Have you ever met someone who likes to keep things extra clean and actually enjoys cleaning things? There are also some people who want to keep things symmetrical and in a specific order, we often say they have “OCD” Like oho she washes her hands a lot, keeps her house exceptionally clean and keeps all the things at their place so she must have OCD. I have heard a lot of people saying oh your un-organized stuff is activating my OCD!!  People believe OCD is a condition where one enjoys keeping things clean and this condition is pretty harmless as people just clean stuff and who doesn’t like a soul in their house who keeps the house super clean?

But let me break this bubble for you all, OCD, Often known as Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is an anxiety disorder. It is a psychological disorder that includes obsessions (Intrusive thoughts) and Compulsions (Rituals people do to temporarily reduce the anxiety caused by intrusive thoughts).

Obsessions include thoughts like me or my family members will contract germs and fall severely ill, I want to throw my baby out of this window, I might hate my, dad and want to kill him, I might don’t love God and terrible thoughts about religion and a lot of thing like this. These obsessions make the sufferer feel they are the nastiest person alive and they try to compensate it with Compulsions which are washing hands again and again and keeping the house superfluous clean and taking extra care of their children and parents and praying more than usual. A lot of factors can contribute to the development of OCD including genetics, cognitions, environmental factors and childhood experiences. OCD is so not associated with washing hands only or like to keep things spotless (It’s just one theme of OCD) Let me give you an example, A woman who washes her hands 30 times a day believes that if she doesn’t wash her hands 30 times, her child may die. And this fear induces her to wash her hands 30 times. She doesn’t wash them because she loves washing them but because she wants to ease the anxiety caused by her obsessions i.e. her child will die. We all experience bad thoughts but we have the capability to shake them off and continue with our lives in an ordinary manner. People with OCD try their best to run away from the horrifying thoughts they experience but the more they run from them, the more they haunt them. A kid who cleans his room 15 times a day with the fear of germs that if I don’t clean it certain times in a day, my younger siblings will contract some viruses and will get sick because of me. OCD also includes doing certain things in a certain way every day and if they don’t do it, it causes severe anxiety. Is it an anxiety disorder, OCD sufferers experience life-threatening anxiety from obsessions and it isn’t fair to call yourself an OCD sufferer just because you like things clean. OCD is a serious mental disorder that cannot be treated without medicines and therapy.

People with OCD are awfully anxious but they try not to show this to the world and this disease often remains undiagnosed due to misapprehensions of this. A lot of children experience terrible thoughts but they are petrified to share them with their parents as they think their parents will consider them as the worst person alive, Which Is actually true. Their thoughts may seem weird or meaningless to others but for them, they are destructive, hazardous and enormously resilient. I hope we start educating ourselves with basic mental health information so we can help someone in need and it’s high time we stop calling ourselves or people who like things clean (OCD).