Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Pet Peeves

Yesterday, the podcast Modern Musings talked about pet peeves. It was a fun discussion, but it also made me realize that I have a lot of pet peeves. One would even say that my pet peeves have pet peeves. I joke…I have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and when you have OCD, your life is a pet peeve.

What is OCD? According to the National Institute of Mental Health, ”Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a common, chronic, and long-lasting disorder in which a person has uncontrollable, reoccurring thoughts (obsessions) and/or behaviors (compulsions) that he or she feels the urge to repeat over and over.” People can have mild to severe cases of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. 

I feel like my tics are not life-altering, just annoying sometimes. I first noticed that I had odd tendencies when I was very young. I would get hyper-fixated on certain things. For example, I was obsessed with making lists and checking things off my list. I also had to have everything in alphabetical order. I would spend days alphabetizing and re-alphabetizing my books, movies, and magazines. There was nothing more satisfying to me than putting things in their place and having them organized. Over the years, I’ve found that without organization, life sometimes falls apart. Over the last eight years, I’ve also learned that sometimes you have to readjust your perception of how things should be and when to fight your battles.

My biggest OCD-related pet peeves:

• The trash should be in the trash can. I am so obsessed with this that I will throw trash away that’s not trash. My OCD has gotten me into trouble in the past. I have gotten so hard into “throwing away trash” mode that I have thrown away checks, important bills/papers, and keepsakes. In my classroom, if students leave their homework on the desk or the floor, I will throw it away (I do give them a disclaimer about this at the beginning of the year). One of the major problems I had with my ex-husband stemmed from his trash-hoarding (another form of OCD).
• The dishes should be in the sink. One thing I can’t stand is going to another person’s house and seeing dishes sitting everywhere. If the dishes are in the sink, I’m okay with it. But if they are sitting around the house, I fight the compulsion to take their dishes to the sink. If I have finished with a dish, I try to take it to the sink immediately. If I don’t, I will stare at it until it is in the sink.
• Dirty clothes should be in the hamper. That is another thing I can’t stand when I go to another person’s house. However, I don’t have an urge to pick up others’ dirty clothes. I can’t stand touching another person’s dirty clothes, especially if they smell like body odor. On the flip side, I won’t let anyone else touch my dirty clothing either.
• Pet hair on my skin or clothes. I know you are saying, “but you have four cats!” Just because they have insane amounts of hair (and compulsively shed in the summer) doesn’t mean I don’t love my cats (or anyone else’s pets). I have separate sets of clothes. Clothes I wear out and clothes I wear at home. I wash both sets of clothes separately. I have multiple sets of sheets and blankets that I am constantly washing to keep down the pet hair. I also groom my cats regularly to keep the hair at bay. If I go to a person’s house with pets, I am mindful of where I sit or what I wear. My reaction also stems from having a mild allergy to pet hair. I obsessively wash my arms and face if I feel hair sticking to them and making them itch.
• Stains on my clothes. This problem came to the forefront recently when I was on vacation. Jason and I ordered a seafood boil to share. I typically buy clothes in mixed patterns and avoid wearing solid colors because mixed patterns tend to hide stains on shirts better. So, I wore a solid shirt, not thinking about the restaurant where we were going to be eating. The boil we ordered was swimming in a butter sauce, and Jason immediately dug in, not caring if he stained his shirt (he usually only wears black anyway). By the end of our meal, I was freaking out because my shirt had stains all over it. I went to the bathroom and compulsively scrubbed the shirt in hopes the stains would not stick. I felt embarrassed afterward because I was having lunch with his family and I felt like they were looking at me oddly with my wet shirt (they weren’t).
• Food in my teeth. Like the stains on my clothes, this drives me crazy. If I am out and about and I do not have dental floss on me, I will not order something that I know will get in my teeth, otherwise, I will pick at my teeth until my teeth are bloody from trying to get out whatever is stuck in them. For this reason, I refuse to eat popcorn, whether it is a flavor I like or not. The memory of popcorn getting stuck in my teeth prevents me from eating it. I don’t like seeing food in other people’s teeth, either.
• Body odor. I do not have a good sense of smell. There are certain things I cannot smell and, in return, taste because I do not have a good sense of smell, except when it comes to body odor. If someone is not wearing deodorant or did not brush their teeth, I can smell it. I might not be able to smell dinner, or the flowers Jason buys me, but I can smell if you didn’t take a shower. I also take extra pains to make sure that I do not have body odor, myself. I compulsively shower and wash my hair at least once a day because I do not want to appear dirty or greasy. Back when I weighed over 400 pounds, my doctor commented on my obsessive cleanliness because she had never met someone of my size so clean.

This is not all of my pet peeves, and I am far from a perfectionist, which is one of the common misconceptions about someone with OCD. I don’t care if I cut straight, draw straight, or hang pictures on my wall straight. I cannot color inside the lines, and I don’t have a problem if my furniture or spice cabinet is aligned a certain way (just whether my spice cabinet is in alphabetical order). I do find myself repeating things, counting over and over, and hyper-fixating on certain tasks, but nothing to the detriment of my life or health. Yes, I have a lot of pet peeves, but I can live with them.

I want to hear from our readers. Do you have any pet peeves? Do they affect your life? Please, comment below or continue the conversation on our Facebook group: MMC Chat.

My Cats

Pet Peeves: A Different Point of View

Howdy readers! This week on the podcast, we had a quick change of plans. We were going to do another topic, but then decided better of it, and we thought we’d give you something a little more light-hearted instead. At least, that’s the way this week’s subject should be taken. We’re talking about Pet Peeves, all those little irksome situations that make us grit our teeth and want to pull our hair out. Some are a little more serious than others, and some are a little more…shall we say “gross”. We’ve also thrown more than a few people under the bus (like my husband), but if you think you are one of those people or you have contributed to one of those situations, please know that it’s all done in jest, and we love you anyway! We all have our foibles, and we’ve called out a few of our own in the podcast. I hope you’ll laugh along with us because we do get pretty silly!

A couple of concepts we will talk about in the podcast are mirroring and triggering, and that’s what I want to talk about here today. If you don’t know what mirroring and triggering are, here’s a brief explanation:

• Triggering is when a person or situation causes emotional distress, usually as the result of arousing feelings or memories of a traumatic experience. In theory, if something annoys us, it is because we have previously encountered that situation with negative consequences, so the recurrence of that situation causes a recurrence of the feelings associated with it.

• Mirroring is when one person’s behaviors mimic (or appear to mimic) another’s. A mirror can refer to our unconscious replication of gestures and attitudes of people we admire, but can also sometimes refer to a reaction to traits and behaviors our subconscious sees in ourselves. Mirrors can be both good and bad. We can be envious of or imitate people and traits we admire (because we want those traits), or we can react (either positively or negatively) when we have not acknowledged (or we fear) that we have those traits ourselves. 

When we talk about pet peeves, we are usually talking about things that annoy us. In many ways, these annoyances are triggers and mirrors of feelings and memories of our own experiences. Take, for instance, the coworker that always wants to chit-chat while you’re trying to work; the reason that it is annoying to you could be because that distraction has, in the past, caused you to miss a deadline at work, or has caused you some other kind of discomfort (a trigger). Or maybe you are secretly jealous that this coworker has the time to lollygag around and chat with everyone in the office while you are overwhelmed with work (envious mirroring). The other possible reason is that you know you are, or maybe you are just afraid you are, also a distraction to other people; you react to your coworker because you don’t want to be associated with that behavior (negative mirroring). 

Knowing why we are triggered by these exasperating situations helps us learn to cope with them. When you acknowledge the fact that you are jealous of your coworker who spends too much time at the watercooler, you can forgive him and maybe even help yourself. You can acknowledge that you are overworked. You might even be able to talk that coworker into lending you a hand. When you realize that the coworker’s behavior is not an intentional attempt to disrupt your workflow, and you give some thought to why that coworker is wandering the office, you might come to realize that that person is bored and needs something to do. Or maybe he lives alone and has no one to talk to. If you are worried that the other people in the office might think badly of you for engaging in that idle chit chat, then realize that is your ego, and again, think about why that person might be hanging around. Look at yourself and see if you, too, have occasionally been the disruptive talker in the office, and give that coworker some grace. Be grateful that they like you enough to talk to you. It could be a lot worse.

When you start looking at those pet peeves from a different angle, something changes inside you. That subtle change from indignation (which is from the ego) to forgiveness makes the situation much more tolerable and less stressful. Not all triggers are so easily addressed, but forgiveness and gratitude are always the starting point of any change in our attitudes, and we can’t change what we do or how we react until we change the way we think and feel.

I hope you’ll give a listen to the podcast this week and join us in a few laughs about some pretty annoying, silly, off-the-wall, and downright disgusting things. After all, laughter is good for the soul, and you might start to look at things in a different light.

Share your comments below, or join the conversation in our Facebook group, MMC Chat.