You know you’ve said it. Maybe your shoes have to be organized a certain way, or you scrub your cutting board a dozen times after preparing raw meat. And when a friend notices your cuckoo behavior, you casually remark that you’re, like, so OCD. It’s a common phrase we throw around to poke fun at ourselves and showcase our adorably dorky side. But research suggests that these quirks are actually so common that it would almost be weird if you didn’t have them.In a study led by Adam Radomsky, Ph.D., a psychology professor at Concordia University, researchers in 13 countries across six continents asked hundreds of people to recall whether, in the last three months, they had experienced any of the kinds of unwanted “intrusive thoughts” that are a hallmark of obsessive compulsive disorder. A whopping 94 percent of people had.Intrusive thoughts, images or impulses can range from worrying about whether or not you locked the front door (even though you’ve never left it open) or getting a song stuck in your head to having the urge to curse at church or push a stranger into the street. However unusual they may seem, it’s normal for these thoughts to arise. The difference between OCD-the-adjective and a clinical diagnosis is what happens to intrusive thoughts after they reach the surface.“It’s not the unwanted, intrusive thoughts that are the problem—it’s what you make of those thoughts,” says Radomsky. “Most of us interpret these thoughts as relatively meaningless, so they fade out fairly quickly. Individuals with OCD are more likely to interpret them as signifying something important, and in turn try to control or neutralize them.”So if you make sure every food label in your kitchen is facing forward, but don’t have anxiety over a jar of tomato sauce that’s rotated 45 degrees, you probably don’t really have OCD. Still, it’s nice to know we’re not alone when an intrusive thought sneaks up on us out of the blue.In fact, while discussing the issue at the YouBeauty office, many of the editors revealed their own secret compulsions—such as unlocking and relocking the door every night before bed, refusing to exit a taxi without rolling up the window, and being unable to concentrate on the television when the cords aren’t neat. Care to share your most OCD-like habits? Leave them in the comments. We are the 94 percent.
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