@tinuviel said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
Now, is it possible for such things to be a disorder? Most certainly. It's possible. As in not always. "I need to keep my shit organised" is not OCD, "I need to keep my shit organised or I'm fairly sure the entire country will be plunged into war and my family will burn alive" is OCD.
OCD isn't really about the compulsions, it's about the reason behind the compulsions.
'If I complete this before the time is up, the day will go well.' 'If I step on this crack, things will go well.' 'If I tap the wall, things will go well.' 'If I keep one foot against the baseboard going down the bathroom hall, things will go well.' 'If I reach my bed before four seconds, things will go well.'
This was basically my life as an abused kid. If I just did all of the rituals right, maybe mom wouldn't attack me later. If I did the rituals right, maybe bro wouldn't pin me to the wall later. If I did all the rituals right...
For my mom, it was, 'if I don't keep the house pristine, people will talk.' 'If I don't keep my middle child pristine, people will talk.' So she controlled obsessively everything I wore, ate, said, how I was allowed to move. If I even dropped a glass of water, I was punished. If I read a book in public, I was punished. If I ate more than I was allowed BUT conversely I was forced to eat great amounts of things I hated, just to show me very agitatedly that PEOPLE WOULD TALK. If I had any pinchable fat on my body, I was starved. If my siblings acted out, I must be punished, as they had obviously 'caught' it from me: they were 'perfect'. (They were not, they smoked, did drugs, etc.) It was never clear to me why this was particularly bad or good or whatever to her, but she was completely fixated on this obsessive ideal of perfection and somehow I was the shit on the stainless tile floor of her life.
But you know, everyone knew my family was fucked, they talked anyway, so she clamped down harder. It was all to avoid this great consequence.
However:
My brother couldn't walk five steps without twitching his head when he was stressed. He collected a collection of tics and got ever more rigid about things. He started to leave obsessive memos all over the house: 'Parisplayer is a loser.' 'A winner does this, a loser does this.' He obsessed over his popularity, he obsessed over my dad being an asshole who liked my unemotional self over him; he obsessed over keeping my mom and I at odds. He obsessed at being head of the family. I'm pretty sure he did quite a few other things, it's only in hindsight that I saw how elaborate and fixated he got. He's on meds, but apparently still quite overcontrolling, at least toward my mom and my sister. He actively believes that I 'contaminated' the family and must be cut out (I figure he picked up on this from mom), and saw my cancer as something I deserved. Losers get sick. Losers die. That's what they deserve, because they're filthy.
Both he and my mother were extremely upset that I was a nerd who was not particularly interested in being popular and MIGHT be queer. This was not just 'ugh that nerd' but like fixated, agitated freakouts to be corrected with highly ritualised behavior lest (to my brother) the sky crack open and the devil, I shit you not, consume our house. I was the cause of all strife and all sin (you know, unlike his drug use), and if I could just be somehow either fixed or removed, all will be well.
When I got away, they started on my sister (formerly the perfect one), who'd initially followed their example but then matured into an interestingly independent person-- but she wants to be loved, so she puts up with it. She doesn't, thank god for her, have OCD. She's got anxiety, but gee, I wonder why.
I am fortunate that in seeing how destructive unmedicated severe OCD, combined with enabling and destructive behavior, will damage your relationships; and how OCDs yammering and panic in your brain will bring about foolish behavior. I am extremely extremely fortunate that I am so disassociative, (see above) because one part will yammer and the other will try to put on the brakes if it can. So I still check the door because the circuit to finishing the action didn't complete if I just do it automatically, so I have Bot watch. So I feel horrified at touching the dirty dishes, but I haven't gotten sick yet, so I do them even if I want to vomit-- and I buy paper plates. There's a lot I'd like to manage better, but my household gets along, my sweetie is taken care of as best I can manage, and the house hasn't burned down yet.
So no, having to arrange your books by color isn't a disorder. I, personally, have to arrange my garden and my art really symmetrically or I get frustrated looking at the bad angles, but that's not disorded even if it is obsessive. In the case of art, it made me a better artist (disorders do come with strange payoffs sometimes), who has been willing to labor for days on a work to make it just right, so someone fixated on book colors could possibly turn that into a decorating asset.
I know this is long, sorry.
Edit: I came out of that with an eating disorder (yes, diagnosed) as well, just like my mom! And a completely distorted body image. But I mostly manage that these days, and Bot has been a great help.
None of this was caused by my adoptive grandparents, by the way; they were great and a source of real comfort to me as a kid. (So my brother obsessed and succeeded in acquiring the things they left to me.) My biological grandparents, however, well, I don't need to detail that clusterfuck. My mother's siblings are almost all mentally ill to some degree or other. I really fear for my nephews and nieces and I have no idea how my family line has made it to this day.