How do you, personally, decide where the boundary between healthy and obsessive is?

For there to be a diagnosis of OCD, the individual has to be obsessing in order to prevent or mitigate anxiety about unrealistic fears, and the individual must know that the fears are unrealistic, and that the obsessions/activities/behavior do not really prevent the feared events from occurring. Everything else is normative, like superstitions, or getting songs stuck in your head, or being worried about the future.

The word obsessive is overused. People call themselves or others OCD without understanding what that diagnosis really entails.

Anyone that has 20k of luvre or more.. Obsessive.

Anybody who asks more than 3 questions a day here is obsessive.

Obsession is when it starts to intrude on your basic functions of life such as work, relationships, and responsibilities.

If an interest of habit hurts my relationships with my family, friends, or business colleagues then I consider it obsessive.

For me a behavior of thought is obsessive if it interferes with my regular life.

Coin toss ;)

@lucillelucillelucille How many times?

I think that if you (the generic “you”) cannot stop or it interferes in your daily life, that is when it becomes a problem.

I collect antique pharmacopia, amongst other things. I will spend money to buy things to add to my collection if I have all of my bills paid, I have enough of a financial safety blanket to be able to purchase pure luxuries, and it is a good deal on the bottle/ device I am looking at.

If I saw a bottle or device that I wanted and spent money that I needed for more important things, I would have a problem.

As far as masturbating 3–5 times a day and it does not interfere with your life and is not an actual addiction (you “have” to do it… feel a compulsion) I say “go for it.”

Edit: behavior or thought (not of).

@dpworkin -As many as it takes to get the result I want!lol :)

@dpworkin you have a more extensive background in psychology than I do, and I’m familiar with your description of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and agree that it’s doesn’t usually fit the picture. But what about Obsessive-compulsive Personality Disorder? It seems to be a more functional version of OCD. I have some of the characteristics of OCPD, as I suspect many health care providers do. Attention to detail and a certain degree of perfectionism are part of what makes me a good practitioner. My tendency toward hoarding and toward pushy parenting are less positive manifestations in my personal life.

If you don’t perform your compulsions to ward off disaster, and if you don’t recognize that they are unnecessary and wish you could stop but cannot, you don’t have a disorder. You may have some features of a certain disorder, but every human being in the world has some features of some disorder or other. The key thing is that it must cause distress and interfere with your happy pursuit of daily life. What you are describing sounds more like a talent and a skill, with some features that are also not quite so adaptive.

Are we distinguishing here between just obsession as in being overly consumed with an idea or a person so that it interferes with the normal activities of life and OCD, which I interpret as ritualistic performance of behaviors that are meant to ward off certain consequences? It seems to me that each can be destructive to happiness but that they do not necessarily have the same causation or perhaps, mode of treatment? I’m wondering which the OP meant.

I’m getting at one of my favorite issues. I’m trying to understand what may be impossible to understand or get people to say anything useful about. I want to know approximately where people draw that quantum line between healthy behavior and unhealthy. So, if we take OCD as the example—how much of that kind of behavior can you do before you are considered not just weird, but in need of treatment.

As in the example in my question why is 1–2 times a day of masturbation healthy, but 3–5 is not? What is the thinking that goes into this judgment or categorization? Why is 3–5 times a day harmful, or even obsessive, and 1–2 times a day is not? That’s just an example, and one I’d be interested in hearing people’s thinking about, but this is really about the larger idea of how we decide when the healthy turns to unhealthy. As always, this is better done with examples than hypotheticals or theory.

The OP has been deemed unhealthy because of mood swings, deep depressions, a racing mind, and sexual acting out. When does a person stop being moody and turn into a person with bipolar disorder?

I think obsessive is like taking something to EXTREMES. And healthy, is moderation.

I’m told I can be obsessive, but I never notice until much later. They used to call it mission oriented and that was a good thing.

@MagsRags But attention to detail and some perfectionism as far as doing a job well is just the way people should be! I’m talking of how I want me and mine to be.

I think there is a lot of overdiagnosis on Fluther.

The clinical designation is whether it interferes with your functioning in life – does whatever behavior or thinking interfere with your ability to do your job, go to school, take care of yourself appropriately, have relationships with other people – that sort of thing. If your SO says that they don’t feel they have a relationship with you because you are on fluther 19 hours a day, you might be obsessed. Another good question to ask is: if you don’t do it, do you get anxious? That is another way to check yourself.

Interfering with function is not a criteria, it is a sine qua non.

Personally, obsessive for me is when I check my email before I run out of the house to get the newspaper, check it when I get back inside, check it before taking a shower and checking it at regular intervals in between drying my hair, just in case my friend finally replied back to me.

Healthy is checking about twenty times a day, but not because of an obsessive anxiety that if I leave the computer for just one second I am going to get a superimportant email about winning the lottery. Essentially it is normal and healthy if my behavior can be controlled and happen at rational times for rational reasons.

ever since i’ve been separated from my husband I have lost the ability to prioritize my time and leave when I need to be so that I can be on time. I will get up early only to find that no matter what I find something to clean or organize to procrastinate getting ready. it’s been 10 months.
it’s so bad now that it took me almost 3 hours to leave my place for the gym…I literally started crying because I realized I couldn’t leave.
I’ve always been very neat but can be messy as much as anyone else. now I am almost finicky and feel like the balance of my world has been upset when things are not in their place.
i think a simple answer to this question is when an impulse or need to do or achieve something begins to rule u to the point of making u miserable verses enabling some type of satisfaction and happiness.

Will I not leave the house because I want to take care of whatever it is, or be around whatever it is? Do I think about it all day? Obsessive, IMO.

Me personally? I can’t tell if my compulsions are obsessive or not. It ‘feels’ wrong to see towels hung crooked in the bathroom, I always have to even up the corners. I must make sure all the vegetables come out of the cans – I can’t throw away a can with a few kernels of corn left inside, and I rinse the soup cans out with a couple of tablespoons of water to make sure I get all the soup. When I have an order of french fries, I line them up on my plate according to size.

If it has a negative impact on other areas of your life (eg socialising, relationships, hygeine) then it’s too much, in my opinion.

@YARNLADY When I have an order of french fries, I line them up on my plate according to size.

What kind of reactions have you gotten from other people when they see you do that?

@wundayatta My family is usually so busy talking, nobody notices. Once a niece asked me about it and I told her I want to eat the smaller crispy ones first before they get soggy, and before I get full. I gave her all the big, long, soggy ones.

@YARNLADY LOL!