Tag Archives: stereotypes

Is being OCD=Perfectionist?

We all wish to be perfect and do our work well. To this aim, we utilise some skills that enable us to channelize our behaviours so that we don’t spend too much time on doing routine chores – e.g. keeping the keys, wallet, shoes etc in the same place everyday, trying to leave work the same time each day to beat the traffic and so on. These things we learn as a result of our experiences and sometimes the difficulties we face. Persons who we call perfectionists invariably have a reasonably good “error checking” system in place and thus, are able to use the above mentioned skills to their benefit. The easiest example to consider would be the character Wasabi from the movie Big Hero 6 who would quote – “a place for everything and everything in its place”.

But, just imagine a scenario where the above skills go haywire and then we have people focusing on the trivial details with an inability to stop the process of error checking. This is not based on any prior learning or a misinterpretation of prior learning taken to absurd levels. Then we have people who are unable to control their impulse to make sure that things (even trivial ones) are placed “exactly right”, doing things over and over (whether it be checking, counting, cleaning or whatever) to “just to be sure”, having illogical/ magical beliefs and so on. This would intrude on their daily functioning and would impair their ability to do the most basic things with any efficiency. This would be OCD or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

Obsessions could be anything – a thought, an image, an impulse to do something.

One common feature of obsessions include the fact that at some level, the person having them identifies them as illogical, unnecessary, excessive, intrusive and distressing.

Compulsions are any behaviour(s) aimed at reducing the anxiety that is created by the obsessions. They could be things like doing things a particular way, or doing it repeatedly, or a particular number of times.

Its important to recognise that there are people who are obsessive about certain things and that makes them who they are but, this is different from people with OCD who dislike this part of themselves that prevents them from living a full and happy life.

-Dr. Shiva Prakash

The Light in the Woods

A battle is not without losses but a battle with yourself is always winnable, the only loss you suffer is the loss of all the drapery you hid your true self with.

It is hard to decide what to say or talk about in a blog like this. A lone pack is in its very essence as I understand it – a congregation of the lonely by choice and not. Perhaps the biggest victory will be to admit to yourself who you really are and take that understanding for everything that it is and everything that it brings along with it. This is the victory we all strive for after all, but most of us fail to achieve; we fail to achieve this for a variety of reasons only a few of which are true for each person. It is this victory that we all fight for and it is this fight that is the cause for most of our woe. A blog like this is supposed to resonate with everyone who feels like this and yet this subject is something so personal that it becomes hard to go beyond the specifics of my own life or for any other writer to go beyond their own experiences. Perhaps it is best to explain (again only in my own understanding) this fight we are all a part of. It is to do with identity and with acceptance of that identity. Who you see yourself as and who you project yourself to be. More often than not the latter is more important than the former, failure to give society and its views of you, due respect and consideration will yield catastrophic results, yes? But even if you were to do so and were golden in society’s eyes you would still not be content. Quite the opposite in fact – the little voice of self in the background that kept screaming in the background? Well now it ’s a cornered animal. You have ignored it long enough and it is going to take a bite out of you when you try to bury it.

And then, even after all that, even if you have magically survived burying your own identity to fit in with society’s cookie-cutter view of how a person should be, what happens next?

You feel empty. You have nothing that is intrinsically you. You cannot identify as anything or anyone beyond a cog to keep society moving. You live and you succeed, maybe even enjoy yourself, but you will always be empty and wonder ‘what if’. What if you had listened and fought for yourself. Now you will lose your balance because that line of questioning never ends well unless you are willing to undergo the pain and fight for it all over again. But this time fighting both for your identity and your own respect for yourself. But all this is only if the bite I talked about earlier was not fatal which more often than not it is.

‘What if’ is a rabbit hole that all of us enter at one point or another. You try to project your value based on something else to escape this darkness but that is what the darkness wants. Sooner or later you will realize how shallow your measurement is and by that time the darkness is even stronger. It will hurt you and it can kill you. You will go sleepless and you will be terrified but when you realize that the darkness is only a part of yourself that is starved for attention and recognition there is some hope. A battle is not without losses but a battle with yourself is always winnable, the only loss you suffer is the loss of all the drapery you hid your true self with. But then people might ask how you win a battle with a part of yourself that you have alienated for so long. I do not know, how could I ever understand what your circumstances are and even more importantly the perspective you possess of your own circumstances? But it is wrong to assume here that I cannot help you, that the people here cannot help you. When I write this I begin to form my own perspective of what lone pack might be. While I cannot give you the answers I will be able to guide you with my own experiences and show you things you did not know.

So lone pack then becomes a light; a light to shine things on and to show you what you could not see before, but it is not a map – your journey is still your own.

-November