Anxiety and impulsive thoughts can make us engage in things which are irrational for just to relieve the anxiety. Most people doubts if they have OCD or not. First thing you need to understand is being a little bit organized and hygienic doesn't mean you have OCD.
What is OCD?
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) as the name suggests it has two parts. The first one is the Intrusive thoughts or Impulses known as obsession and Behavioural Compulsion that people engage in for relieving the anxiety.
Commonly acts like excessive hand washing and checking things repeatedly are examples of OCD. The funny thing is that these examples happen at some part of any common man's day to day life. The actual disorder is far rarer.
When To Take it Seriously?
There is a threshold point where you needed to take things a little bit more seriously and take actions.
More than this little hygiene obsession there may be other some hard symptoms. There is a point where you don't have any control of your thoughts and the compulsive behaviours. This behaviour may be time-consuming and interferes with school, work and social life.
In some people there will be some extreme thoughts like fears of contamination and illness, worrying about harming others, preoccupation with numbers, patterns or morality. You may adapt some walking patterns. These all came here.
The real vulgar part of OCD is that you knew already you are doing irrational things to overcome your anxiety. Being unable to act even after knowing it's irrational will hurt the mind more.
Still Don't Know The Cause
There is still no clear cut reason for OCD. There are some assumption and some studies.
One of the reason may cause OCD is associated with the low levels of Serotonin. Seratonin is a neurotransmitter which helps in communication between brain structures. It helps in vital processes such as mood, aggression, impulsive control, sleep, appetite, body temperature, pain.
More knowledge and understanding of the brain can give more explanations in the future.
Controlling The Thoughts
There are behavioural therapies and medications for OCD. It can be cured by following a certain path.
You could a lot of meditation techniques and there a lot of other ways in online to control OCD. You could visit some professionals if the thing is a little bit out of your control.
I will share a basic idea of controlling the thoughts. The first thing you need to understand is you can't control your thoughts. So don't dwell on that. If you try more and more to control the thoughts inside your brain you state will become worse. And there is no sense in stopping these thoughts coming.
What you can do is ignore these thoughts from the beginning. Just be open for any thoughts to come but don't try to give much attention to anything. There is an idea by Psychologists.
Consider yourself standing in a platform and there are a lot of trains passing in front of you. These trains are the thoughts, just observe them but not get on to anything. Just observe. Even if you get on something there is always an exit, So leave the thoughts as fast as you can.
You don’t have to control your thoughts. You just have to stop letting them control you.
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