Hello, I've been having this same issue for about ten or eleven years but it's not quite the same as a lot of you. When I was 6 or 7 I started counting letters in words and I didn't even realise I was counting them, we were taught odd and even numbers in school so I subconsciously started to group those sentences together in letters of groups of 4, I picked 4 because it was an even number and things were a lot easier that way I think, anyway when I read things and they didn't have an even number of letters I always added on letters to them to make it even because it bugged me like crazy and it even came to the point where I may have invented my own alphabet by doing that, like I instinctively read a word and singled out the vowels and constants in it, I don't remember the number of letters, vowels or constants in it but I can instantly tell you if it's an even number of either one of these things, It's quite difficult for me to explain but I'm hoping someone here has this same kind of condition because I've never actually met anyone who does this but I always knew there had to be someone else.
I've tried explaining it to people and they either simply don't understand or don't believe me but it's great when they challenge me by giving me a long sentence, sometimes even with as much as 30 words and I tell them as soon as I hear it if it has an odd or even number of vowels, constants or letters and it's quite satisfactory but this can also drive me mad, like I could hear a song I like and start singing the lyrics and all of a sudden I'm counting the letters and adding more to the words and I feel like it's not a very nice song if the chorus doesn't have an even number of letters etc.
Even as I'm typing this I'm counting the letters like it's kind of fun to do and at the same time annoying and I've been told I'm not a normal 17 year old and that I should go get diagnosed for a mental illness but I don't think it's that bad.
If it's a case of OCD then it would explain a lot of things in my life, like how I can't stand when things are out of place and that things are never perfect like when I'm writing and I write a letter slightly wrong I start filling it and extending it to the lines on the page and just creating a mess without even knowing it but when I do get it I feel slightly satisfied or when shoes aren't perfectly alined beside each other and A LOT of other things
So basically things need to be perfect or else I get itches or it starts bugging me like crazy until I fix it.
