What Are to Long Term Effects of Compulsive Neck Cracking, and Is It Normal for People With OCD to Do This?
Question by purplegirl88: What are to long term effects of compulsive neck cracking, and is it normal for people with OCD to do this?
I am just curious about what the effect are because it is a bad habit that I have and have a feeling it is connected to OCD to some extent. I just want to make sure I am not doing any perminent damage. I don’t really want a wikipedia article telling me this, I would prefer a medical professional answering this. I am not talking about an occasional pulling my neck back and cracking it, I’m talking about doing it over and over again in a row a number of times a day, doing it each time until the feeling of needing to do it goes away. I have been doing this on and off since november or december of ’06. I researched it a little last year, but it was inconclusive.
Best answer:
Answer by RobertAleriahHill
Hi , my first advice would be to contact your local physician , its almost impossible to diagnose something like OCD without actually seeing the patient . but if you answer yes to the following questions it might be an indication of OCD
1. Do you find the thoughts ( i.e the need to crack you neck ) keep coming into your mind even though you try not to have them ?
2. do you have recurring thoughts, ideas, words that you cannot get out of your mind?
3. Do you have to keep checking things that you have already done?
4. Do you get easily worried , e.g contamination with germs
5. Do you spend a lot of time on personal cleanliness even though you are clean.
6. Can you resist the thoughts ? what happens ?
The best measures of combating OCD / habit , is to resist the thoughts , and not act on them , it may seem really hard but it works , or sit in a room with somebody behind you , concentrate really hard on your thougths , and have them rummaging through your head , then ask the person behind you to shout STOP ! , keep doing this , and hopefully next time you have these thoughts you will associate them with a loud stop ! .
Just a final note , cracking your back/neck is harmless so dont think your doing long term damage , to me it sounds like a bad habit .
hope this help
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