Things have definitely got better. A few years ago it used to take me five minutes of checking the taps were off before I could go to bed. I'd tap out a little tune in my head and check in rhythm to it (I still do that for the cooker occasionally but it only takes 30 seconds).
A few years before that when I was 12 or so it could take me half an hour or more to pack my bag for school each night. I'd have to double and triple check that all my pens and pencils, protractors and compasses were there. It was crazy.
From what I've read, obsessions like this (known as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or OCD) develop as a coping strategy. I can certainly see that would make sense for me. When I was 12 my parents moved and I went to a new school. I effectively had no friends for a year and was very unhappy. I used to come home and cry. The OCD was my way of gaining control over a situation I didn't have control over.
I had a variety of other nervous tics growing up that I'd forgotten about until just now. I use to twitch my head, and I remember a thing I did with my eyelid too. It got quite embarrassing when kids noticed.
The OCD gradually got better but has never entirely gone away. It's certainly at a manageable level now. They say that Prozac can help and as I've been taking it for anxiety for over a decade that may have had an impact. The main thing I expect is that I'm much happier now and have control over my life.
Anyway, I just wanted to share another freaky aspect of my life in the hope it might help someone else feel less freaky! I'd be interested in hearing from anyone else who has or had obsessions like this.
I used to imagine I had a ball of string which was positioned somewhere I was and then, because the end was attached to me, would unwind as I went about my business. It meant, of course, that I could not ever complete a circle around anything (like a school desk or a counter in a shop or a lamp post in a street) for fear of tying my string in knots. And I would always have to return by the same route that I'd taken to get somewhere.
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