Thursday, February 23, 2006

Poca Loca

I’m convinced I’ve got some kind of behavioural / Obsessive compulsive disorder…or simpler still a syndrome of sorts… I’m pretty sure if I look hard enough I can fit in somewhere… While Georges Gilles de la Tourette aka the guy who is accredited for discovering tourettes syndrome would have a hay day with the way I twitch when I think of anything closely related to Irish cream I’m not so sure that would be my preferred syndrome of choice. And even though practically every single person I know has an Obsessive compulsive ritual in their lives I don’t think OCD would be it for me either… I want something with a little more “spunk”… a touch more zest and drama! I am Egyptian and after all anyone will tell you that even though we claim to avoid it , “it” is inevitably in the adenines, guanines and thiamines of our DNA. I hardly know anything about mental disorders and so ehhh.. what the heck… lets edumacate me about something as I write. I have this deep routed belief that people will say anything around you if they think you’re in capable of processing it or better still they’ll allow you to see so much more of their personalities than they would the average person. So first I thought maybe OCD… “the doubting disease” as one website called it where basically the person is both obsessive and compulsive to extremes. The O for obsession is defined as follows: Obsessions are recurrent and persistent thoughts, impulses, or images that are experienced as unwanted, intrusive, and inappropriate. These thoughts cause marked anxiety or distress, and are not simply excessive worries about real-life problems. And the C for compulsions is defined as follows: Compulsions are repetitive behaviors or mental acts that the person feels driven to perform in response to an obsession, or according to rules that must be applied rigidly. These behaviors or mental acts are usually aimed at preventing or reducing distress or preventing some dreaded event or situation. Importantly, the compulsive behaviors are generally not connected to the worrying thought. For example, a child may be plagued with an obsessive worry that if they don't turn the light switch on and off perfectly exactly 32 times, he will come home to find his dog slashed and mutilated.
All this is fine and dandy so lets see now…do I fit in? obsessive.. yeah I can be that sometimes… I do have a habit of making my car beep 2 or 3 times as I walk away from it just to be sure its locked. But then again I have been driving an old school Audi that had what I was convinced was a possessed radio. It would turn on according to its own whim only to blast static! Although the fact that the heated passenger seat switch was broken made for some interesting ass burning experiences, its perfectly understandable that I’m a little giddy with my new baby! I don’t know that that qualifies though… and plus everyone knows about OCD… I want to be in un-chartered territory… something people won’t know and so I’ll have to explain to them and hence more fun with the social experiments.
So OCD and Tourettes aren’t it… what of Schizophrenia? The term "schizophrenia" translates roughly as "shattered mind," and comes from the Greek word σχίζω (schizo, "to split" or "to divide") and φρήν (phrēn, “mind”).+ People with schizophrenia often suffer terrifying symptoms such as hearing internal voices not heard by others, or believing that other people are reading their minds, controlling their thoughts, or plotting to harm them.
But then there’s a fine line between serious illness and the theatrical production I want to put on! The solution? A Tweaked form of all these disorders combined? Do the twitching from tourettes, The internal voices from Schizophrenia, the mutilated dog bit from OCD and ohhh I don’t know lets throw in another couple of interesting ones I found. Narcissistic Personality disorder* aka known as all that and a bag of chips disorder or simply My shit don’t stink disorder. Whose symptoms I discovered border along the “pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and sense of entitlement.” Or the Sexual Aversion Disorder* / the wanna be Matha Mary disorder whose symptoms are of “persistent or recurring aversion to or avoidance of sexual activity.” But with the combined effects of nymphomania, which oddly enough isn’t a disorder I could find defined “scientifically” anywhere, would make for a great deal of stress for the voices from the schizophrenia ...
And last but definitely by no means least… Trichotillomania*.. MY ABSOLUTE Favorite of the batch…where “The primary feature of this disorder is the recurrent pulling out of one’s own hair which results in significant hair loss”. Typically occurring before adulthood, studies demonstrate that between one to two percent of college samples have this disorder or have had it in the past.”
And sooo there you have It.. what exactly? Not really quite sure But… I Betcha didn’t know that anyone of us could ever so easily have one disorder or the next if we truly have your hearts set on it. So I guess what all this means is that the next time someone looks at you like you’re loosing it just nonchalantly smile and go.. “ yes I’m going crazy… want to come along?”
+ from wikepedia.com
* from allpsych.com

2 comments:

Forsoothsayer said...

girl nehda...maybe lack of punctuation is a sign of ocd?

Sand-E said...

I decided that punctuation restricted my abilility to express myself way back in the day, i haven't been able to recover since. I think i might have unintentionaly created a mental block. I dont know what to use when.