Fine Lines

Interesting article on the cause of OCD - expecting chaos and preparing for it:

..The more symptoms they expressed, the more likely they were to distrust their past. This caused them to believe that new environments are unpredictable, and therefore should be avoided or distrusted. They were actually more surprised by predictable outcomes than unpredictable ones.

I don't know of anyone with the truly bad OCD symptoms like the article describes but there are many around me (including myself) who have a specific pattern of behavior followed by a trigger that they can't seem to avoid repeating. Could be small things like being overzealous about cleaning and organizing -sometimes the effort to limited to some specific area even. Or it could be that they water indoor plants religiously first thing in the morning, cannot get the day started without two cups of coffee. 

There is a line between harmless ritualistic behavior patterns and OCD. But the root cause may not be that different. Maybe we expect the day to go awry if we don't make the bed perfectly, don't put the shoes away where they belong, don't get our mug of coffee for the road and so on. We are expecting chaos to strike and these ritual actions could be our insurance against the worst.