I mean like people like parents/siblings/spouses/significant others/kids/roomates/housemates…
I mean, I have paranoia about other things too (such as germaphobia/mysophobia), but specifically on this issue of people snooping, is amongst one of my top fears, and I’m just curious if other have this similar fear/paranoia.
Like every time I wake up, I wonder if my parents or brother put some malware/spyware on my phone because they think its a funny prank or whatever.
Every time I enter my PIN for my phone, I always cover the screen before entering it in case my parents have cameras in the house. And even more so in public, I’d fear CCTV getting my PIN.
[No, I have not been diagnosed with schizophrenia, I don’t hallucinate or anything like that. (But I do have a diagnosis of depression.)]
[This is distinct from the common fears of government surveillance or whatever. That, strangely enough, I fear much less, since I’m just one in hundreds of millions of people that they would care about, so I’m not so worried about that.]
No.
This isn’t OCD at all.
They’re not describing a need to perform specific tasks in a specific way or number of times which they feel anxiety if they do not do.
They do not describe any rituals that they feel they need to do to alleviate anxiety.
They don’t describe anything like needing to check if a door is locked 10 times or checking if an oven is off 10 times, you’re just making that up from nowhere.
…
They’re describing a generalized, heightened sense of anxiety about the security of their digital devices from people they are in close proximity to, as well as just a general fear of being spies on by cameras.
As well as germophobia and mysophobia.
None of these fears are entirely factually unfounded or without merit, germs can harm you, digital devices can be covertly spied on.
They then go on to detail how their family is emotionally manipulative and abusive.
…
… IM(unprofessional)O, this is CPTSD.
That will manifest as heightened general paranoia as well as any number of specific paranoias… because it makes sense to be extra worried about trusting things when you are constantly surrounded by duplicitous assholes who lie about things constantly, and cause you to fear things like footsteps and knocks on doors.
If your baseline is: I am normally lied to, spied on, have my words twisted against me by people I am forced to be around constantly, you’d likely become generally untrusting and paranoid too.
Germo/Mysophobia could come from being stuck in an unclean environment where people rarely or never excersize sufficient hygeine and cleaning, don’t throw out moldy food, etc, which has gotten this person sick multiple times, so the compensation is to have a heightened awareness and aversion to potential sources of sickness.
I am not saying it is OCD, I am saying it could be OCD. Especially if they left details out of their post, which they may well have. The things I made up are examples of real symptoms someone might have. I am not saying they have any of the symptoms. The only reason I made this post with a detailed explanation of how OCD works, is because the majority of people think OCD is about washing your hands and being clean, because the contamination obsession is one of the most common obsessions. Therefore, if this person did have OCD, my post is a good introduction to realize it. If they do not, they will not relate to anything I wrote, and in that case they can ignore my post.
You may well be right about the CPTSD as well. They should look into it too.
I don’t feel comfortable diagnosing them based on one post they made lol. That’s not what I was attempting to do. I am also uncomfortable with you definitely saying “this isn’t OCD at all”… we cannot tell what this person is truly experiencing from one post alone. So giving potentially useful knowledge to them, such as a more accurate rundown of how OCD works, is only logical imo. It’s better to have information than to not have it.
My sibling was initially walking around with undiagnosed OCD for years because of the hand washing stereotype. And the neat freak stereotype. “I can’t have OCD! My room is a mess!” type of deal. I don’t want this to happen to anyone else. That’s all.