I personally have problems with doors, and stuff that should be locked. I can never be sure I locked properly.
Totally did backtrack unreasonable distances just to check if I had closed the door.
It's all fine when it's my door. Worst case scenario, I get robbed.
However it's more of a problem when it's someone else's door. Worst case scenario, they get robbed, and that's a different story. Or pets get out...
Obviously I can't take the door on my front seat... So my solution is to take a picture of me trying to open the door, a kind of proof that it's closed.
And, would you know it, it works! When I get anxious, I pull out my phone and look at the pictures.
It's getting better, actually. I believe I'm fixing it slowly. Good riddance!
There's a very helpful method for being confident that you did something right, and while it may not be enough for people with compulsive disorders, it's great for many situations:
I have experienced a (partial) failure of this. On the takeoff roll, there’s a call out for “airspeed alive”. One day after leaving the airplane parked outside for a long weekend, I dutifully looked at a dead airspeed indicator and called out “airspeed alive” followed shortly by realizing the mistake and aborting the takeoff, but there’s a danger of looking and “seeing” what’s expected but not actually there.
This reminds me of some of my… I guess I should call them “non-conscious automated vocalisations”.
For a while I used to greet people with the greeting they’ve just given me: they say “hello”, I also say “hello”, they say “good morning”, I say “good morning”. Fine until my sister greeted me with “happy birthday”, though I did at least notice and stop myself after one syllable.
More seriously was when I was following a different automated greeting. I was in hospital with testicular torsion and the doctor asked “how are you?” — my polite British “fine thanks how are you?” was entirely out of my lips before I realised that this answer was not there one I wished to give and I had to add “well expect for this…”
> Fine until my sister greeted me with “happy birthday”, though I did at least notice and stop myself after one syllable.
When I'm not able to stop myself I have been forced to say,
"happy birthday ... to me". Others must think this silly reply means it's more like too many birthdays.
Other comments contradict this. Also, it doesn't pass a common sense test. How can you validate the air speed meter with zero airspeed? The correct reading is the same as a common completely broken reading.
I've had a lot of success with this for things like closing doors and taking medication, as my memory gradually wanders off into the misty lagoon. Especially the “as needed but at most once every 24 hours” kinds of medication that can't be handled with a pill organizer—with the timing information included in the call. Point to the bottle (or if out of range, hold the pill up, or otherwise physically emphasize the object), say “Taking a symptomstoppidine on Thursday morning” or such.
I don't suffer with this too much, but while the "point and call" method works well for one-off activities it doesn't do much for regular ones. I end up asking myself "I remember pointing and calling... but was that today or yesterday?"
Is there a way of using point and call, or a similar method, for helping with that?
This is also a useful technique for keeping two people in sync about something situational and important. Whenever our pet bird flies down to the floor, which is often, it's vulnerable to being trodden on. So the wife and I call it out whenever we see it, and repeat until the other person also says it out loud.
Works with lots of other stuff, like hot stove tops. It can be a bit infantilizing to the other party unless they're also au fait and on-board with the technique.
I have a weirder version of this problem that's less debilitating but annoys people who live with me -- if I pass by a door I will automatically lock it with no memory of having done so, even seconds after. Like kleptomania but for locking doors. If I'm within five feet of a door it's as if a magic force emanates from my body to lock it as far as my own awareness is concerned.
One of my roommates in college was carrying in groceries, put his keys down on the counter, and went out to get a second load. I was reading a book, passed the door, locked it, and walked upstairs, completely oblivious, stranding my roommate outside.
They referred to this as "getting Lars'ed out" from then on.
I had a family member who had the same drive, and after one too many times of me getting locked out while I'm bringing in things from the car, the New Rule™ was that if I'm actively using the door, it is stopped fully open, and the Habitual Locker is not allowed to touch it without coming outside to help carry things in, no exceptions.
My version of this is turning lights on. I enter a room and immediately turn the lights on, but I'm neither aware of turning them on nor aware of them being on, so I don't turn them off when I leave.
I added motion sensors to most rooms in my house about a year ago and I’m surprised how much of a quality of life upgrade they have been, maybe give that a shot.
My wife used to turn off all the lights before we both ran to work, but she would usually start doing it when I was half naked and looking for my keys wallet and phone.
I replaced everything with LEDs and stressed that the price of leaving the lights on was less than being 2 minutes later to work and absolutely nothing compared to getting fired for being late.
Since moving into town and getting my ipod stolen from my (possibly unlocked?) car, I habitually lock my car doors every time I'm getting out. Which is fine, except when I'm just running up to someplace and not actually parking. I locked myself out a few times before I got into a routine of very deliberately putting the keys into the same pocket every time and telling myself I have them.
Which is great, except for the time I got a phone call as I was leaving the car and forgot the keys in the ignition. Gotta stick to the routine for it to work!
Similarly, I used to get anxious about if I'd turned off the lights, locked the door, made sure the oven was off, etc at night. So now I count one number for each "thing" I do, and I know that I need to count up to 5 to "prove" I did it. Then, later in bed, I know I checked the front door because I know I counted to 5.
You'd expect this would transfer to the "well, are you sure you counted", but I'm never actually anxious about that. I think it works similarly to mnemonics, where the simple act of making a mnemonic for something makes it memorable, and it doesn't matter if it's a good mnemonic or not. In this case, I have "proof" I have done the things that make me anxious, and it doesn't matter if it's "good" proof or not, I just don't feel the anxiety.
This is kinda funny, because I've had the opposite outcome. Well, "ish", because my situation isn't directly comparable.
When I'd leave the house in the morning, there were always five things I needed to have with me: Wallet, phone, badge, glasses, and smokes.
Once a month or so I'd get to work and realize I had left one of these at home. It was a tragedy to be caught an hour from home without my phone or glasses. It was annoying to be without my wallet, cigarettes, or badge.
So I decided to regiment this. Wallet always in the front right pocket, badge always clipped to belt, phone in left back pocket, cigs in front left pocket, and glasses in my backpack. I would pat each location and say out loud, "wallet, badge, phone, smokes, ... glasses".
It didn't work. I quickly just went through the motion of patting and saying without actually verifying the fucking things were there. The first time I forgot an item was a mini existential crisis. ("If I can't account for these simple EDC items when I'm trying to, what hope is there?")
WFH has solved the badge issue. ApplePay mitigates the wallet issue. Glasses are still forgotten sometimes, but my eyesight isn't that bad when I'm out and about (it was only terrible to be without glasses when I worked at a computer in an office). So I guess the situation just solved itself.
I only need to confirm my e-cig is with me. Everything else is either I remembered it or "oh well". And if I quit that, then I'm free :)
I do this counting thing subconsciously with the stuff I'm carrying from "scene" to "scene" of my life.
And it show.
If you suddenly throw me an extra thing to carry, I'll forget something I should've had with me. It's hilarious really for everyone else.
I used to work with someone who had that same problem with door locks, he'd sometimes leave work to make sure he locked his door. This was well before the days of ubiquitous web based home security cameras, but he rigged up a video camera and a video capture card on his PC to take a picture of the door (and door lock) and post it on a web page every minute. So he could easily check to verify that the door was closed and locked.
Nowadays, maybe an electronic lock would be an easier solution, though I'm not sure that would satisfy the urge to be sure it was locked, would he trust it?
I have this exact same phobia. Except it's having left the gas on the stove on or having bumped it. I bought a methane alarm and put it not too far from the stove. Now all I need to do to make sure there's not a gas leak in the house is just open up the camera and not hear the alarm.
Can't speak for anyone else, but for me the electronic lock was enough. At least after I'd used it a few times and got a feel for how reliable the indication was.
I kind of hit a similar problem: My parents let me stay at their house while they were on vacation and I was traveling through their city, as long as I locked up and set their alarm when I left.
Me, being unused to how their alarm worked, was unsure if I set it.
I set the alarm, locked the door, hear it beep, waited outside until it stopped beeping, then I thought to myself "was the alarm really on?". I unlocked the door, opened it, setting off the alarm, which I turned off with my code.
Goto 10
This repeated a few times until some larger alarm somewhere else in the house started blaring loudly that could probably be heard across the neighborhood. So I disabled it one more time, and just left it well enough alone since I couldn't get out of the loop without some other way of verifying things.
I started reading and thought "why not just …"—and you did!
Since this is Hacker News, I'm surprised that you haven't come up with some more elaborate system, e.g., properly locking the door closes a circuit, and you can check the status of the circuit remotely.
I don't worry too much about whether I left the door locked or unlocked, but suck a system would produce anxiety in me, because I could never be sure if there wasn't some circuit malfunction and it wasn't showing me a false positive or negative.
My wife and I had the exact same response to the baby wearables or gadgets that promised to tell us if our baby was still breathing up in her crib. We weren't worried about that, so the notion of adding something that would almost-certainly be a flaky indicator seemed guaranteed to increase anxiety.
I make a mark on the back of my hand in ball-point and ONLY rub it off when the job is done. Eq (using your example) if I knew I had to lock a door on the way out I would write either an 'L'(ocked) or a D(oor) on the back of my hand.
Because I stick to the 'mental rules' of only rubbing it off once the task is completed, if I'm uncertain if I've done the thing / task I can look down to my hand to see if that mark is still there or not. If it is - U-Turn time!
It Works pretty well (as always, mileage may vary) even for multiple things if needed although the random letters/marks on the back of your hand can make people curious but if it does I simply say - It's a list of stuff I need to do.
Field Notes 3.5" x 5.5" notebooks are the size of a folded index card with only a few pages in them. So they comfortably fit in my pocket. Staple bound is relatively weak, but their relatively cheap price means that you can just keep buying them as they wear out (moving your legs / walking / etc. etc. slowly weakens the paper and tears it apart).
Realistically speaking, a Field Notes 3.5 x 5.5 is well balanced: I seem to run out of space roughly as the staple binding wears out. (I know people don't want to "waste paper" but.... I haven't found a good strategy for that. The small size and "disposable" nature of these Field Note books are superior in my experience)
Pentel Kerry is a "shrinking" pencil. It has a small size when its stored, but when you pull the cap off and put it on the back, it "grows" slightly and has a better balance for writing. Its a very slight effect, but the "smaller stored size" makes for a nifty pocket-pencil.
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> I make a mark on the back of my hand in ball-point and ONLY rub it off when the job is done. Eq (using your example) if I knew I had to lock a door on the way out I would write either an 'L'(ocked) or a D(oor) on the back of my hand.
Never erase in your pocket notebook (despite using a pencil). Just add more information later: cross out old information with new dates, if you're out of space write down a page-number where you can see more information on a particular subject.
I really enjoy reading about folks sharing their OCD stories. This one resonated with me because it's one of my obsessions.
I will say that after going through CBT and becoming an amature expert on OCD as a sufferer, a therapist would argue that this behavior of checking your photo is a form of compulsion. It works for dam sure but you're never really going to be able to go to sleep without some form of checking when the obsessive thoughts start.
Anyone who has gone through treatment knows the ultimate goal is to weaken the reaction of the obsessive thoughts which is what exposure therapy is all about.
Just a quick story, my laddering technique for achieving peace was to eventually get to a comfort level where I can sleep with the door wide open all night. Well, I didn't get that far but I did sleep with all my doors unlocked for a couple nights.
Lastly, I can safely say that I now check all my doors once these days with the exception when I'm stressed at work. I'll check them once before going to bed and if I brush my teeth between checking the door and actually walking to bed, I might check them once more. But this is a seldom occurrence these days.
Same for me. A fix I used to have is shifting something unusual about my clothes after checking the doors are locked, like doing up a button I don't normally do up, etc. I can then check that, "yes, button is done up, I locked the door".
But what seems to have cured me for good is having children. I'm just waaaay too tired now to even consider going back to check the door. Screw it, what am I gonna do? Oh dear, baby #1 was sick on me again. Hey, baby #2, don't run off without me! Baby #1, put that hat back on again. No more snacks until it's back on. Baby #2, what did I say about running off? What is it I was worrying about? Can't remember. Goto 1
> It's getting better, actually. I believe I'm fixing it slowly.
You've illuminated the key point I think. I struggled with this as well, and finally just forced myself to abandon the door, and struggle with the feelings. If you can do it ONCE, it gets easier from there. I admit I was a light case compared to the hair dryer, but the more times you can push through the compulsion -- with the aid of whatever tricks you can come up with -- the easier it gets.
A technique I learnt as a kid from my uncle was to mindlessly use physical interaction to “feel” the state of things and learn a habit of doing it all the time. For the example of locking the door, it would be trying to open it and pull/push on the handle right after closing it. This seems to stick far longer in one’s memory.
I still remember one time when I was staying at a friends place in a different city, I took his key to get back early and the key broke in the lock so he came back to me trying to get the bit of key out of the door so someone else could open it. We were all very drunk. It was quite traumatic!
Have you tried getting locks that only release the key when locked? If you've got the key in your pocket then the door is locked. More time efficient than taking a photo every day.
How would you get back inside the house without leaving the key in the exterior lock, making you unable to lock the door from the inside with the same key?
Not to mention the potential of having someone lock you inside, taking the key, and then something bad like a fire happening while you're stuck.
They actually do make locks that only release the key when they are locked-LOTO (lock out tag out) locks. They are used to disable hazardous equipment for maintenance. The idea behind key retention is that it prevents leaving the lock in an unsafe state where someone else could unlock it. It's also supposed to make it easier to know that the machine is actually locked out, since the maintenance tech can check if they have the key. Similar idea to some of the solutions to OCD posted, the tech can check if they have their LOTO key to be sure it's disabled before entering something like a trash compactor. The key stays with the lock at all other times.
That being said, for a door all your objections are pretty reasonable, the only use for key-retaining locks I know of is fairly specialized, but interesting in how similar it is to the reminders people dealing with OCD use.
When i leave the house i count to 7 before I close the door. House keys, wallet, phone, glasses, car keys, lock the door. Anything else is item 7, prepared the night before.
Totally did backtrack unreasonable distances just to check if I had closed the door.
It's all fine when it's my door. Worst case scenario, I get robbed.
However it's more of a problem when it's someone else's door. Worst case scenario, they get robbed, and that's a different story. Or pets get out...
Obviously I can't take the door on my front seat... So my solution is to take a picture of me trying to open the door, a kind of proof that it's closed.
And, would you know it, it works! When I get anxious, I pull out my phone and look at the pictures.
It's getting better, actually. I believe I'm fixing it slowly. Good riddance!