I am going with an endearing quirk/routine. Plus you are getting even wear with your clothing kind of like rotating tires on a car.
I have similar rotation/wear patterns.
As long as I am not endlessly flagellating myself over a pattern disruption I am good.
I still have a routine/quirk about putting money away in my wallet.
All of the heads have to face the same way or I feel out of sorts and eventually start imagining some calamity may strike.
Sometimes I have to wait until I get to a safe place to sort this out.
As long as I can get those heads straightened out I am good to go.
I suspect this started many years ago when I worked for the PA State Liquor Control Board as a clerk/manager. All the money for the bank had to have the heads facing the same way.
It’s been a part of my routine forever now and doesn’t impact my functioning. But sometimes it can be annoying.
Hey, @Ellecram, thanks for starting this. I see aspects of myself in a lot of these posts.
I would think of this as balancing things out. For example, if I’m walking on an asphalt sidewalk, and it’s crossed by concrete driveways, I would want crossing the driveway to be an even number of steps so that both feet make the same number of steps on concrete. If that doesn’t work out - say it’s two right and three left - then I would want the next driveway to be three right and two left to even things up. I should say that this is not a crippling compulsion - I can tell myself to stop; and the worst I get if things go wrong is a feeling of unease. And if I’m in company I’ll be distracted from the whole process anyways. I guess I have a number of examples of this sort of behavior. If it’s OCD it’s very low level, but there’s definitely something there at the back of my mind
Since I started this I have been somewhat more aware of some things I do that seem irrational.
Isn’t it fascinating how these things end up in our daily lives?
I can relate to your sidewalk/driveway issue all too well.
But, like you said, if it is low level and not creating issues it’s fine. It does seem to have a component of balancing to all doesn’t it?
I am traveling from PA to Virginia this week for Thanksgiving. Every time I travel I have this irrational compulsion to clean off the top of my refrigerator.
I have no idea when or why this started but it is now cemented into my pre-travel preparations.
Makes no sense but apparently my karma is unbalanced if that refrigerator is not wiped down before I leave the house.
I have all kinds of little quirks. A lot of them are Type A behaviors. I don’t know when something cross the line from Type A to actual OCD. I would suspect the two intertwine quite a bit.
My very worst instance ws during my time as the Keeper of the Coffee at work. I would collect the money, buy coffee and supplies, and usually got stuck with cleaning up the mess at the end of the day. I was of the same pay grade as most of my coworkers who swilled coffee. As long as my work assignments got done, the supervisors didn’t really care. They liked their coffee, too.
I bought flavored creamers, and everyone enjoyed those. At the time I was “volunteered” to take care of the coffe, there was only Sweet-n-Low offered for artificial sweetener. I decided to expand the offerings. When I bought the next big box of Sweet-n-Low, I also bought the big box of Equal, and the big box of Splenda. I do mean big–like 500 packets each box.
There wasn’t a lot of room for the coffee set-up. I didn’t want to cram three individual dishes for the sweeteners. The Type A behavior starts buzzing in the back of my brain. I continue thinking,and my hands start stacking the packets.
Type A emerges as a rude, demanding monster, which grabs me by my ears and slams my head against the desk. To immobilize the monster, I began to stack the packets, ABCABCABC.
Oh, yes I did. The whining in the back of my brain is telling me THIS IS STUPID AND A WASTE OF TIME, but the whining cannot overpower the Type A monster.
One morning, when I was living alone in an apartment, I caught myself repeatedly verifying that I had indeed locked the door. Took me, like, five times to realize what I had been doing and head toward the bus stop to go to work.
For me, phones (I have 2: one for work, one for me) go in my front left pocket. Keys and wallet go in my front right pocket. Nothing in the back pockets. Always.
But this is just logical. I’m left handed, and usually on my phone. So putting those in my left pocket makes sense. Keys go with wallet, since you don’t want the keys scratching the phones. And nothing in the back pockets; it’s not good for your lower back when sitting.
I would have been impressed. I bet it was visually very satisfying.
When I make coffee with a Keurig (rarely), there’s an order to things.
First, you put creamer in the bottom of the cup to create a small pool. Then, you add sweetener to the pool (this is important; the powder goes in the liquid, not the other way around. Otherwise, you have to start over).
Then you place your cup in place, and start the machine. While it’s dispensing coffee, you need to use a straw to aggressively stir the rising liquid; the goal is to create a small whirlpool. This should continue until the Keurig starts blowing air, at which point you can retrieve your cup.
That seems backwards to me. I’m right-handed, and I therefore keep my phone in my front LEFT pocket, because I hold my phone in my left hand while I touch it with my more dextrous right hand. If I pulled the phone out of my pocket with my right hand, I’d need to transfer it to my left hand to use it.
The diagnosis of OCD is when the thoughts or behaviors are distressing to you or create an impediment to your daily functioning. For example, constantly being late because you have to recheck something ( as opposed to being late because you have poor time management like I do).
I’ve been doing this since the mid 1980s when I worked in the liquor stores.
It may have been courtesy at one time. I was never specifically taught that until I entered the liquor store line of work.
My only other work experience was the steel mill and the US Navy where I did not handle cash.
I have noticed recently that when I get cash from the bank for a trip some of the bills are upside down almost as if in a pattern. I have no idea what’s up with that.
OCD runs hard in my family. My father and son have both been clinically diagnosed with it. My grandma (father’s mother) was a huge hoarder-- stuff everywhere. Spare bedrooms were filled to the ceiling with junk.
My dad, maybe as a rebellion against that, became a neat freak. Everything in its place. He was always a big germophobe, and if he thought dinner tasted at all weird, even if all the rest of us thought it tasted fine, into the garbage everyone’s dinner would go. Later in life (after I had moved out) his latent OCD really emerged, and my mom would help him with all his rituals, like checking 3 times to make sure all the doors and windows in the house were locked before going to bed. My mom used to grow tomatoes, but he stopped letting her even bring the tomatoes into the house, because he thought raccoons may have licked them and infected them with rabies (I got a lot of fresh tomatoes in that time period, before she gave up growing them). If he was driving and hit a pothole, he’d have to stop the car and look all around for a body because he was convinced he hit a person. We thought that was a real weird one, but later my mother, in a support group for loved ones with OCD found out that’s a common thing with OCD. I could go on and on, but those are a few highlights.
I myself have latent OCD tendencies. I used to be worse as a kid. I’d have to check light switches I turned off-- I’d think maybe I accidentally only turned the switch off halfway, and it would cause a close enough gap in the circuit for the electricity to arc and cause a fire. But checking once wouldn’t be enough- I’d think well, can’t hurt to just check again. And again. I used to have bad panic attacks. Eventually as a teenager, I managed to come up with coping strategies to stop the intrusive thoughts. I basically came up with my own form of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy years before I heard the term.
I like neatness and order, but I don’t think I have any actual CDO* rituals.
Most of my hand tools are on pegs on a large pegboard above my workbench. Each tool has its home. If it’s not in use, its on its peg.
I do rotate most of my clothes. Freshly folded underwear and t-shirts go to the back of the row. Back when I was working, fresh shirts and pants got hung on the far right of the line-up, each day’s clothes were plucked from the far left.
I have ~1300 records, all on custom-built shelving arranged alphabetically by artist, each artist group arranged chronologically. Books are similarly arranged.
When my vehicle’s gas tank approaches half-full, I get twitchy until it is properly filled (which it always is with a quickness).
Not really OCD I think but my wife doesn’t seem to be able to do anything different from what she’s currently doing without doing something else first. I think if there was a fire extinguisher right next to her and her hair caught fire she’d stop to check her messages before putting it out.