#well severity does tend to fluctuate but like it’s so so pervasive and frankly an absolutely ridiculous way to live

[tacit-semantics]

It’s 3am which means it’s finally time. Dirk OCD posting under the cut. cw for in depth descriptions of compulsive behaviors regarding scrupulosity (moral), violent intrusive thoughts (alluded to, non-graphic), and contamination, as well as mentions of self harm. If you’re prone to picking up obsessions or compulsions through reading about them, I would suggest skipping out on this one

So first of all I wanna say that this is not intended to function as a set of assumptions/inferences that point towards dirk having ocd in canon so much as a set of ways in I, as a person with ocd, saw myself in him. It’s a very… enthusiastic headcanon of mine though so this switches back and forth between long winded babbling and then its canon inspiration depending on how excited I am at any given moment. Also, disclaimer: ocd can manifest in a whole bunch of ways, and a lot of them are super specific to the person in question, which is to say that I’ll be drawing a lot (but not entirely, on account of the fact that there’s very much a limit as to what I’m willing to discuss regarding me specifically) from personal experience for the sole reason that that’s how I best understand the disorder. Now, getting into it!

- first things first: he’s got scrupulosity obsessions, I think, specifically moral. Very, very afraid of hurting the people close to him, which in turn manifests as a sort of hypervigilance in everything he says and does. I think that in this context the knowledge of Bro would be equally devastating and necessary in that he’s concrete proof of the worst case scenario, and acceptance of that possibility is necessary to overcome ocd, but also like. I don’t think theres much in the way of mental health accommodations on post apocalyptic earth (much the same as current earth actually), so in practice this would just be Bad.

- speaking of hypervigilance: his attention always being split between his physical body and his dream self reminded me a lot of how a solid chunk of my brains processing power is always devoted to various bullshit, even if the rest of me’s working on autopilot. I also think he’d be the sort to assume that not anticipating a threat to his loved ones counts as a failure, so he’s always on guard/trying to stop things before they start/jumping at shadows, effectually. For me this manifested as a contamination fear but I don’t think that would track here I think he’d be more along the lines of trying to predict his loved one’s actions and putting out imaginary/preemptive fires accordingly

- this would also work well with his fear of manipulation I think. Like he’s so worried about his actions being controlling that he tries to prod at THEIR actions to ‘protect’ them from him which ends up as a sort of bizarre self fulfilling prophecy

-information hoarder. He’s taken the tests, he’s read the articles, he knows what’s wrong with him (he thinks) but also doesn’t want to use it as an excuse (he thinks) and also gets thrown into spirals when his actions don’t match up exactly with the information he’s gathered. I also think it would be fun to try and puzzle out mental health bullshit through the juggalo-internet. Not fun for him, but for me thinking about it

-hal is basically an extended study in rumination. Dirk needs definitive proof of himself and his motives, and well. Hal is not that, but I can see how he might have been intended to serve that function

-reassurance seeker but like in the way where he continually asserts to other people that he’s bad. In his mind this functions as a warning so that they know to be on guard around him. He worries about this being a sort of manipulation too, of course. Nothings ever easy.

-this gets more difficult when he goes from living alone and isolated to living with other people, I think, because now there’s an added layer of ways he has to worry about hurting them.

-if you didn’t know, a super common way for ocd to manifest is (unwanted and frightening) intrusive thoughts about hurting others in one way or another. I think it’d make sense for him to develop obsessions like these once he starts sharing physical space with other people. Like meals and the like he’ll just be sitting there zoned the fuck out because he’s monitoring every single urge and thought he has so he can ‘restrain’ as necessary

-also think he’d still be Constantly Aware of Everything, Always, even when he’s no longer splitting his consciousness in the literal sense. The thought process might start with something like noticing a chair is slightly wobbly and immediately having to fix it because otherwise it might fall, and if it falls when another person sits in it it’ll be his fault because he knew it was wobbly and didn’t do anything to fix it, and then he applies that thought process elsewhere and it escalates

-the thing is is that all this escalation happens pretty quickly because it’s a very intense set of feelings that you’re sitting with 24/7 so like cut to a month later and he’s pushing cups of water to the center of counters because otherwise they might spill and someone’ll slip and it’s HIS job to make sure they don’t, he’s repeatedly checking food over to make sure nothing’s wrong with it, he’s mapping everything he’s touched in the past week to see if he’s done anything bad or wrong, etc etc. these just keep getting increasingly more disconnected and bizarre like shit gets weird and frankly it might not even register for him that what he’s doing is irregular like from the inside things can seem as reasonable as they’re not

-that said, once you take that hyperawareness and ramp it up in reference to like everything, you realize that it just… isn’t sustainable, which means that at some point he inevitably‘fails’ and that goes as well as you think it does. Like on a good day he dismisses an ambiguous dot on a piece of bread as an obsessive quirk (maybe because he’s tired from other compulsion sets or something it happens) and then two days later someone accidentally eats a bit of bread before realizing there’s mold on it and well now dirk can’t get up from bed for the next three days sorry

-I think there’s a lot of really interesting things to say in terms of control here too. It’s all a bit ironic of course, as in something out of your control making you feel in control even if just for a second, fear of imposition taking a turn into imposition with a different motive, the distance between motive and action for that matter. I am getting off track.

-also dirk strikes me as the sort to have a comprehensive list (either written or mental) of every bad and ‘bad’ thing he’s done, ever. Regularly combs through his memories to see if he can think of others, and considers them obsessively both within and outside of context

-also just. That one convo he has where he’s talking about drowning in himself. I love that one

-physically, think he might scratch himself during panic attacks. Lot of self harm urges (head banging, eye trauma) but those don’t bother him nearly as much as his fears of hurting others. He’s unsocialized as fuck, and I think that as such he might not necessarily realize that he processes distress and anxiety in harmful/irregular ways

-I also wouldn’t be surprised if there was like this super noticeable gap between how he perceives himself and how other people perceive him too that’s pretty common. I don’t think he would have a fear of people finding out that he’s ‘bad’ by his standards though for the sole purpose that he assumes they already know

-Anyways from there it’s just like a various grab bag of related bullshit/uncategorized neuroses and obsession/compulsion sets. I think he has trich and maybe dermatillomania too. Autistic, definitely. Probably some other stuff. Comorbidity king. Sometimes he has to finish a compulsion set to sit down but he just finished a different one and is too tired to start again so he just stands on his phone for an hour. Has weird stress dreams. Bites his nails.

-all in all, ocd tends to latch on the things you care about- hence why so many intrusive thoughts are so ego dystonic, hence the fixation. Dirk, in canon and in this spiel here, loves the people he loves very much and just does not want to see them hurt and- unfortunately- sees himself as a threat thus. Well all of this.

-this concludes OCD dirk hour. If you have anything to add, please feel free! But also please be respectful about it, especially considering the subject matter.

EDIT: wrote a sequel to this, found here. It's not as put together as this one, but it's definitely a thing that exists