I have to sort my books!’ she cried,

With self-indulgent glee;

With senseless, narcissistic pride:

‘I’m just so OCD!’

‘How random, guys!’ I smiled and said,

Then left without a peep -

And washed my hands until they bled,

And cried myself to sleep.

-Poem_for_your_Sprog

The vagueness of these posts get to me a bit. Do they like clean sheets cause they feel nice, or do they change their sheets in the middle of the night because they might’ve sweat on them and they can’t stop thinking about it? People use OCD too casually, but people also take someone talking about their illness, latch onto the part easiest to minimize, and run with it.

If you think you might have OCD, get diagnosed and get care if you can, but if that’s not possible, find some legitimate, useful advice from reputable sources.

https://iocdf.org/books/

If you can’t stop thinking that you’re probably faking, it doesn’t hurt people who have been diagnosed for you to take some books out of the library and find out if the advice helps you. In fact, it lets the library know those resources are in demand so they’ll be there for others, later.

The general public treats pretty much all mental health diagnoses this way. Depressed, anxious, schizophrenic, bipolar, OCD, PTSD, and more are all descriptors people commonly use to describe their emotions or personality traits in a way that’s completely disconnected from their clinical definitions and manifestations. Whether that’s disrespectful to people who have clinically diagnosable conditions? I don’t know if I’d go that far. The reality is most people just have absolutely no clue what actual bipolar disorder or actual OCD look like, and they often lack the language to otherwise effectively describe their internal experiences.

Where do you draw the line