I want ten chocolate chip cookies. Medium chips. None too close to the outside.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is an anxiety disorder, first and foremost. It is not a thought disorder. Although the thoughts associated with OCD are bizarre, they are not at all the focal point of the therapeutic objective. The essential features of OCD are recurrent obsessions (thoughts) that create an awareness of alarm or threat.

Persons typically engage in some avoidance or escape response in reaction to the obsessive threat. Obsessions take the form of either a perceived threat of physical harm to oneself or others or, in some cases, more of a metaphysical or spiritual threat to oneself, others, or perhaps a deity. The overall syndrome of OCD consists of three primary branches. Within all three branches, in approximately 80% of all cases, persons performing these rituals are painfully aware that their behaviour is unreasonable and irrational. However this insight provides no relief...

...Ordering is a subcategory where persons feel compelled to place items in a designated spot or order. This person fears a sense of being overwhelmed and impending anarchy if items are not placed exactly as they are arbitrarily determined. Persons with this condition typically line up items in parallel locations, but the focus is on the concept that each item belongs in a particular place. Another form of OCD is perfectionism, in which persons feel compelled to habitually check for potential mistakes or errors that might reveal their own faults or might jeopardize the person's stature at work.

It's not until you pause and reflect upon yourself, that you realise everyone else is in the same race. We're just all running a little differently.

This has all emerged recently. I've always been aware of odd little things I do in day to day life. Sure, everyone has a routine, but there's routines and then there's obsessions that you realise are just outside of the boundaries of everyday.

I recently saw The Aviator at the pictures. An excellent film which brings forward the life of a man many have heard of, but whom, I for one, was not fully aware of. The character Howard Hughes is played by Leonardo DiCaprio. Hughes apparently suffered from OCD during his life. And since completion of the motion picture DiCaprio has stated he experienced a reoccurrence of his own childhood OCD.

An example I hear you ask?

One of my (now apparent) symptoms is ordering. When in a Q to purchase something in an emporium of some-kind, I will usually dig out my varied coinage from my trouser pocket. Time allowing, I then methodically order the coins in size order. The largest (£2) at the base of my palm and smallest (5p) by my fingers.

Every time I do this I pause, even though I know, and check that the 2p definitely isn't bigger than the 50p. (One day, my precious, one day). I don't know why, but this feels right. It might be a comfort thing, it might not, I'm not certain. I will then usually attempt to then place the ordered stack back in my pocket with their new hierarchy imposed.

In years gone by, another favourite was even spinning. Life as a kid for some still wholly unexplained reason, I would spin around. However, (you've guessed it) I would then usually have the torturous task of spinning back the other way an equal number of times to make sure I was still facing the "same way."

I had no security blanket. Maybe I should have...