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.
