I have the exact same compulsion with locking my door. If I leave my apartment and I don't do my little ritual then I'll either be worried all day, or some times I'll drive back to my apartment and "properly" close the door.

Oh yeah I've had this one big time in the past. It sort of comes and goes, hasn't been bothering me much lately. But a few times at my old job I drove all the way back into work to verify I'd locked the door when leaving for the night even though I was _very_ conscious about locking it - I just wasn't was totally certain as I felt I needed to be.

If this starts bugging me again I'm going to start taking pictures of the locked doors for myself. :)

Have you tried balancing this urge to return, against self-anger and humiliation at all the time and gas you're wasting by driving back to check?

When I get irrational urges, I make the urges battle my insecurities and get out of the way. Insecurities usually win.

I used to do it too. I figured it was a short term memory flaw, then it became a habit, so it just feels "off" to not double check. I'm actually comforted seeing i wasn't the only one.

Thanks for sharing. The complexities of the human brain will never cease to amaze me. There should be a way, in all this neuronal maze, to escape those compulsions, but I bet it's really well hidden.

Well, one way out is behavioral therapy.

Obsessive compulsive disorder is a form of anxiety disorder. You are afraid of something (sickness, death, loosing control) - then you get obsessive about it and then you do some compulsive action to mentally ease that thought/anxiety.

But now you have "learned" to behave in a certain way to feel better. And you are weighting the triggering thought as more important by giving that much attention to it. This is resulting in a self-enforcing feedback loop in the end.

Behavioral therapy is a way to "unlearn" this behavior. Mostly by working against the initial anxiety. If you are unconcerned/neutral/bored of something, you cannot gain that much obsessive/compulsive momentum.

Unless you pull a logical trick to reduce every discomfort to fear, I don't agree that everyone that suffers from OCD is afraid of something and anxious about it.

I don't think that fear and anxiety are exactly the same thing. (fear being a very basic response to a very concrete (perceived) threat, while anxiety is more diffuse, constant, covering larger timeframes)

Assuming we are talking about the same thing (anxiety), why do you think that not everyone suffering from OCD has that as the cause? What other types do you know of? It is possible that I was focusing too much on intrusive thoughts and related issue, but my current understanding is that the OCD mechanism described above is the same for any type of OCD and that it is by definition an anxiety disorder.

The discomfort you are describing could be the same thing as the anxiety I was speaking of, although discomfort is maybe not intense enough to describe the internal experience of the disorder.

As always: these things are distributed on a spectrum with better/worse days and cases between people. It only becomes a disorder if you suffer from it on a regular basis in some phase of your life.

>I don't think that fear and anxiety are exactly the same thing. (fear being a very basic response to a very concrete (perceived) threat, while anxiety is more diffuse, constant, covering larger timeframes)

That could just be a historical product of the English language. Other languages don't necessarily discriminate this way between fear and anxiety.

E.g. we can equally talk about someone "fearing" they have forgot the stove open or "being anxious" about it in this here parts.

What 193 is describing isn't a conversion of discomfort to fear, it's an a-rational pattern of behaviour that's independent of discomfort or fear.

Orwell talked about reinforcing effects: "A man may drink because he is failing, then become all the more a failure because he drinks." OCD as a form of anxiety is about a sufferer having taught themselves to behaviourally self-medicate. And just like most forms of addictive self-medication, it becomes a reinforcing effect that's somewhat independent of any real objective cause.

CBT and other behavioural approaches to therapy try (with measurable success) to interrupt that self-reinforcing behavioural effect. Many here are talking about somewhat obsessively checking things, and they're describing it perfectly: "did I check? I'll check again just to make sure", which grants a moment of relief from the anxiety; give it a few minutes, and the anxiety returns, forcing another hit of reassurance to be sought. OCD is an extreme form of addiction to this cycle.

Traditionally the DSM categorized OCD as an anxiety disorder - apparently now it's categorized in the larger envelope "neurotic, stress-related, and somatoform disorders", which anxiety falls under as well. There's certainly an anxiety element, as it causes a great deal of distress to fail to follow the behavior.

>Unless you pull a logical trick to reduce every discomfort to fear

In OCD there's no external discomfort (like having your hand touch a stove or having a headache).

So it can very well be all about fear and anxiety in general without having to "reduce every discomfort to fear".

I would want to measure dietary Taurine levels in the body for a start. Experiments consuming 3g/day have shown no side effects, but your main source is limited to energy drinks so you have to contend with caffeine, and Taurine does not last long in the body (can start to be expelled in urine within 10mins), much like many of the water soluble chemicals classed as vitamins or minerals. Cooking actually destroys it from organ meats and some scientific studies have shown a link between vegetarianism and a variety of mental health issues including OCD. You wont find any substantial levels of Taurine in vegetables, but you will in raw liver, kidneys and brains. From my own experience, 3 or 4 Redbulls a day (1g of Taurine per can) can change many repetitive behaviours. Taurine also has many other positive effects on the body like including VO2 max, improving cholesterol profiles, improving bile acid patterns, reducing depression, improving sleep, improving memory, reducing atherosclerosis, reducing fatty liver disease, reversing some types of cataracts, reducing stones especially in women, to name some of the observed scientific improvements to human health. Its probably why its now added to formula milk for babies since the 80's (but at levels lower than breast milk) and has subsequently improved their cognitive abilities.

> From my own experience, 3 or 4 Redbulls a day

This seems like an incredibly bad idea. You would be far better off using taurine powder.

> some scientific studies have shown a link between vegetarianism and a variety of mental health issues including OCD

Could you provide links or keywords? My close family went full-vegan ~ 2y ago and I'm worried they may be doing themselves more harm than good.

If taurine is a start, then all other microelements are the continuation? Studies for taurine would also be helpful.

Is this a troll given the username?

If Taurine doesn't last long in the body yet has these wonderful effects, could you provide references?

I think you could lose hair faster that way, but it's just a hunch.

Ironic, in this case, as taurine was once extracted from bull semen.

so what if it is good for the health?

I do not ask how hot dogs are made, and I care even less for things I take for my health

It’s ironic when the author describes a fear of food contamination by semen, that possible relief might come in the form of bull semen, that’s all.

Would it help if you had a webcam pointed at the door so you could remotely verify it's closed and locked? Or do you need some the actual feeling of the door being closed to end the fixation?

It may help in the moment, but any action that reinforces the (faulty) belief that your obsessive thoughts are relevant and worth paying attention to will worsen OCD over time.

The right approach is to teach yourself to be OK with the uncertainty of the door being locked or not. This is what behavioral therapy for OCD, specifically ERP, aims to do.

You hit the hail on the head with your latter idea. At least in my case, it all comes down to the "feel" of the door being locked and shut; I yank the door around pretty violently some days if I'm especially stressed. At some point, the compulsion was about the door being closed for the security of the apartment, but now it's been bastardized over the years into just being a fixation on the door itself.

Also, as jcranendonk pointed out in a separate reply to your comment, reinforcing the behavior does more harm than good in the long run. In my case, I've been able to reduce some of the mental strain by following CBT principles in a therapy session and also on my own; I can't comment on ERP personally, but I do know it's shown widespread promise in the literature. My previous therapist incorporated some of its techniques into our sessions as well, but was principally following CBT practice.

Really want to see an answer on this

I expect it would just move the goal posts, and you would end up staring at the screen to confirm the door is closed or checking the camera to ensure it is pointed at the correct door or some similar way of getting the 'hit' that the door checking gives you.