Quotes & Sayings About Ocd

People see me going around constantly flipping off lights and think I'm OCD. No, I'm just turned off by lights that are turned on unnecessarily. It's not about wasted money, it's just about waste. Whenever I see someone throwing out food, I just picture all the energy that went into making that food being lost - the diesel in the farm equipment that picked it, the energy in the fertilizer and the whole fertilizer plant, the truck that brought it to the restaurant, the BTUs used to cook it, and the electricity for the heat lamp at the shitty restaurant. All gone because you couldn't finish your taco salad. — Adam Carolla

The two diseases also seem to share a neural component. The symptoms of Tourette's apparently arise from impaired inhibition in the circuit linking the cortex and the basal ganglia-a circuit that is also impaired in OCD. The basal ganglia, you'll recall from Chapter 2, play a central role in switching from one behavior to another. Impairment there could account for the perseveration of obsessions and compulsions, as well as the tics characteristic of Tourette's. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

Even fictional characters sometimes receive unwarranted medical opinions. Doctors have diagnosed Ebenezer Scrooge with OCD, Sherlock Holmes with autism, and Darth Vader with borderline personality disorder. — Sam Kean

We all have our routines," he said softly."But they must have a purpose and provide an outcome that we can see and take some comfort from, or else they have no use at all. Without that, they are like the endless pacings of a caged animal. If they are not madness itself, then they are a prelude to it. — John Connolly

We began the process of learning how incredibly difficult it is to live with someone who is totally anal and slightly OCD (ahem ... Victor). And someone who is perpetually accidentally hot-gluing herself to the carpet, and who is sort of mentally unstable, but in an "At-least-I-still-remember-how-pants-work" kind of way (cough ... that'd be me). Victor remarked that comparing myself with the sometimes naked hermit next door wasn't exactly a strong mental-wellness benchmark, especially since I often ended up pantsless myself. I raised my eyebrow at his seemingly seductive remark until I realized he was referring to the time he found me half naked because I'd just hot-glued my jeans to the carpet. — Jenny Lawson

The discovery that modified speech can drive neuroplasticity in the mature brain is just the most dramatic example (so far) of how sensory stimuli can rewire neuronal circuits. In fact, soon after Merzenich and Tallal published their results, other scientists began collecting data showing that, as in my own studies of OCD patients, brain changes do not require changes in either the quantity or the quality of sensory input. To the contrary: the brain could change even if all patients did was use mindfulness to respond to their thoughts differently. Applied mindfulness could change neuronal circuitry. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

Sometimes labeling is only useful, like with OCD. Once you're labeled you can be treated. On other occasions labeling leads to tyranny, like with childhood bipolar disorder in the U.S. — Jon Ronson

It's like an OCD thing, it's not as much something I enjoy. If I see a chapstick that I've never tried, I have to buy it. And then once that door's been opened, I have to check the whole store to see if there are more chapsticks that I don't have. — Anna Kendrick

We're Killers On The Keyboard — Cyndi Williams Barnier

Martin said, "It feels as though part of my self has detached and gone to Amsterdam, where it - she - is waiting for me. Do you know about phantom-limb syndrome?" Julia nodded. "There's pain where she ought to be. It's feeding the other pain, the thing that makes me wash and count and all that. So her absence is stopping me from going to find her. Do you see? — Audrey Niffenegger

Churches crack me up. They're like money, a conspiracy of faith. Like everyone agreed to believe that not only is there a God, but he comes down and checks on folks, so long as they hang in certain places, put up alters, burn lots of candles and incense, and perform sit-stand-kneel and other wacky rituals that'd make a coven of witches not look OCD. — Karen Marie Moning

I have a slight bit of OCD, I think. I'm not walking around flipping light switches. But when I say I'm going to do something, I have to do it. — Eminem

When you say 'control freak' and 'OCD' and 'organized,' that suggests someone who's cold in nature, and I'm just not. Like, I'm really open when it comes to letting people in. But I just like my house to be neat, and I don't like to make big messes that would hurt people. — Taylor Swift

Sensitive people usually love deeply and hate deeply. They don't know any other way to live than by extremes because thier emotional theromastat is broken. — Shannon L. Alder

I'm super OCD, so everything is clean. — Kendall Jenner

The problem was never my mind; it was a heart that could never hold all that it felt. — Shannon L. Alder

This will sound strange, and yet I'm sure it was the point: it was a bit like being high. That, for me, anyway, had always been the attraction of drugs, to stop the brutal round of hypercritical thinking, to escape the ravages of an unoccupied mind cannibalizing itself. — Norah Vincent

Hoarding is a form of OCD, did you know that? — Miranda Liasson

To be honest, it's probably better if I don't talk. Cute guys make me nervous. Like tongued-tied total-brain-malfunction nervous. All my filters shut off and suddenly I'm telling them about the time I peed my pants in the third grade during a field trip to the maple syrup factory, or how I'm scared of puppets and have mild OCD that could possibly drive me to tidy up your room the moment you turn your head. — Elle Kennedy

If you put the wrong foods in your body, you are contaminated and dirty and your stomach swells. Then the voice says, Why did you do that? Don't you know better? Ugly and wicked, you are disgusting to me. — Bethany Pierce

I have seen many cases like N. during the five years I've been in practice. I sometimes picture these unfortunates as men and women being pecked to death by predatory birds. The birds are invisible - at least until a psychiatrist who is good, or lucky, or both, sprays them with his version of Luminol and shines the right light on them - but they are nevertheless very real. The wonder is that so many OCDs manage to live productive lives, just the same. They work, they eat (often not enough or too much, it's true), they go to movies, they make love to their girlfriends and boyfriends, their wives and husbands ... and all the time those birds are there, clinging to them and pecking away little bits of flesh. — Stephen King

It happens that there are a lot of people who are very talented who also happen to have a mental disorder. A lot of the mental disorders are initially things that are adaptive. Like even OCD, it's good to sort of have structure and have certain rituals but when it gets to be extreme then it becomes problematic. — H. A. Berlin

I'm too measured and controlling - about everything. That's why I take Lexapro. It's for OCD. I don't feel like I'm struggling with it. I think OCD is a part of me that protects me. It's also the part of me that I use in my job, in a positive way. — Amanda Seyfried

I have sporadic OCD cleaning moments around the house. But then I get lazy and I'm cured. It's a very inconsistent personality trait. — Chris Hemsworth

I belong to a secret order. We all have OCD, so you'd better believe we have order. — Jarod Kintz

I felt as if I were living just above the surface of my life. It was lonely and utterly exhausting trying to make sure that everything was perfect all the time. No truth left unsaid, no hand or surface unwashed. Whoever said that high school was the best time of our lives definitely did not have OCD. — Kristin Albright

Well, I have severe OCD and social anxiety disorder. I was diagnosed when I was fifteen and every year I get worse. I don't like people, I don't like outdoors, and I don't like trying new things. I have a routine and when my routine is interrupted, like you seem to enjoy doing, I get extremely stressed and it becomes difficult for me to focus for hours afterwards. — Nash Summers

[I]f he had to guess, he would say that the reason he doesn't want to loan the book out, to Ethan or anyone else, is because of the part of his personality that is one gigantic record-keeping system, a complex sifting and filing scheme that dictates what goes here and what goes there, turning his life into so many marks on a tablet. His mind would busy itself with the book's whereabouts every second it was away. He knows it would. — Kevin Brockmeier

OCD focuses on the negative. I didn't think to myself, My praying will save my grandma. Instead, I thought, If I don't pray, my grandma will die for sure. — J.J. Keeler

Maybe we ought to look at a guy's response to our microwave from now on." Aunt Annie said.
Really." Mom said. "The narcissist looks at his reflection in it. The OCD guy thinks you don't keep it clean enough.The antisocial
"
Puts his fist through it because it reminds him of his father." Annie said. She'd read all of mom's books, too.
And the paranoid one would be jealous of the amount of time you spend cooking." Mom said
Were you using that microwave again? Is something going on between the two of you? I caught you looking right at its clock." Annie said. — Deb Caletti

It (trying to keep the law) grants you the power to judge others and feel superior to them. You believe you are living to a higher standard than those you judge. Enforcing rules, especially in its more subtle expressions like responsibility and expectation, is a vain attempt to create certainly out of uncertainty. And contrary to what you might think, I have a great fondness for uncertainty. Rules cannot bring freedom; they only have the power to accuse. — Wm. Paul Young

I have OCD, which is not fun. I have to be incredibly tidy and organized or it messes with my mind and switches off on me. — Charlize Theron

I do not have OCD OCD OCD. — Emilie Autumn

Not really. It's called OCD and -
'Yes, yes, so my psychiatrist tells me.'
'You have a shrink?'
'Apparently, I have some repressed anger and unresolved abandonment issues after my experiences with God. — Suzanne Wright

Leaving knots untied and scattering seeds to distract them will only work on vampires with OCD. — Molly Harper

My drawers are neat. I must have OCD. I toss around the socks and underwear to see if I can piss myself off. — Colleen Hoover

So, you played a game in which you had to know more than someone with questionable OCD? — R.L. Mathewson

People with OCD including myself, realize that their seemingly uncontrollable behavior is irrational, but they feel unable to stop it. — Abhijit Naskar

It's a thousand tiny impulses, building on one another. First you decide it's a good idea to check the oatmeal bin for bugs. Next you're going through all the canisters, and before you know it, you're wearing a hazmat suit and examining the frosted flakes for ground-up glass. Each action further enforces the obsessive-compulsive circuit. When the disease is full-blown, sufferers are firmly entrenched in the neural loops that make them repeat thoughts and actions over and over. In other words, your brain keeps getting back in line for the same carnival ride it didn't enjoy in the first place. You lose your sunglasses, you throw up on your shirt, and two minutes later you're back on the Whizzer. Wheeee. — Jennifer Traig

I guess I wonder what it would be like, to be living their live instead of mine. — Corey Ann Haydu

I have OCD mixed with ADD; you try living with that. — Justin Timberlake

I tried to point out that it's not a gimmick to teach patients suffering with OCD that their intrusive thoughts and urges are caused by brain imbalances, and that we now know they can physically alter those imbalances through mindfulness and self-directed behavioral therapy techniques. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

Sometimes it's even hard to tell the difference between a tic and a compulsion. But while tics stem from an urge in a specific part of the body - either completely unconsciously or through a premonitory sensation that's satisfied only by the tic - OCD bubbles up as conscious thoughts in the mind. — Tim Howard

I try Dr. Pat's breathing exercises but they're not working because my entire mind is focused on keeping myself glued to the couch. I don't want to move any closer to the bathroom just in case. But I hate myself for the thought. I know it's not right or normal. I know I'm not simply some cute quirky girl like Beck says, and every moment I can't get off the couch is a moment that makes me one level crazier. That heavy, pre-crying feeling floods my sinuses and I drop my head from the weight of it. Cover my face with my hands long enough to get out a cry or two. Because there is nothing, nothing worse than not being able to undo the crazy thoughts. I ask them to leave, but they won't. I try to ignore them, but the only thing that works is giving in to them.
Torture: knowing something makes no sense, doing it anyway. — Corey Ann Haydu

Torture: knowing something makes no sense, but doing it anyways. — Corey Ann Haydu

My father taught me that you can you read a hundred books on wisdom and write a hundred books on wisdom, but unless you apply what you learned then its only words on a page. Life is not lived with intentions, but action. — Shannon L. Alder

I close my eyes and make a wish that I'll stop having OCD so that I can be a decent friend again. If I want it badly enough, hopefully it will come true. — Corey Ann Haydu

All behavioral or mood disorders - including depression, OCD, ADHD and addiction - have some neurochemical components, but sufferers can still work to overcome them. — Jeffrey Kluger

I'm probably borderline OCD. I insist on having all objects at right angles to each other. So a fork has to be at a right angle to the knife on the table. The salt and pepper pots have to be placed close together. Only recently have I started to notice it's a weird way to behave. — Laura Haddock

Think like a middle-aged man with OCD, a dead wife, and a teenage daughter.
Think like a woman with three teenage sons who once ran a golf cart into the side of their granddad's house."
"Cameron and Sean shouldn't have let me drive," Adam said in his own defense. "I was seven."
"You shouldn't have ASKED to drive. You were seven. — Jennifer Echols

Officially, it is no more possible to be a little bit OCD than it is to be a little bit pregnant or a little bit dead. — David Adam

I want to get away from the stigma they all clearly feel just because they have an illness of the mind as opposed to, say, an illness of the lungs or blood. I want to get away from all the labels. "I'm OCD," "I'm depressed," "I'm a cutter," they say, like these are the things that define them. — Jennifer Niven

According to National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the following anxiety disorders exist within adults with Asperger's: 1. Panic Disorder 2. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) 3. Social Anxiety Disorder / Social Phobia 4. Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) — Leslie Burby

After I impulsively revealed that I have OCD on a talk show, I was devastated. I often do things without thinking. That's my ADD/ADHD talking. Out in public, after I did the show, people came to me and said, 'Me, too.' They were the most comforting words I've ever heard. — Howie Mandel

Compared to being caught in the wrong body, being plagued by 'dysmorphic OCD thoughts,' being gay is commonplace and mostly accepted. What once seemed unimaginable and shameful has been revealed to be perfectly normal. — Susan Estrich

I'm tired of being inside my head. I want to live out here, with you. — Colleen McCarty

The good part about having a mental disorder is having a valid reason for all the stupid things we do because of a damaged prefrontal cortex. However, the best part is seeing someone completely sane do the exact same things, without a valid excuse. This is the great equalizer of God and his little gift for all us crazy people to enjoy. — Shannon L. Alder

The baby was warm against my chest. I knew I was broken too. I wasn't like other people. I was scared and weird and anxious and sad lots of the time, and I didn't know why. My parents thought I was abnormal, I was pretty sure. They said I wasn't, but you don't get sent to a therapist if you're normal.
Sometimes we really aren't supposed to be the way we are. It's not good for us. And people don't like it. You've got to change. You've got to try harder and do deep breathing and maybe one day take pills and learn tricks so you can pretend to be more like other people. Normal people. But maybe Vanessa was right, and all those other people were broken too in their own ways. Maybe we all spent too much time pretending we weren't. — Kenneth Oppel

We are up in the attic doing a jigsaw puzzle, which may be the single fastest way one OCD person reveals herself to another. — Pam Houston

I do have a touch of OCD, and I used to obsess about research. But I'm better than I was. Gone are the days when I would drive to a set of traffic lights to find out if you could turn left. I finally realised it didn't matter. A book will not stand or fall on whether or not there's a branch of Starbucks in Brixton. — Mark Billingham

I'm quite contradictory - a bit OCD, but quite untidy. I have piles of stuff everywhere, but they make sense to me. And I'll find the one thing in the room that's my boyfriend's, and complain about him leaving it out. — Kimberley Nixon

I have one of those Garmin watches, and I'm OCD about downloading my runs no matter where I go. I used it on an 18-mile run in Paris, a 12-miler in the mountains of Montana, a couple of runs in the Bahamas. Wherever I am, I try to run. That's what's so great about it. — Al Roker

Because now people use the phrase OCD to describe minor personality quirks. "Oooh, I like my pens in a line, I'm so OCD."
NO YOU'RE FUCKING NOT.
"Oh my God, I was so nervous about that presentation, I literally had a panic attack."
NO YOU FUCKING DIDN'T.
"I'm so hormonal today. I just feel totally bipolar."
SHUT UP, YOU IGNORANT BUMFACE. — Holly Bourne

I feel like Amy wanted people to believe she really was perfect. And as we got to be friends, I got to know her. And she wasn't perfect. You know? She was brilliant and charming and all that, but she was also controlling and OCD and a drama queen and a bit of a liar. Which was fine by me. It just wasn't fine by her. She got rid of me because I knew she wasn't perfect. — Gillian Flynn

Not that I'm saying you have OCD or anything. You just like things to be organized. Really, really organized. — Katie Ruggle

Carrying all of these thoughts is downright heavy. — Corey Ann Haydu

I think of everything and I'm pretty sure if I could use my organizational skills for something else, like wildlife survival kits or preparing people for nuclear warfare, I'd be a millionaire. Or at the very least actually a useful human being. — Corey Ann Haydu

There isn't anybody out there who doesn't have a mental health issue, whether it's depression, anxiety, or how to cope with relationships. Having OCD is not an embarrassment anymore - for me. Just know that there is help and your life could be better if you go out and seek the help. — Howie Mandel

Feelings are like blankets, covering you up so you can't see clearly, or like mazes you can too easily get lost inside. I am terrified of getting lost. — Corey Ann Haydu

they catch initials -- STD, PMS, OCD, HIV, etc., as if MTV teamed up with KFC and licensed the Latin alphabet to the pharmaceutical industry so OTCs could replace MDs. If Romeo and Juliet were alive today, they'd be put on antidepressants, sent for counseling, and bundled off to separate boarding schools to meet socially acceptable partners with money-back guarantees. — Paula Young Lee

I was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADD/ADHD) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) as an adult, but I don't remember a time when I didn't have them. Back in the 1960s, when I was growing up, my symptoms didn't have a name, and you didn't go to the doctor to find out. — Howie Mandel

When I am fully immersed in my work of nourishing humanity, it fills my head with all kinds of feel-good chemicals, such as endorphins, serotonin and dopamine. Problems occur during the brief intervals between the finishing of one work and the beginning of another. During these intervals, my biology starts to get filled with stress hormones cortisol and adrenalin, that worsens my OCD. That is why, I can't sit still even a day after I finish writing a book. Because if I do, my OCD begins to suffocate me inside my head. Hence, as soon as I deliver a work, I have to start working on my next scientific literature. — Abhijit Naskar

I expect the world from you, as I should, because you're amazing and talented and funny and sweet. You're sexy as hell and clever and smart and capable of so many things. So yeah. I expect a hell of a lot from you. And I also expect that you can be successful in managing your OCD. I'm proud of you, Bailey. — S. Walden

Kessa began to cut her meat into tiny pieces. As a whole it was unmanageable, frightening; but divided and arranged, the meat could be controlled. She cut four pieces. She'd count to four between each bite. — Steven Levenkron

I am responsible for what happened to me but if I was to stay there it is kind of a constant reminder and it is very easy ... You know the new song is called Mental ... I am not trying to hide from people that I have OCD, and I don't think that I am a completely normal person. — Shane Bunting

We are legion, an army of millions. Though most of us will go to any length to hide our compulsions, we recognize one another. The guy using a paper towel to turn the restroom doorknob, the child counting his eyelashes, the old man wearing Kleenex boxes for shoes - these are my brothers. We are a secret tribe. We're like Freemasons, except that our secret handshake is followed by a vigorous washing session. — Jennifer Traig

It felt good to say those things out loud. It was a relief to free them from my head and expose them to the light. — David Adam

...shades of OCD. — Susan Kaye Quinn

I could think of nothing but the loneliness, of being stuck in that glass room with only OCD for company. OCD, the bully; OCD, the oppressor; OCD, the destroyer of lives; OCD. — Ben Gander

Often during writing, I am compelled by OCD to delete and rewrite a word or sentence over and over again. — Abhijit Naskar

(In response to a picture critic.)

I'm actually a very joyful person. But being a genius with a photographic memory mixed with a strong case of OCD makes for a difficult picture sometimes. — Calvin W. Allison

Pretty hard to see when you refuse to look. Pretty hard to hear when you refuse to listen. — Jeff Bell

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I never leave the house without [my Santa hat]. In fact, I pretty much never leave my room without it. I honestly don't know how this habit started and believe me, I'd break myself of it if I could, but I'm a little bit OCD about the Santa hat. Whenever I try to put it away, I get this horrible, overwhelming feeling that somehow Christmas will be destroyed if I do. — Kieran Scott

You prefer the bed on the opposite wall?"
"I prefer the bookshelf in the lower left corner of the room, and the ceiling fan not to be hanging over my head while I sleep."
"OCD?"
"Feng shui."
"Is it contagious?"
"Hardly anyone gets it. — Devon Monk

Have you realized" MacRyrie asked her, "that you're just like Novikov but with more charm and no OCD?"
"The direct thing?"
"Yeah," both bear and wolf said at the same time.
"I like being direct. Then no one can hold shit over your head. Like when I got pregnant in high school. I ran around telling everybody. The nuns were horrified. But no one could shame me because I'd already put it all out there. For everybody! — Shelly Laurenston

Yes, I am a tad obsessive. For a nonreligious woman, this is my faith. — Rabih Alameddine

My compulsive thoughts aren't even thoughts, they're absolute certainties and obeying them isn't a choice. — Paul Rudnick

The real problem with his type of OCD
chronic fear of hurting other people
was that you thought so much about not running over children, not sideswiping pedestrians, not poisoning strangers with germs on your hands
essentially not killing a world full of strangers
that you ended up hurting the people you loved most. He saw that now. — Cammie McGovern

People who live with OCD drag a mental sea anchor around. Obsession is a brake, a source of drag, not a badge of creativity, a mark of genius or an inconvenient side effect of some greater function. — David Adam

I was beginning to think that Simon just had a bad case of OCD, ADD, and PMS. With a little BS and OMG mixed in. — Dannika Dark

The first time I saw her,
Everything in my head went quiet. — Neil Hilborn

Being stress and anxiety free is a human preset, I just show you how to 'flick the switch' to off. Permanent stress and anxiety recovery is possible quickly and simply despite what many are told. — Charles Linden

The idea is to help patients more clearly assess the contents of their thought stream, teaching them to note and correct the conceptual errors termed "cognitive distortions" that characterize psychopathological thinking. Somone in the grips of such thinking would, for instance, regard a half-full glass not merely as half-empty but also fatally flawed, forever useless, constitutionally incapable of ever being full, and fit only to be discarded. By the mid-1980s, cognitive therapy was being used more and more in combination with behavioral therapy for OCD, and it seemed naturally compatible with a mindfulness-based perspective. If I could show that a cognitive-behavioral approach, infused with mindful awareness, could be marshaled against the disease, and if successful therapy were accompanied by changes in brain activity, then it would represent a significant step toward demonstrating the causal efficacy of mental activity on neural circuits. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

Personality is a slot machine, and the cherries, lemons, and bells are your SSRI system, your schizophrenic tendency, your left/right brain lobalization, your anxiety proclivity, your wiring glitches, your place on the autistic and OCD spectrums - and to these we must add the deep-level influences of the machines and systems of intelligence that guided your brain into maturity. — Douglas Coupland

Mind over matter represents the triumph of will over physical hindrance. Our thoughts are our weapon against the world. — David Adam

When I was in my teens I had issues with OCD. — J.K. Rowling

My life is routine-obsessed. I'm OCD, and if I'm not at home, I always get up early and exercise. I don't crash and burn at night, not these days, so early-ish to bed. At home, I have three small boys who bring me down to earth with school runs and endless meals. — Gary Kemp

OCD, we discovered is a lot of different things-it's not just washing your hands, it's whatever you're obsessed with. It can be just the way you hold a pen, and you always have to have it a certain way or you have to eat your food, it depends. It's something that, as a character I thought was really interesting because sometimes it's used in a film where it is OCD and sometimes it's strategic. — Antoine Fuqua

The human mind is a complicated place ... We hold on to things, images, words, ideas, histories that we don't even know we're holding on to. — Corey Ann Haydu

My doctor said I had OCD. I couldn't believe it. I had to call him nine times to make sure. — Judy Gold