How do you do tasks promptly when you have OCD? I just got finished with dishes and it took an hour. My mom can wash that amount in max 20 minutes. I observed her technique, and found the issue was that I was washing every square inch, and this was taking all the time. I have this issue in other areas, too. Can't even shit without spending 20-40 minutes washing with a bidet and wiping to ensure true spotlessness. I want to do things faster, and stop wasting so much time on things, but I also want to make sure the task is complete. The best thing I can think to do is to just emulate people in my life on these things and trust how they do it more than my methods. Any ideas on how to make the voice compelling me to shut the fuck up? I'm tired of being stuck in these endless loops. I've been making some progress in overwriting my older habits to be somewhat faster, but it's not consistent and seems to have hit a plateau. If it helps, I am unmedicated for my OCD and ADD, but I am making a lot of progress and better now off of medication than I used to be on medication. At least for the OCD.
>>34075816Maybe you can use your OCD differently. I think you just need to aim for different objectives.For instance, when you wash dishes, you don’t waste time washing the backs too much because people don’t eat from the back of the dish. So by doing so, you are wasting water and soap beyond what is necessary, not to mention time. You need to focus more on efficiency and learn to channel your OCD into min/maxing.Let’s move on to your bidet example. You can only get that bidet so clean before it becomes pointless to clean anymore. You are wasting time and cleaning material for little to no gain.
>>34075816Do you have OCD or are you a perfectionist?
>>34079010I have OCD. I feel like if I don't do something "right" then something bad will happen. I can tell I'm not a perfectionist because I follow my OCD ritual more than I follow what is needed to accomplish a task correctly. In addition to being diagnosed by a professional (I spoke about my symptoms without knowing why I was like this only for him to say it sounds like OCD. I didn't even know these were the symptoms, I thought it was about neatness or cleanliness or something).>>34078728It's not a bad idea, but I think redirecting my OCD to cut back on time can only go so far before becoming a hindrance again. Then again, it's better than where I am now. I will certainly try to aim it for different objectives. At worst, I will be in the same place I am now, just with different obsessions. My main, even now, is with discerning when enough is enough. My OCD says to go further and further, but reality tells me to relent, and it's hard to follow reality when I think about how there might be a particle of some dirt. For example, today, I unclogged a backed up toilet (I apologize for the bathroom examples, but the grossness is what's causing my compulsion to clean). It wasn't pure sewage water, but it had shit in it and a tiny pinprick drop flew into the air after a flush. I couldn't find where it landed, so I just wiped the approximate area with alcohol wipes. But then I had to go further and change my pants because it had a high chance of having landed on my pants (couldn't find it on the floor, after all). Then I stopped myself from cleaning my house shoes and feet as well (since the bottoms of my pajamas made contact with the drop and then with my feet). I realized I was going too far, but by that point I had already taken measures that might be excessive, but seemed reasonable at the time. Each situations needs unique judgement, but I can't tell the line between reason and OCD anymore.
