MJZ

Hi there, This kind of obsessive thinking is extremely annoying (and I know because I've had it too). About two years ago I met this girl which I really liked, and before I knew it I was in love. Not that I'm the type of guy that falls in love very quickly, but this was really an exceptional case, I've never been so much in love before in my life. I also thought she felt the same about me so we started going on dates and all but then she told me that she really really liked me but she missed the 'spark' that's needed, so she just wanted to stay friends. Needless to say, her not feeling the spark set my mind on fire into thousands of painful sparks and for about 6 months I had something familiar that you describe: the obsessive thinking about that one person, thinking what could I have done to make it go better, thinking it over and over and over again. Now I'm no expert on the matter but I don't think this is what you call OCD; OCD is when you obsessively make some sort of useless action (like switching on and off the lights 7 times, closing the door 7 times before you go out) and that sort of thing. I think the thing that you describe is simply called being lovesick, nothing more to it; it can become obsessive, thinking about the person all the time, and sometimes it can drive you crazy, but not some sort of OCD. Anyway, hope I helped.

Hi there... It almost feels boring to say it but I also count letters in words and small parts of sentences. A friend of mine told me that she found an article on the internet concerning this topic but she couldn't remember where, so I started searching, and it's not that I find myself particularly weird and peculiar about this, but it's nice that at least I have found my soulmates I count letters all the time, mostly subconsciously (but reading all of this naturally very consciously). I take a relatively long word or phrase and then I chop the words into little bits which I add up. For example I take the phrase 'told me that she' and then I play around with it a bit, making different combinations: 'toldm eth atshe', 'told metha tshe', 'tol dmethat she' etc etc. I always make combinations that seem aesthetically appealing to me. Symmetry always seems particularly appealing, and a lot of the times I add/remove spaces/punctuations and that sort of things to make things more symmetrical. Also, i'm not sure if this is the same thing, but being a musician, I have a big fascination for odd time signatures (being not just the 'standard' 4/4 or 3/4 measures but finding a particular interest in 'weird' rhythms like 5/4, 7/8, 9/8, 13/8 etc etc, in case this means anything to you). I count letters all the time, I simply can not stop doing it. Luckily this doesn't really bother me in a way that I can't do other things simply because I'm always counting letters. It's some sort of a background noise in my mind that's always there, and a lot of the times I completely forget about this peculiarity. I have read here that people who do this often have a lot of thoughts raging on in their heads, which is definately the case with me, I simply can't stop thinking about things that bother me. I am also extremely chaotic and messy in nature: planning and organization are not to be found in my dictionary (although I'm trying very hard to improve this) and my house is always an inexcusable mess. What I've also read is that it's mostly quite intelligent people that have this thing, which I guess is also the case with me (without wanting to brag about it, I sometimes wish I was a little bit dumber so that I could stop thinking once in a while). Also I have several nerve tics. For example, I simply can't stop snapping my fingers all the time, and I constantly twitch my eyeballs and my nose, and as a kid I constantly made weird noises, which quite annoyed my mom and my sister Again, all of this does not really bother me, I just find it very nice that there seems to be quite some people with the same lettercounting thingy, I find it very interesting that I regocnize a lot of you people's characters in mine. grtz martin