OCD is Not an Adjective

"OCD" is used commonly as an adjective. I hear it all the time from friends, family members, clients, and people on social media - "I am so OCD about cleaning." "I have to color code my planner because I am so OCD." Please stop - OCD is not an adjective. Just because you like things to be in order or like your home to be clean and shiny, does not mean you "are OCD."

OCD is a mental illness. It stands for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. It is a debilitating anxiety disorder involving intrusive, disturbing thoughts (obsessions), and repetitive behaviors aimed at getting rid of the distressing thoughts (compulsions). No pleasure comes from these behaviors. It gets in the way of daily functioning and can be quite time-consuming. It is a commonly misunderstood condition and I would like to break down some of the misconceptions about it.

Obsessions are unwanted thoughts, images, or urges that create distress. These obsessions can have different themes that vary from person to person. For example, a person might be terrified that they will harm someone else and have a constant dialogue in their head questioning all of the ways that they may have inadvertently harmed someone that day.

Compulsions are repetitive behaviors that a person feels driven to do in order to try to suppress an obsessive thought. Using the example of someone who fears harming others, a compulsion might be mentally reviewing all of your memories from that day to be sure that you did not hurt anyone or having to check all appliances multiple times before leaving home because you fear burning the house down and killing your family. Compulsions can be visible, like checking behaviors, or mental, like saying a prayer or word over and over in your head.

OCD causes significant distress and impairment. You might like your books to be organized alphabetically, but if they are not, you can probably move on with your day and reorganize it later. You derive pleasure from the books being in order. A person with OCD can not just move on to something else and gets no pleasure from things being a certain way. The obsession is so strong and the urge to do the compulsion is so great that they cannot move past it and think about anything else. Their symptoms affect all areas of functioning.

So, please, let's stop using OCD as an adjective. We all have quirks, but that does not mean that you have OCD. Using it as an adjective only serves to further stigmatize the disorder and invalidates the pain and suffering of those who actually have OCD. If you think that you may have OCD, please seek out a mental health professional trained in using Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), which is the treatment of choice for OCD. A great resource is The International OCD Foundation https://iocdf.org/