OCD Action

Hi Twitchy -

your worry is entirely natural for someone with OCD, it's part and parcel of the disorder. With 'natural', I certainly don't mean to say that it is part of normal life, it is a burdensome doubt that can cause considerable unhappiness and loss of spontaneity.

What's to do? I think you'd really benefit from not checking it again (if possible at all, since you are presumably at home now). Try to make clear to yourself: I did the right thing, by checking once. A second check wouldn't have given any other result. There are plenty of reasons to hold this belief.

Then seek some distraction, something that engulfs you totally, that demands your full attention. This can be anything: watch a fine movie, read a book, call a family member, do some knitting, prepare parts of tomorrow's dinner, talk to your partner, if you have one... the list is endless.

Thing is: if it's your OCD habit to check things numerous times, and this is an exception, then you will really profit from it, when you come to know that everything is fine at work. Progress is on the horizon.

If your OCD is such that you usually check only a few times, or just the one time, then you are dealing with some exceptional anxiety over something that normally doesn't bother you that much. Well, if you succeed into slipping into a different mindset within a reasonable time (see my examples above), than you'll have managed to overcome an unwanted and unexpected 'spike' in your OCD pattern. Which would be quite a feat, also.

Here's wishing you all the best out of cold and grey (well, black, now) Holland. Many people here, by the way, were in a laughing mood about the way our government and our weather institutions treated the snowfall. There was a 'Code Orange' warning given this morning, it sounded so alarming and overdone... a couple of inches of new snow aren't harmful at all, everyone out there in the real world does what she/he has to do, but the media are in something of a frenzy. Funny, that.

Best, Cuthbert.