Obsession

[Nocapszy]

I'm not certain this is where this thread belongs, but at the moment it seems best.

I'm curious to know what anyone thinks on obsession.
Perhaps if anyone is obsessed, maybe they'd elaborate, but not about your obsession -- I don't care about whatever you're obsessed with. I'm curious now about obsession itself.

I'm not talking about how girls obsess on their hair or someone might say "I'm obsessed with a fruit smoothie".
I'm talking about the kind of obsession where normal life is impeded by insistent/recurring thoughts on a topic.
The kind of obsessiveness that might be called a disorder by anyone with a psychology degree and a notable social life.

I want to leave the parameters pretty vague at the moment, but I'm not referring to the way most people apply the term colloquially.
Partially I want it undecided so the participants will feel comfortable posting their own ideas as they are instead of alterred by whatever arbitrary filter I have.

 

[SillySapienne]

I am obsessed with human beings, and human nature, much to my detriment, unfortunately. :/

Oh, lol, that didn't answer your question at all.

Obsession, it is an interesting thing, it can be positive as it can be a strong source of motivation, but it can also be detrimental as it can hamper one's ability to see clearly and function normally.

A women who is obsessed with her weight will not be able to focus on anything but her body image and food, oh man, that would suck. :sad:

 

[Jack Flak]

I've always been obsessive. I obsess about something until something else comes up, then obsess about that. It's a strength and a weakness, and part of my personality. If you have a problem with it, then "too bad."

You know, I've read that 70% of all people are considered mentally ill if you go by book standards. Which is completely ridiculous. "Oh, please, save your life...'Cause you've only got one." --Smiths

Add: I actually had OCD for a year or two as a kid, but somehow grew out of it. Now that was a real problem.

 

[LostInNerSpace]

I tend to get obsessed. I can become obsessed when I take on a project. I think about thinking about thinking about it, and even dream about it. I can see INTPs generally being obsessive types. I think so much that after a while I get burned out and move onto something else. If I know I don't want to lose interest I will try to pace myself by taking up other activities. My obsession with exercise has kind of alternated. The problem now is that I am becoming obsessed with saving time. I can't go to the gym because parking, getting up to the gym, changing, then changing again, showering, getting my car will take too much time. So I run around the block instead, but I can't stand the polution. The obsession with time does not actually make me more productive.

I also have a germ phobia. I carry around Isopropyl wipes. I sometimes pour Isopropyl solution over the Urinals and on the floor around the Urinals, and on toilet seats even though I don't sit on toilet seats. But I just realized that Isopropyl solution is not all that effective at killing viruses. So now I need another solution but I don't trust the chemicals in other solutions.

Is that obsessive enough? I could go on.

 

[colmena]

Idealist.

Knowing I wont meet my own standards stops me from doing anything.

 

[substitute]

I have a close friend who suffers with pretty severe OCD which impinges on just about every aspect of his life and centres around an obsessive fear for a) his personal safety b) cleanliness (his own very unique definition of it) and c) his lack of confidence in his own ability to handle 'things'. Things like putting the trash out, having the landlord inspect the appartment once a year, a plumber coming to fix the heating, etc, these things cause him extreme anxiety so that he obsesses over them completely and utterly from the moment he's aware it's coming to often days after they've happened.

From what I can gather from his opening up to me and what he's told me about his sessions with psychiatrists, it seems this stems largely from an incredibly overbearing and critical father who seems to have instilled in him an impression that it's actually MORALLY wrong to be incorrect, to make a mistake. So he lives in total fear of making mistakes and becomes inert, and transfers all of the stress and guilt this causes him to 'trivial' worries and magnifies them out of all proportion. Little things that he can 'control', like if turning around three times in the doorway before he leaves makes him feel he's 'safe' against the possibility of there being dog turd on his doorstep that he doesn't notice, that's a lot easier than facing his fear of DOING something - anything at all, literally, even getting out of bed some days.

I can't think of any instance of myself ever being obsessed with anything, only in the colloquial sense of short-lived enthusiasms for a certain TV series, musician, author, whatever. I've never experienced this feeling of something taking over my life the way my friend does with his obsessive anxieties.

 

[ceecee]

I don't think I have a actual obsession with anything. Oh from time to time I think slightly and my husband like to say things like...<gratuitous Blades of Glory quote> Y-y-y-you sex demon! You sex fiend! Impure! Impure!



But that's not what we're talking about here.

I have gotten very immersed in some things such as school and work and sometimes cooking and gardening but not to the point of obsession. I have some weird quirks but they aren't OCD either.

 

[lowtech redneck]

I'm not talking about how girls obsess on their hair or someone might say "I'm obsessed with a fruit smoothie".
I'm talking about the kind of obsession where normal life is impeded by insistent/recurring thoughts on a topic.
The kind of obsessiveness that might be called a disorder by anyone with a psychology degree and a notable social life.

I want to leave the parameters pretty vague at the moment, but I'm not referring to the way most people apply the term colloquially.
Partially I want it undecided so the participants will feel comfortable posting their own ideas as they are instead of alterred by whatever arbitrary filter I have.

You have to distinguish between obsessive thoughts that cause pain to their recipients (such as in obsessive-compulsive disorder) and obsessive thoughts that provide pleasure (at the cost of impeding other functions) such as certain types of autism or addiction, or for that matter obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.

In terms of the former, obsessive thoughts are caused by the inability of the mind to shut off anxiety-producing thoughts after the basis of such thoughts have been dismissed on rational grounds. The rational mind is well aware that such anxiety is either groundless or excessive, but that knowledge is prevented from affecting the emotional response to such thoughts due to fucked-up brain chemistry. Meanwhile, the brain refuses to let go of an obsession because it is designed to facilitate survival, which means not allowing oneself to be distracted from potential dangers that are serious enough to cause anxiety after rational consideration. Its utter fucking hell.

 

[lowtech redneck]

From what I can gather from his opening up to me and what he's told me about his sessions with psychiatrists, it seems this stems largely from an incredibly overbearing and critical father who seems to have instilled in him an impression that it's actually MORALLY wrong to be incorrect, to make a mistake. So he lives in total fear of making mistakes and becomes inert, and transfers all of the stress and guilt this causes him to 'trivial' worries and magnifies them out of all proportion. Little things that he can 'control', like if turning around three times in the doorway before he leaves makes him feel he's 'safe' against the possibility of there being dog turd on his doorstep that he doesn't notice, that's a lot easier than facing his fear of DOING something - anything at all, literally, even getting out of bed some days.

If he has obsessive-compulsive disorder, then his childhood issues would only affect the forms in which his obsessions/compulsions manifests-they would not be responsible for the disease itself. To combat the disorder he needs to learn how to treat obsessions in the generic sense rather than arrive at some Freudian breakthrough over a specific manifestation-or else a new set of crippling obsessions will emerge, and he is back where he started. If his psychiatrists tells him differently, then he needs to get a new one.

 

[Haight]

I have OCD.

Do you have any other questions?

 

[heart]

I have germ phobias that I try to cope with by educating myself on being food safe and such and then tell myself I've done the best I can and to quit worrying. For some reason that helps, like somehow it would be worse if I (or anyone who eats at my house) got sick from germs if it were a lack of my being careful.

It's worse when I am sleep deprived and it gets better when I take my vestibular suppressants.

And it's also hillarious because I really am a slob, just a slob with clean hot spots and no cross contamination in the kitchen.

 

[Domino]

My form of "obsession" has to do with wanting to immerse myself in a person or thing and become so inundated that I'm feeling it/them all through me, to better understand, to better connect it to my Ni. The fever winds down, then flares back up, esp over something that truly has taken hold of me and won't be departing. As a little girl, I was obsessed with horses, like most little girls are, but it stuck forever. I see horses as greater than the sum of their parts, spiritual, psychic creatures. Horses delivered me from darkness. Any thing that flashes light, I cleave to, follow after, stare at and try to conjure.

Most obsessions are minor and harmless.

Someone with OCD is experiencing a terrible thing that controls their will. I watched people close to me struggle with it, to the point of tears and being unable to move. That's not obsession, that's illness.

 

[norepinephrine]

Knowing I wont meet my own standards stops me from doing anything.

Perfectly phrased. When a subject is play, I have no problems. Once I have expectations of myself, I freeze and fail to perform.

 

[norepinephrine]

And it's also hillarious because I really am a slob, just a slob with clean hot spots and no cross contamination in the kitchen.

I don't have any particular phobia in the area of germs - in fact I might generally lean in the opposite direction. But after working twenty years for Coop Extension and digesting endless articles on food safety I am rather obsessive about cross-contamination and anything that comes out of my kitchen that will be consumed by others.

What is amusing is that the only times I became violently ill after potlucks was when I was taking a food education class. I doubt contamination was to blame (no one else got sick) but several of the participants were herbalists and the only thing I could narrow it down to was possibly lovage, the emetic potential of which (for some people) is well documented.

 

[Lalaru]

Idealist.

Knowing I wont meet my own standards stops me from doing anything.

I have this same problem. I only do things when I have to, and even then I never put my heart into them. But I fail to see what this has to do with obsession. You are obsessed with perfection...?

My obsession is with computers, my life has essentially molded itself around them. At first it hindered me, I would be glued to my monitor or thinking about a game or a website all day long instead of focusing on school, but now I just have a healthy obsession and can live without them but prefer not to. I had OCD when I was little and have mild relapses, but I never really thought of it as an obsession...

 

[Nocapszy]

Not talking about OCD.
Good so far otherwise thanks.

 

[Domino]

Not talking about OCD.
Good so far otherwise thanks.

*washes and rewashes Nocaps*

 

[heart]

I don't have any particular phobia in the area of germs - in fact I might generally lean in the opposite direction. But after working twenty years for Coop Extension and digesting endless articles on food safety I am rather obsessive about cross-contamination and anything that comes out of my kitchen that will be consumed by others...

In my case the phobia is based on real things, growing up there was almost no attempt made in our kitchen as far as basic food safety and "stomach flu" was always passing through the house. As soon as I grew cognizant enough to realize what germs were and that there were ways to try and prevent food borne illness I became very interested in it.

 

[lowtech redneck]

Not talking about OCD.
Good so far otherwise thanks.

If you want us to discuss whatever it is you're talking about, then you're going to have to provide some "arbitrary filters."

 

[Nocapszy]

Wanna bet?