS get redesigned? Kind of obvious why but humor me here. Like yeesh.

Well first of all she started out as.. actually another character! Not mine. Long story. This first design looked too similar.

Second of all, it didn't fully fit her, she looked a bit too young, and as big Speckle fans may not expect she actually to me looked Too Nice for someone so hot-headed.

And also her design had bad colors and finally too many details that I just [dragged-out] kept forgetting. Lol.

Among giving her darker skin and dreads I in fact took away one aspect, her face shadow! It didn't seem very fitting for her at the time, since she was just genuinely nice and trustworthy in ToonTown rather than a spy like in TTD.... Also I just kept forgetting to draw it (Atropa kept it though! Lent was supposed [to] but I kept. Uh. Forgetting. Lol.)

All of that + generally growing as an artist led to THIS!! (Which I'm much more proud of.)

[beemovieerotica]

oh fuck do i have ocd lol

you might!! it's hard to tell when there's an overlap with general anxiety (and OCD is categorized as a type of anxiety disorder) but yeah, do you:

- find yourself needing to rewrite, reread, clarify, or follow-up to an unnecessary degree - overexplaining yourself to people to be perfectly understood, otherwise you feel like some harm might happen to yourself or others

- do similar things with your physical environment - re-checking and making sure everything is "where it should be" to prevent loss or harm - needing to know where everything is, having backup plans, with an anxiety attached to having these systems in place

- anticipate worst-case scenarios frequently, imagining that if you don't do something, then a domino effect of things might happen to cause catastrophic harm

you may also have compulsions / rituals attached to these, ranging from kind of logical (cleaning & sanitizing spaces to prevent illness) to pure physical impulse ("i need to touch the doorknob to make sure it's locked, even though I can physically see the lock without touching it")

OCD can be associated with strong feelings about morality, religion, or other belief systems ... it can be tied to anxious superstitious behavior

nail picking, skin picking, hair plucking, scratching at things on your body or clothes that feel out of place

there's a lot but this is mainly the stuff that has been present for me in my life

[gerrydelano]

i was wondering if you had any, like ocd,,, hm, idk how to phrase this. but basically i read your ocd post and had a "hey wait" moment. ig i was wondering where you learned abt the less talked abt symptoms like obsessing over certain things, or needing to overthink & agonize over every outcome when trying to do something. i never considered i have ocd just bc i don't have severe physical compulsions. ik compulsions don't have to be physical but i never thought i had mental compulsions either

hi! i was going to put this in the disability ask dump, but unfortunately, i ended up writing like 1.2k words because, appropriately, my OCD went haywire. let’s go!

the way i learned about the lesser discussed symptoms is really just, because i Have the symptoms myself jhbknm OCD is one of my most troubling diagnoses and it really fucks my whole life up ngl. like, i’ll sometimes forget that i even have it because i’m so accustomed to the rituals and the way i’m wired, until something happens and i go “oh right lol.”

like, i’ll realize all at once how many times i’m repeating myself or how long i’ve been dwelling on a small miscommunication that was resolved hours ago. 

or have to redo a comment on a document i’m beta reading because i made one at 8:56 and then went above it to make one at 8:57, so i need to delete the first one and put it BACK so that it looks more like i was commenting completely top to bottom and hadn’t gone backwards, and then i’m like. hey, so that’s a much

you don’t have to have just Severe Physical Compulsions, yeah, there are so many ways it manifests and everyone’s going to have a more personalized distribution of where their symptoms are stronger or less prominant compared to other people with the same disorder. 

most of the compulsions ARE mental, that’s where the obsessive part comes in. it is Can’t Turn Brain Off Disorder, in a different way than like, ADHD (which i also have, and by now i can sort of tell the difference between what behaviors come from which thing, though the overlap can muddle it a LOT and that makes my OCD get angry.)

my  OCD makes me Latch Onto something and i CANNOT stop Obsessing over it and Agonizing over it and asking people for reassurance about something or revisiting a topic to Make It Very Clear that i meant X and not Y, etc. it contributes to my pathological fear of being misunderstood, which is part of why i write so much in all these posts and overexplain myself a lot.

OCD is highly stigmatized and stereotyped, and people tend to think it’s just... being a “germaphobe” or a “neat freak,” or JUST little rituals like turning a doorknob 3 times before you feel comfortable going into the room, or flicking light switches on and off a number of times.

those rituals are absolutely a thing! and yeah Germs Bad (i literally have to wash my hands every time i so much as touch my own sock if it’s on my foot even if i just put it on and even if i’m like, freshly showered and totally clean. i touch the sock i Feel The Phantom Sock Touch on my finger and HAVE to wash my hands.) but there’s a lot more to it, things like moral scrupilosity and the obsession over doing something wrong.

there’s also catastrophizing and disaster planning, and having an escape plan for every possible situation, and overplanning. my OCD makes me overpurchase food when i go out because i’m suddenly afraid that i won’t have enough “for later” or that i will never have the chance to eat again, so i need to Stock Up.

it’s a constant narrative of “i have to do this, or else” “or else what” “Else”

like... you don’t even have the answer for what you’re worried will happen, you just feel that ominous threat that something Will.

i don’t really have any specific resources for you because i really just. learned by examining myself and googling certain things and thread hopping and all of this exploration was done years ago for me, like. i’ve been living with the knowledge that i have certain things for a long time and i’ve just, relaxed on that particular obsession.

it DID used to make me go nuts over trying to make sure everything has an explanation/trying to narrow down my own pathology into as few words as possible (which is not how it works, sadly) but the longer you live with something the easier it gets to go “oh right this is because of that” etc.

okay see the fact that this answer has gone on so long, is the OCD for me hgjvhbkn. i wanted to keep this short, but i kept going, and couldn’t stop, and then i was like “do i leave this in the disability ask dump or make a new post?” and i had to ask ren which one i should do and the ambiguity of the answer given made me Very Twitchy and then i KEPT WRITING and now it’s too long to keep in the ask dump and i had to put it in its own ask WHICH bothers me, 

because i have a thing about Blog Order and keeping things Neat and Orderly and making sure that asks/text posts are appropriately cushioned by art and i cannot reblog Funny Memes because they’re “ugly” i can only reblog fanart and if i get too many asks it makes me short circuit because i do not want to spam and so i tried to consolidate and WANTED to with this but You See What I Mean?

and then i read this paragraph out loud to ren because i can’t fucking shut up! and i’m reading this out loud as i type it, because i’m fucking ins*ne. which i can say because i have OCD jghfnkkenrf.

it’s just. repetitive. i repeat myself so much and Cannot stop. 

and i do have a number system! i like 2, 4 and 8. i do everything in multiples of that. if you see me doing !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! at any point, just know they’re deliberately counted every time. i have a system. i’ll do 4 sets of 4 usually, but sometimes i end up doing well past 64 of a given thing and it’s just. 

it’s excessive! and that’s the disease. it’ll manifest in the tiniest little innocuous habits and compulsions so small that you might not even realize they’re “strange” or anything, because it’s just, you do it to feel comfortable and get used to it.

So Yeah! it’s definitely not just the physical compulsions you see on TV a lot in like, Monk, or whatever. honestly miranda bailey on grey’s anatomy was a really emotional and hard-hitting expression of the rapid onset of traumagenic OCD, you could check that out, too! but for the most part, google your own behaviors a little and look up “myths about OCD” to see them debunked.

just know that there’s no singular one way that a disorder manifests, and you’re not required to have Every Single Symptom in order to have it. there’s a minimum requirement, yeah, and some things you can’t have unless XYZ happened (like DID you need trauma before a certain age, etc.) but it varies so much person to person, no matter what.

the media portrayal of it definitely pushes a particular presentation, much like many other conditions (autism, schizophrenia, etc.) and you should definitely look into how to disengage from those stereotypes and myths so you can more accurately assess yourself and your experiences.

sorry if this wasn’t much help! i’m way out of practice on the resources for this stuff, and like. i know i don’t owe emotional labor just because someone asked a question online but i still like to at least give some personal input in case any of our experiences line up, so you know you’re not alone and that there’s a potential reason for it.

good luck!