YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

I have a lot of I guess you'd call them symptoms that seem to be related to OCD:
Constant checking of locked doors.

Having certain verses of songs stuck in the front of my head. The only way I can make sure they are "right" and purged from me is to listen to the thing 6 times in a row. I think it's more along the line of "I have this verse wrong and I must make sure what I'm thinking in my head is correct" before I'm able to stop obsessing.

Picking at my skin and scratching even more so if I have a cut or a scab already there. I "think" the picking is a way of controlling my body when I feel I have no control. Probably not exactly what's going on but really I haven't told anyone I do this so I could be wrong. The scratching can get pretty bad since the sensations most of the time are not on the skin but inside the nerve so the scratching is a futile exercise because the itch is not really an itch more like a hold out from a spastic tick or twitch. Where the nerve has registered a sensation and misread it. It could also be I scratch until the spot is raw because it feels like one way and I don't want that sensation so I want pain because pain is the way the brain releases those fight or flight chemicals etc. Or at the very basic I just want the sensation to be "different" than it is in that moment. I'm really not sure what the dynamics are of picking. The urge to do this can sometimes be terrible and I'm not always in a location where it is "ok" to be scratching like I just bought 500 lotto tickets. I don't want people thinking I have lice or something because I don't. It's very frustrating.

I have scales on the scalp from psoriasis, and the picking/scratching tendancies you talk about. Super-shameful.

I've never been diagnosed as well. The behaviors I did at the height of my OCD were counting all my steps and always ending on evens. I deep down thought that someone in my family would be hurt even though intellectually I know that's ridiculous. I also would chew things on one side of my mouth and then the other ending on evens. I would type out everything I was saying with my toes. I would count every calorie of food I ate to reach approximately 1200 calories. I had a ritual before I went to bed each night. I would obsessively think about each member of my family dying in a horrible way. It was an awful way to live. I still have a few of those behaviors (I lock everything three times and worry a lot), but so far I've kicked a lot of those habits. I just realized that it would take over everything if I let it and the stress in my life diminished as well.

I can relate to the songs stuck in the head that you mentioned, but the 6 times is a different story. It can tiring though to have the songs replaying over and over.. that's for sure.