How are you with last minute things? I’m pretty terrible. I need time to think and brood. Maybe it’s that my OCD likes to have time to worry about all the worst possible scenarios or ways a situation could go. Maybe I’m just too much of an introvert. I don’t know exactly.
Usually I stress out about upcoming events so much that I make myself feel sick, and even then I can’t be sure if I’m actually sick or if I am just psyching myself out.
I used to think I had the flu almost all the time. I would try to get my husband to go grocery shopping for me “just in case” I was sick. Or I would use hand sanitizer before going shopping and hope I wasn’t spreading any germs. It turned out that I had endometriosis, which is a whole other story, but the OCD thrived as a result, even though I didn’t really associate my symptoms and actions to OCD at the time.
That’s the thing I’ve learned about obsessive compulsive disorder, at least in my life: it is a shape shifter. It can start out as scrupulosity and then switch to hit and run and then to contamination or checking. And then it can go back to scrupulosity when you least expect it. And sure, I know that isn’t exactly fantastic news, but therapy and exposures can help cut it off or, at least, cut it back.
And about last minute things? Maybe that’s just me and not a universal OCD trait.
((But please don’t spring things on me. I’m a planner, okay? ;))