Stop comparing the ocd target sweater to the Starbucks cup thing. It’s not the same. Ocd is trivialized and mocked. It"s mental illness that’s so difficult to live with and people who don’t have it act like it’s “being a lil to tidy” or “a tad more organized” or it’s you’re someone who’s a little freaked out by germs. A shirt saying obsessive Christmas disorder is not helping any of us with ocd. It’s directly catering to the ignorance about it. Target should be ashamed.
First off, I came across your site and wanted to say thanks for providing a great OCD resource to the community.
I thought you might find this infographic interesting, as it shows detailed information about the social signs of OCD to look for, and has proved to be a great hit with our readers: http://www.healthline.com/health/ocd/social-signs
All the best,
Nicole
Thanks for sharing Nicole! (I edited your post to remove your personal info)
Followers, this is a really great infographic, and Healthline has a ton of really great stuff!
honestly, what bothers me more on than the OCD christmas sweater target is selling are the insensitive comments about OCD and mental illness. it’s just so wrong and ignorant to be saying shit like that and makes me, a person with a mental illness, disgusted with how people treat people different than themselves.
(i don’t have OCD, so i’m not speaking for anyone with OCD as i am not privileged to say anything about something i have not experienced, i’m just putting it out there that i just don’t like any kind of discrimination or judging of mental illness, racism, sexuality, gender, religion, disabilities, etc. because it is so wrong to judge people for anything!!!)
something I’ve been thinking about the past couple days is an interaction I had with a classmate where she told me that her husband has OCD (and I was like oh lol me too), and that she likes to “mess with him” by slightly rearranging things like swapping things in the silverware drawer and then watch him “stand there trying to figure it out.” my first reaction was a shocked “that’s terrible!” masked with a laugh, and she was like “we’ve been married seven years, it’s okay.” but um, the more I’ve thought back on it the more upset I’ve gotten?? like… this isn’t some cute quirk he has where you can so lightheartedly play around with it, like how some people are just like “idk I just like this thing this way” holy shit OCD isn’t like that. It’s an anxiety disorder. He’s not staring at the drawer confused because he simply likes things in a particular, neat way, he’s spending the time trying to wrap his mind around the anxiety caused by shifting something from how he expects it to be. that’s… not fucking funny?? that’s not a game? why is OCD treated so flippantly like it’s not a spectator sport and it’s not something for you to make a joke out of us with, we’re people with a condition in our brain and it’s beyond dehumanizing to reduce us to “look they freak out when I do this thing it’s funny” what the actual fuck
Chances are, if you have this type of OCD, you are doing compulsions; just in your head instead of visible ones. These kind of compulsions are called “covert compulsions” and can be difficult to catch because of their invisibility to the naked eye. Some common forms of these in-your-head compulsions are as follows:
Reassurance-seeking from self
Ruminating on obsession
Mental retracing of steps
Repetition of special words/phrases in head
Mental undoing of actions
Mental checking of physical and emotional reactions to different situations in past, present, or future (or completely made-up)
“Flooding” brain with unwanted images, thoughts, or scenes to gauge the reaction
Other common compulsions that come with “Pure-O” OCD are avoidance, reassurance, and confession rituals.
So the other day I was at target and I saw a shirt that said OCD: overly Christmas disorder. This just really pissed me off because I have OCD. Everyone puts OCD off like its some sort of joke when it’s not, I always hear people saying how OCD they are when they have no clue what it actually is. Please don’t make a corky Christmas sweater out of my mental disorder. You wouldn’t put a quirking saying about depression or an eating disorder on a sweater, so please stop making OCD a joke.
I was watching the news when this came up. In spirit of the season, they are selling sweaters that say OCD: Obsessive Christmas disorder. As someone who has suffered from severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and anxiety since they were 6, let me tell you, this is not “cute” or “funny” to me at all.
According to articles and crude comments, people are defending the sweater by saying it isn’t serious, it’s “political correctness” to refute the sweater, and cracking OCD related jokes like “at least it’s evenly spaced”. It is easy for people to dismiss argument against it since the majority of people have NO IDEA what OCD is. They just know what T.V. depicts it as and think that is all to it, so making fun of it is therefore ok. OCD is not a cute quirky girl organizing her crayons by color. It. Is. Not. Cute.
OCD has ruined my life. I have had to deal with intrusive thoughts since I was six, because that is what OCD can do to people. They weren’t “oh no the wall frame isn’t straight, I’m such a ditsy girl”. When I was only six, I couldn’t sleep for days at a time because I couldn’t stop thinking about my mom dying in the most horrific way. Stabbed to death, shot through the head. The images would flash through my mind non stop. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t move because it felt so real to me, and I was stuck in that state of panic for many, many hours at a time. It WAS TORTURE.
It became so real to me, the intrusions, that I couldn’t stop thinking “it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen”. That is OCD. The intrusion would go away after a while, only to be replaced by another crippling fear. The fear was anything, from intense fear I would lose control of my limbs to stab myself, to the fear someone would come in my room and kill me, which I could see in my mind. There was no way to get rid of the thoughts. Help came slowly. It did not stop them, even today.
My OCD was so bad, the thoughts and compulsions were so horrific that I had to keep pencils, knives, and scissors away from me. Anything that could be used to stab, because the fears felt REAL to me because that is what OCD does. I became suicidal so I had to keep all those away from me, because I kept having the intrusive thought “what if I stab myself? What if I kill myself? I can’t deal with all this… I should kill myself.” over and over and over. I was only 8 when I got these thoughts.The thought never went away, but it gave me a sickening compulsion. I began to point a knife at myself for hours at a time, to prove to myself I wasn’t going to kill myself, because that is what the OCD wanted me to do to get rid of the thoughts. For a while.
My mother worked all day to support me so she wasn’t there to see my compulsions in action, after my father left us because he thought I was crazy. I never told my mom the specifics of my thoughts, but she tried her best to get me help, since I would sit by myself for hours with the OCD, refusing to eat or sleep. I had no friends. I was too busy thinking of these thoughts in my head, and doing compulsions to get rid of them. I wanted nothing more but to die at the age of 8. OCD ruined my life. THIS IS WHAT OCD IS. IT’S NOT A JOKE.
When you have OCD, you can’t think that these thoughts are implausible because the MENTAL DISORDER makes you feel like it’s all real. I will never get rid of OCD. I will only ever learn how to cope with it. It never goes away completely, because it always comes back.
When I saw this sweater, I cried. A lot. Don’t call it political correctness. Don’t you DARE call me too sensitive. I’ve only mentioned a slice of my struggles with OCD. And as someone who has gone through so much torture by the damned thing, it made me cry because I don’t think it’s cute or quirky at all.
Here is a VERY accurate video of what it’s like to live with OCD:
I am constantly contacted by people who suffer from misgivings and OCD (waswasa) in various aspects of their day-to-day lives, such as purity/impurity, uttering disbelief, and pronouncing divorce. A brother once kept emailing me for months on end because every so often he feared he said or did something that took him out of the fold of Islam. Another brother called me from abroad for 20 consecutive days. He thought he had divorced his wife, and despite me explaining to him strongly that he had not said anything which would end his marriage, he would still call back the next day and ask again. A lady thought everything in her house – the bathroom floor, walls, carpet, etc – was becoming impure because of the possibility of impurity coming into contact with it. A sister was obsessed with performing wudu that she would take an hour completing it and often repeating it. These are just a few examples of hundreds of cases I have dealt with.
Those suffering with such misgivings really need help and support. Islam is not to make life difficult for us, rather the opposite. Remember Allah knows you have this condition, so even if something was left impure – for example – you are excused. Once a person complained to the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him & give him peace) about having continuous doubts of passing gas and hence invalidating his ablution (wudu). The Prophet (peace be upon him) said to him, “[given that you suffer from doubts], do not consider your wudu to be broken [with mere feelings] unless you hear a sound or smell something.” (Abu Dawud) Normally, wudu is invalidated with passing gas even if there is no sound or smell, but since this person was suffering doubts, the Prophet (peace be upon him) gave him a concession that his wudu will not be considered broken unless there’s sound or smell.
Do not let the deen overwhelm you. Be strong, and do not let Shaytan overcome you. Try getting some professional help if need be, and make lots and lots of du’a that Allah Most High relieve you from this condition. Reciting Surat al-Nas abundantly should help as well In sha Allah. May Allah grant ease to all those suffering from this condition, Ameen.
@OCDus 