I would like to hear from members who would like to share their experiences with OCD. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Does anyone have it or know a friend or family member who does? For someone who has lived their whole life untreated and who wont ever seek help, such as a parent, what are some good strategies to deal with them? From what I've experienced, there are good days, where it subsides or is pretty undetectable and you can interact in a healthy way and there are days where you just want to scream! Are there varying degrees? I would like to hear from anyone who wants to share their experience and a request to NIC for his advice as well. Bear in mind I need advice on just dealing with it and how. The person in question will not ever admit they have it or they need help. I know it genetically runs in families, or one is more susceptible if a parent has it.
I'm not sure of the exact situation you're in, but there are a few things that stand out to me. I'm assuming from your post, this is not you.
First, has this person ever been formally diagnosed by a psychologist or a psychiatrist? If not, how do you know this person is OCD? Is it your assessment, or other people's? What makes you think that this person is OCD? It really takes a trained professional to make the call about this because there are a lot of things that may look like OCD but really are not.
With any mental illness, there are good and bad days. The goal of treatment is to lessen the number of bad days and increase the number of good days. OCD is best treated with behavioral therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy. Medication can also help. From what I understand, OCD for various reasons can be difficult to treat.
There are varying degrees of OCD and related disorders. OCPD, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, is very similar to OCD, but tends to present as a pervasive personality style. People with OCPD can be thought of as "super-perfectionists". These people generally don't have to perform the ritualistic actions that are a hallmark of OCD. There are very specific diagnostic criteria for OCD, which, if not met, don't mean the person doesn't have OCD-like traits or behaviors. Some people diagnosed with OCD remain mostly functional, and some are very crippled by their illness. The diagnosis itself hinges on whether the OCD obessions and/or compulsions interfere with daily life.
If this person will not admit a problem or willingly seek treatment, there's not a lot you can do unless there is an immediate threat to cause harm to themselves or others, in which case, you can have the person committed for whatever is mandatory in your state/locality. Otherwise, there's not a lot you can do to force them to seek help. Treatment doesn't work unless the person being treated is aware of their ilness and is committed to treatment no matter how hard, inconvenient, and at times useless treatment may seem.
The only way to deal with a person that won't get treatment or admit their problem is to realize that you can't change it, and that you must accept them as they are. If, in light of this, you have to change or reasses your relationship with this person, that's what you have to do. You can't change anyone except yourself and how you deal with this person.
If you have any other specific questions or concerns, I'm sure there are plenty of people here that will be able to help you answer them.
One thing i dont understand tho is every other OCD that I know is ridiculously neat and im definitely not
Though having cleanliness obsessions and compulsions is almost always what we think of as OCD in popular culture, it isn't necessarily so. I know many people with OCD that are messy. In fact, some people with OCD are also hoarders, which is many times the antithesis of compulsive neatness. Pure obsessional OCD has no compulsive or ritualistic behaviors associated with it so the person may or may not be neat independent of their illness. OCD obsessions and compulsions don't have to be about neatness or cleanliness at all. They can be ritualistic couting, religious obsessions, etc. Cleanliness/neatness doesn't have to be a part of the illness at all.
I would venture to say that it's more someone that is OCPD that is likely to display perfectionistic cleanliness. People with OCD tend to have an overall need for everything to be "right" and if they are not, it causes anxiety. Even when someone with OCPD obsesses over cleanliness, a lot of times the very thought of cleaning can be so over whelming he/she just avoids it altogether.
Again, there are a lot of clinical subtleties that only a trained professional understands and then can ferret out from there a diagnosis based on a person's history, behaviors, and thought patterns.
Take care.
Snoozan
