People with OCD can be drama queens . . . but so can the rest of us.
People with OCD can have trouble letting grudges go . . . but so can the rest of us.
This is where OCD starts to cross into “normal” behavior and make us a smidge uncomfortable.
Do lots of us have a smattering of OCD? I think so.
From watching my son with new eyes this Christmas vacation as he is home after four and a half months at college, I am pretty sure that he finds it difficult to exist with a low adrenaline level. So he “thrill seeks” as they say.
This would make him a “drama queen” in the parlance.
I am actually pretty fortunate that he does that, not by way of alcohol, drugs, or sex addiction, but by way of living in his own head. Only that is painful in another way . . .
Far as I can tell, he comes up with his grudges against people out of thin air. He will describe something that someone at the college or associated with the college has done that he feels is an affront to his dignity and . . . I just won’t see it.
Or it will seem as though it comes from a parallel universe he has set up, with different rules for behavior. People will have no idea that they have offended him because they won’t know the rules in his parallel universe. It is as though he wrote a script for a play and treats other people as actors in his play who got their lines wrong . . .
He has a thing for honorifics. Whom he should call “Mr.” “Ms.” or “Miss,” as opposed to those whom he addresses by first name. And this part of his parallel universe has driven several powerful grudges he has developed at the college.
If I thought that addressing the honorifics issue and defining it specifically for everyone in his world would actually help him cease being a drama queen, I would speak with his school’s administration about it. But I am fairly certain that, even if they got the honorifics sorted out with Joey, he would have a new “drama queen issue du jour” by tomorrow. It’s what he does.
I don’t know how to get him to stop holding on to an “issue du jour” any more than I know how to get him to “reconcile” with people against whom he holds a grudge for reasons totally invisible to them.
I pray that our brainstorming will help us with this part of OCD, too.
And . . . maybe in the process we will find some relief for supposedly normal Christians who develop grudges against others and say that they cannot find a way to let them go.
It’s worth a try. I have known many people stuck in hatred they said they didn’t even wish to carry. I know it is not pleasant to carry bitterness and vitriol, even for a little while.
Maybe we can find help for us all.
iconobaptist 