[Randomhuman]

I am sorry that this is so long but IDK how to make it shorter.

I am a 15 y/o girl and about 6 months ago I began researching different mental disorders out of curiosity and I came across OCD. It perfectly described some of the things I had thought were just odd quirks that had been happening since I was 10 or 11 years old, but these things weren't dominating my life and weren't serious enough to be OCD, maybe just OCD tendencies.

However, for some reason, I kept questioning everything I did and wondering whether it was OCD. Then, it was as if I wanted to have OCD. Every time I did something normally, I would try to re-do it as if I had OCD to prove to myself that I had OCD. I didn't know why I was doing this, but it kept happening and I was becoming increasingly anxious because of it until it was difficult for me to focus on anything and it was dominating my thoughts every waking hour.

Fortunately, this problem dissipated over summer vacation and I was fine. However, every time I saw or heard “OCD” anywhere it would make me anxious, so I consciously avoided anything that could possibly have OCD in it. Unfortunately, it gets brought up occasionally at my school, and after it was mentioned a couple times I started thinking about it again and then I took a screening test at Psych Central and after that it’s been just like last year again.

It’s like normally I have some OCD tendencies but they don’t dominate my life and it’s fine, but then when I think about whether I have OCD or not I begin to intentionally do everything as if I have OCD. It’s like I don’t have it, but I want to have it so I’m pretending I have it or something, but it’s not like I would ever want to have OCD!!

Do I have OCD? And if not what is wrong with me??

P.S. These are the reasons I thought I might have OCD:

I used to be obsessed with the number 4, now not so much but I still do most things in sets of 4 when I can.
Whenever I see a digital clock, I will either repeatedly check the clock to see whether the time has changed or imagine the position of the numbers on a keyboard over-and-over. If I am actually in front of a keyboard I will look at the numbers in the time order.
I avoid the number 7 and the color red for seemingly no reason.
Recently since it’s cold-and-flu season so I have been avoiding touching door handles and washing my hands more frequently, but it’s become slightly ridiculous to where I will not touch something unless I am sure no one else has touched it and I avoid standing anywhere near other people so that they don’t infect me (though once again, this was not a problem at any other time, and it seems like I’m “making it a problem” now that I’m linking about OCD again)

Once again so sorry this is so long and thanks for reading.

[Skeezyks]

Hello Randomhuman: I believe this is your first post here on PC. So... welcome to Psych Central. Since you're a teen, two additional forums, here on PC, that may be of interest to you would be the school & study issues forum & the teens' lounge (no adults allowed!) Here are links to these forums:

https://forums.psychcentral.com/scho...-study-issues/

https://forums.psychcentral.com/teens-lounge/

I'm sorry but we here on PC cannot offer mental health diagnoses. Plus, I'm not a mental health professional. So I can't suggest anything with regard to what may be going on with you. For this you would need to see a mental health professional, possibly a mental health therapist, at least to begin with. I recall you mentioned having taken the OCD screening test here on PC. There are other psychological tests you could take as well if you want to. Here's a link to the listing of quizzes & tests that are available:

Psychological Quizzes and Tests

Reading through some of the posts here in the OCD forum may also help you to gain some additional perspective regarding what you're experiencing.

And then here's a link to an article by our host Dr. John Grohol, Psy.D. on the subject of OCD. The article also provides links to a number of additional articles on the subject including one titled: "Do I Have OCD?":

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

I hope you find PC to be of benefit.