OCD Symptoms: Compulsions

OCD compulsions are usually performed by the individuals either because:

1. OCD sufferers simply feel that they must perform them.

2. OCD sufferers are trying to compensate the increased anxiety caused by the obsessive thoughts/images/impulses.

Compulsions are made in the absurd hope of the sufferer that they might somehow help avoid an unwished and unpleasant future event. For example, one OCD sufferer might think that if they do not switch the light on and off for 15 times before they leave a room a loved one might die. As you read this black on white, even if you’re an OCD sufferer, you can feel how absurd this thought process is.

OCD compulsions can include issues such as counting specific things – counting footsteps, counting cars, counting cars on the street by color etc – or counting in various ways – counting by intervals of two, counting things that appear in various patterns, etc. In OCD compulsions numbers and patterns are of extreme importance and most of the compulsions revolve around them. For example, sufferers might clean their hands for X times, they might check whether their cars have been locked for X times (I admit I’m guilty of this; I also check at least twice whether the car alarm is running fine and whether the hand brake is on), whether the doors of their homes are shut (I used to do this as well), brushing their teeth X times on each side, touching various objects Y times, etc. Pattern-wise, a sufferer might seek patterns through sidewalk cracks and walk on the sidewalk only by respecting the pattern that’s inside their head. An interesting film where you can see OCD compulsions in action is “As Good As It Gets”, starring Jack Nicholson as Melvin Udall, an OCD ridden character.

Basically, OCD compulsions are made by the sufferer so that they could get some relief and escape their obsessions or to avoid situations in which their obsessions might reappear. But such relief is only temporary and obsessions plus the adjacent anxiety is bound to return sooner or later. Since at first compulsions brought some relief to the situation, they are repeated whenever obsessions reappear and so on and so forth in a self-reinforcing circle. The sufferer initially thinks that compulsions are a small price to pay but they eventually spiral out of his control and it becomes obvious even to the sufferer that compulsions don’t help at all with getting rid of obsessions. From personal experience, I have to say that I was probably unaware of using compulsions to solve my obsessions at first and that was probably true until my compulsions became too large and persistent to remain unobserved. Your situation or the situation you’re seeking answers for might not be the same though.

There are people who do various things repeatedly in order to learn a new skill for example. These are not compulsions though; they are merely behaviors. Behaviors become compulsions depending on the context in which they are made. If they are made to escape obsessions or to avoid triggering them, then sure, they are compulsions.

OCD compulsions can eat up copious amounts of time from the life of a sufferer. I can attest myself to the large amounts of time my compulsions used to eat: a couple of years ago I estimated that I wasted at least 90 minutes each day on useless compulsions. Nowadays I’m down to a couple of minutes a day and hopefully I’ll be done with them as soon as possible. For some people, compulsions not only eat time but also affect physical health (for example, washing one’s hands with antibacterial soap repeatedly can turn one’s hands red and inflamed).

Obsessive compulsive disorder compulsions also spiral out of control time-wise when one does them yet it doesn’t yet have the feeling that everything is alright (e.g.: “I’ve switched the light on and off for 15 times before leaving the room but maybe this time I need to do this for 2 more times so that a loved one won’t get hurt”). The next time one does the compulsion if feels the need to do it with the increased threshold. Also, when tired, one is incline to performed one’s compulsions in larger amounts than usual.

This concludes our article on OCD compulsions. If you want to add on top of what we wrote here or if you’d like to share your experience with obsessive compulsive disorder compulsions then don’t hesitate to post a comment.

Related posts:

1. OCD Symptoms: Obsessions