20-52-2014: What’s your OCD?

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May 18, 2014 – When I was a kid, lots of kids were overactive, hyper, difficult, whatever. Parents wrote it off as “too much sugar”, or many other things. That was fine, for the most part we all grew out of our behaviours, or learned how to deal with them. Textbooks on mental disorders were thin.

But today!

Today we have volumes on mental disorders, people are diagnosed with ADD, ADHD, OCD…and any other number of conditions. Children today are more medicated than any other generation in history. Are they really worse off? Or have we just forgotten how to deal with the growing pains that come along with the developmental changes from child, to adolescent, to adult. Has our world become so disassociated that we now hope for a pill for every personality that differs from some perceived level of average that we have decided is normal.

What if Edison had been diagnosed with OCD and been medicated for it? What if Pasteur, or Flemming, or Graham Bell had been prescribed a pill for a behavioural difference for the average Joe? Would we have the electricity? Would we have safe milk? Would we have penicillin? Would we have the telephone? It’s an interesting question to ponder.

What are we stifling by providing drugs to children to help them overcome conditions that we all survived and grew out of or learned to cope with?

We all have a little OCD tendency. It’s normal. Humans are animals, and we look for patterns without consciously thinking about it. We like patterns, they are comforting. They bring order to a chaotic world. Think about it, what little quirk do you have? What bugs you that doesn’t seem rational to others?

Do you have to wash your hands for exactly so many seconds?

Do you have to check that something is off several times to convince yourself you really did do whatever it is that you tend to worry about?

Do you obsess a bit about the cleanliness of the toilet/sink/dishes/whatever surface floats your boat?

Do you count to yourself as you climb stairs, wash dishes, shuffle cards, shake dice…?

Are you crazy fussy about organization and fret about where every item sites on your desk?

Do you have to have things in odd or even numbers to feel comfortable?

Do you organize your items in a specific order?

We all have some strange little habits, but they don’t mean we have full blown disorders, though some people certainly do have conditions that lead to significant difficulties in their ability to cope with daily life.

I never really thought about the little habits I have, and for the most part I’ve had them pointed out to me through the years.

For example, during my Master’s program at UBC, one of my co-workers walked by my desk and pointed out to me that all of my books were organized by height. It suddenly bugged me that I’d done something like that, so I reorganized. Later he stopped at my desk and noted that my books were no longer so carefully organized. I smiled and thought to myself…if he’d looked closely now they were organized by topic…and by height within topic. What a nerd I am.

But you know what? He had his quirk too. He couldn’t not be the last voice in a goodbye. We’d have a conversation and we’d be at the end of it. He’d be walking away and I’d say “Bye”. He’d say “See you” I’d say “OK” He’d say…something. I used to enjoy seeing how long I could keep him going as he walked away. I don’t think he was aware of it, but it was amusing.

I also have the tidiest desk in the office. I like things tidy, I find it comforting. My computer files are organized and easy to navigate, paper files are well organized and information is always easy to find. Once, long ago during a lab meeting, my supervisor at UBC, suggested that all of us form a company because we all had such unique and yet complementary skills. I was voted manager. I once had the woman who was head of the Department financials call me up for information that she should have since she said “Your records are better organized than mine.”

One Fall I was out at the Bamfield Marine Station for a month with another PhD student. We were sharing a cabin for the duration of the experiments we’d planned, and several other fellow lab mates came and went during the time we were there. She had her quirks, I had mine. But she pointed out another quirk that I’d never noticed in myself.

One evening at dinner she pointed at my plate and stated “Your food can’t touch!”

I stopped with my fork in mid air and said “What?”

She repeated herself, again, pointing at my plate.

And I could only laugh and look at my plate and realize, that unconsciously I had a tendency to keep the items on my plate isolated from each other. It was humorous, but it certainly didn’t make me a mental case.

And then there are the pencils. I like wooden pencils, not mechanical ones. I like hard pencils, not HB, and I like them nice and sharp. I keep them in a cup, point up so that the points don’t get dulled by the bottom of the cup. Every so often Kirk turns one upside down just to see if I notice.

I usually do eventually.

But he has his own little quirks. He can’t stand it if the screws on wall plates for light switches and electrical receptacles aren’t all perfectly lined up vertically.

We all have our quirks.  They aren’t weird and they don’t define us and they aren’t to be ashamed of, but they are a part of what makes us who we are. I find amusement in mine, they make me laugh.

What’s your quirk?