My OCD Types: Hyper-Responsibility...Did you check the stove?

Alright, folks, I have finally made it back to my fantastical blog for another fun-filled edition of OCD types...Tara-style!!! Today my focus will be on hyper-responsibility. Just what the heckfire is it!?! Well, it is basically feeling responsible for anything and everything. It is kind of wanting to control the world around you and everyone to make sure no one gets hurt. I have a crap-ton of hyper-responsibility issues.

Let's take another ride on the for instance train. Let's say you put a special medication for your dog in the refrigerator. It's gotta stay cold and that means, unfortunately for someone like me, it has to stay in the fridge with your foodstuff. Well, you might start worrying about "what if someone accidentally touches it when they are trying to get food?"...so you will go back in the kitchen to situate that medication so that it is nearly inaccessible in the refrigerator. You'll go back and sit down in the living room. "But, what if someone doesn't realize it's medication for a dog and they touch it and resituate it on their own?"...Well, that may cause you to get up and mark the medication in some way...like with a piece of tape that says "Don't Touch"...You'll go back into the living room. "But, what if someone puts something in the fridge that knocks the medication bottle over?"...You'll get back up and put the medication bottle in a bowl inside the fridge. (It should be noted here that the bowl will never be able to be used for anything else now, no matter how many times it is cleaned...) ...You'll go back into the living room. "But, what if someone doesn't see the medication bottle in the bowl and grabs the bowl and the medication bottle falls over onto their hand and contaminates them?"...You see how this can go on for literally FOREVER!!!

Hyper-responsibility certainly pertains to the long held images of a person with OCD who continuously checks whether the door is shut. Or the person who continuously checks their alarm clock, because they don't want to be late for work and somehow cause the world to crumble. But, these are not the only kinds of hyper-responsibility seen in people with OCD, as noted above. The above situation with the medication bottle, though I didn't quite have the same experience, I very well could have. There is a bottle we have to keep in the fridge for our dog with eye drop meds. I fear food touching it all the time. I fear touching it and touching anything else all the time. Will it really hurt anyone? Most likely not. But, to us folks with OCD, any kind of possibility, no matter how minute, is still a possibility.

Another type of hyper-responsibility I suffer madly from is checking water faucets. Upon washing my hands, I will stand staring at the water faucet fearful to leave, because what if the water isn't completely turned off. What if I walk away and...what? The water mysteriously will start flowing from the faucet again. Sounds nuts, huh? Kind of is...That's what sucks about this disorder. The logic really isn't there.

Another issue with hyper-responsibility that I have is not telling the complete, full truth. If someone asks me a question, I feel the need to tell them the whole truth. And for a long time, I felt if I missed any part of this "full" truth, I needed to track them down to fill them in on the detail that was forgotten. As well, if asked a question I would often answer with the absolute truth. "What time is it, Tara?"... "It is 3:12pm...not 3:10 or 3:15...3:12pm...Oops, nope, it is 3:13pm now." I don't suffer from this as much anymore. Can't tell you how I fixed that issue, just kind of fixed itself I suppose.

A big one for me, is worrying incessantly about someone being inadvertently hurt when I could have done something to keep them from getting hurt. For instance, if I walk into a store and see a puddle from the snow melting off of someone's boot, I feel compelled to track someone down to tell them about the puddle so it can be cleaned. Or I might slide the rug at the front of the store over the puddle to cover it. Or, heck, I might just clean the puddle up myself. Do I always do these things? Nope. But, when I don't take care of the puddle problem (or something similar), I leave worrying about it. And I will worry for days about whether someone might have fallen in that puddle that day. I will even keep my ears perked to listen to the news in case they talk about a person who fell and hurt themselves in that store.

All this hyper-responsibility is exhausting work. None of us should feel responsible for the whole world. But, unfortunately, some of us do. And for those of us who do, it is a battle to get through the day sometimes.

Okay, going to shut down the blog-factory for the day. I think next post we'll talk a little about numbers...I stinking love numbers!!!