@ocdbrian: Yes, some people with OCD do clean. That part is real, and I'm not here to tell anyone their contamination OCD doesn't count. But the cleaning isn't the disorder. The reason behind it is. Nobody scrubs a doorknob for twenty minutes because they enjoy doorknobs. They do it because of what they think happens if they stop, and because stopping while it still feels wrong is close to physically impossible. Which means the stereotype gets it backwards in a way that actually matters. It looks at the visible half and skips the engine. And once you've defined OCD by what it looks like from outside, you've made every other form of it invisible. The people whose compulsions are mental. The people who ask the same question in different words for years. The people whose entire disorder happens where nobody can see it. The stereotype is why I waited so long to ask anyone for help. I kept comparing myself to a cartoon and concluding I didn't have it bad enough to bother a professional. Choiceful is the app I built for people like you and me. 24/7 therapy chat, in my bio.
