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The Hair Dryer Incident (2014)

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Re: The Hair Dryer Incident (2014)

#71

Post by lstamour »

stordoff wrote: post #66
MarkusWandel wrote: post #16

Seriously, I wasn't even through the second paragraph before I thought the same thing - just take the thing with you. It doesn't try to solve the OCD, but it solves the problem. Nobody in my household has OCD, but we had a garage door that sometimes, unpredictably, would decide that there was an obstruction at the very bottom, and go back up. Did you really, really watch it go all the way down before driving off? Did…

> Engineer's solution rather than psychiatrist's - simply rig something that lets you check over the internet and close the door (but not open it!) if necessary. Wouldn't necessarily work for OCD, as the obsession can easily morph into "Did the sensor fail?" I can see it being helpful though.

Live feed camera with a timestamp turned on then? :) Could double as a security cam for the car when it's in the garage...

The real fun one is if you need to stare at the latch as well, just in case it looked closed, but wasn't...

That said, this particular story has been repeated a bunch, or at least I've heard it before but I can't quite remember where. I'd be interested if anyone's found a proper source for it, but not quite interested enough to go hunting myself. :)

Re: The Hair Dryer Incident (2014)

#72

Post by [deleted] »

hallway_monitor wrote: post #19
kayodelycaon wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve had the same problems with regular doctors and medical issues. A lot of my problems turned out to be a milk allergy.

In my experience most doctors are pretty useless trying to solve a difficult problem. I had my daughter's colon biopsied before someone suggested using a hypoallergenic formula.

[deleted]

Re: The Hair Dryer Incident (2014)

#73

Post by Fleetfantasy »

As an OCD haver of over 20 years, I find these suggestions to be pretty wonderful. In some of cases, these conditions can't be fixed by therapy, and/or the drugs don't work. Therapy is fantastic, but sometimes these things can be the difference between getting out of bed in the morning & not.

Finding these solutions can be absolute bliss - technology for 'hands-off' switching off things is one for me. As with everything it's a balance, but if something small helps in a big way, that's a win for me!

Re: The Hair Dryer Incident (2014)

#74

Post by dantheman »

gwbas1c wrote: post #60
Ensorceled wrote: post #36

I remember a panel on a news program years ago where the one guest was a psychologist who was treating "untreatable" drug addicts by getting them "hooked" on running or weightlifting or martial arts. They would stop drugs but would instead be doing martial arts for hours a day or running 20 miles every morning. Then he would start treating the addiction personality and causes, but in many cases the patients would jus…

> could only be diagnosed with ADHD if your life was worse than "the norm" Because ADHD is a real situation for some people, and for others it's a way to legally take class-B stimulants. Yes, people really do try their friends' ADHD medication, enjoy it, and then shop around doctors to find someone who will prescribe it. It's called "drug seeking," and doctors do flag patients who do it. This, BTW, is what happens wi…

Let people take whatever medicine they want.

Re: The Hair Dryer Incident (2014)

#75

Post by zentiggr »

willcipriano wrote: post #35

I had a weird tick as a kid where anytime someone said something to me I had to mentally adjust the length of the statement so the number of words was divisible by 5. So for example if you said "Are you going to school today?" I'd add "my good friend, Will" in my mind. It drove me nuts, but I was unable to stop. Then one day it just went away. Still have no idea what that was but it plagued most of my childhood. I re…

I've had a habit for my entire adult life, of sorting the letters of words alphabetically in my head. The longer the word the better.

It's even better when the sorted letters turn out to make any sort of repetitive pattern.

And I count stairs, unless I specifically override the internal voice and say "1", "1", "1", "1,".... to myself.

Re: The Hair Dryer Incident (2014)

#76

Post by rebuilder »

dr_orpheus wrote: post #25
hallway_monitor wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience most doctors are pretty useless trying to solve a difficult problem. I had my daughter's colon biopsied before someone suggested using a hypoallergenic formula.

Variation from doctor to doctor is also wild the reactions you get out of people. Our daughter had a dairy allergy and we had observed after cutting it out her getting better. Our original pediatrician basically had the attitude of "well since you self-diagnosed this and it wasn't officially by me I'm going to largely ignore it and proceed as normal." We switched pediatricians and the difference was amazing. The resp…

Doctor 1: "Kids have all kinds of stomach problems all the time. The parents always say it's dairy or gluten. The parents don't know anything, so I'm going to ignore them."

Doctor 2: "Kids have all kinds of stomach problems all the time. The parents always say it's dairy or gluten. This is probably going to go away on its own, but the parents will keep insisting I do some thing until it does. I will tell them they are on the right track and send them off. "

Doctors have to play a whole metagame beyond just trying to figure out what might be causing the symptoms their patients are presenting with.

Re: The Hair Dryer Incident (2014)

#77

Post by thaumasiotes »

mlyle wrote: post #54
Ensorceled wrote: post #36

I remember a panel on a news program years ago where the one guest was a psychologist who was treating "untreatable" drug addicts by getting them "hooked" on running or weightlifting or martial arts. They would stop drugs but would instead be doing martial arts for hours a day or running 20 miles every morning. Then he would start treating the addiction personality and causes, but in many cases the patients would jus…

> In this view, if you have symptoms of ADHD but can, for instance, hold down a good job then by definition you don't have ADHD. I deleted the book from my Audible account. This may overstate the point a little bit. But there's a kernel of truth here: if you don't require some degree of significant impairment of functioning, a whole lot of criteria for mental illness would apply to huge swaths of the population. E.g.…

> if you don't require some degree of significant impairment of functioning, a whole lot of criteria for mental illness would apply to huge swaths of the population. E.g. this is why the diagnostic criteria for ADHD include: "There is clear evidence that the symptoms interfere with or reduce the quality of social, academic, or occupational functioning."

Wouldn't this just tell us that these categories are completely meaningless?

Re: The Hair Dryer Incident (2014)

#78

Post by pmichaud »

Ensorceled wrote: post #36

I remember a panel on a news program years ago where the one guest was a psychologist who was treating "untreatable" drug addicts by getting them "hooked" on running or weightlifting or martial arts. They would stop drugs but would instead be doing martial arts for hours a day or running 20 miles every morning. Then he would start treating the addiction personality and causes, but in many cases the patients would jus…

Do you remember the name of the psychologist or any info I might use to look him up?

Re: The Hair Dryer Incident (2014)

#79

Post by stavros »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #77
mlyle wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In this view, if you have symptoms of ADHD but can, for instance, hold down a good job then by definition you don't have ADHD. I deleted the book from my Audible account. This may overstate the point a little bit. But there's a kernel of truth here: if you don't require some degree of significant impairment of functioning, a whole lot of criteria for mental illness would apply to huge swaths of the population. E.g.…

> if you don't require some degree of significant impairment of functioning, a whole lot of criteria for mental illness would apply to huge swaths of the population. E.g. this is why the diagnostic criteria for ADHD include: "There is clear evidence that the symptoms interfere with or reduce the quality of social, academic, or occupational functioning." Wouldn't this just tell us that these categories are completely…

No, why? "Illness" sometimes is about the quantity, not the quality. If you enjoy the odd glass of wine once a week, you're fine, if you drink every hour of the day, not so fine.

Re: The Hair Dryer Incident (2014)

#80

Post by choeger »

teucris wrote: post #44

Having lived through OCD and come out the other side, I completely understand why the solution was considered bad. Sure, this solves the particular obsession. But the issue is that OCD is never satisfied. You develop rituals like this and they work for a while, giving your brain that little dopamine boost every time you look at the hairdryer in your car. But that dose diminishes over time, and soon taking the hairdry…

Did you consider that the OCD could get worse due to the negative effects of the OCD, e.g., bad performance in the job or problems with the patient's relationships to friends and family? If such a feedback loop exists, breaking it can be part of the cure, no?
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