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Varieties of OCD

Jacob explained it this way. “You have, say, a tree, and the trunk is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Then each branch is a different form, i.e. contamination, invasive thoughts, counting, religious, things like that. Then on that branch, there’s another twenty branches, and each one of them is a different aspect of that form of OCD.”

Dr. Michael McDonough, consulting psychiatrist at St. Patrick’s Mental Health Services in Dublin, Ireland, explained how OCD works in the brain. “There’s a part of the frontal lobe of the brain, where a lot of the thinking and planning goes on. A circuit that connects that part of the frontal lobe with the feeling and emotional centers and also the centers that relate to deciding to move or act seem to be very active in OCD sufferers,” he said.

Psychologist Leslie Shoemaker adds “It’s an overinflated danger signal, where a person with OCD is always looking for danger and how to prevent that danger. And so, a lot of time gets consumed and sucked into being safe, and keeping others safe.”

“Yeah, you don’t turn it off,” Jacob said. “It’s constant, it’s tiresome. I pay such attention that you wouldn’t understand. If you lived in my world, you would notice so many more things. It’s so uncomfortable.”

“In a split second, I analyze so many different things. I don’t feel capable of having human interaction with another person on a daily basis, because of OCD, in terms of them being ‘OCD dirty,’ and I don’t want them to touch me. Always paying attention to whether or not someone is walking behind you faster than you are, so they’re probably going to pass you, in which case you’re going to have to step to the left in case they bump against you.”

“At crosswalks and stoplights, I won’t press the button. I’ll never press that button. The closest I’ve gotten is using my foot to do it, but that’s kind of mean, because other people have to press it and I feel bad about doing that. A few years ago, I used to use plastic gloves, about 200 every couple of days, because that's how I interacted with the world. If I needed to pick something up, I’d use plastic gloves. I would use two layers of plastic gloves and when it got real bad, I’d use three layers. And it’s only now that I don’t do that.”