While believing that a lucky dress will give you the confidence to make a good impression during a job interview would seem like a harmless superstition, the same is true with the ritual of most mothers who makes it a point to always check and re-check if the flat iron had been unplugged or the oven was properly turned off before leaving the house. Many of us have little superstitions and rituals which help us become productive and produce positive results. However, when these rituals are taken to extremes and begin to affect normal daily functions, it becomes a problem.
The moment you start feeling that something will really go wrong simply because you are not wearing your lucky shirt — you develop a form of paralysis, at least in the psychological sense. When you feel the need that lucky shirt all the time to prevent something from going wrong, then it’s already as if the shirt has control over your life. This type of behavior, much like repeatedly checking if the flat iron was unplugged even if one has already double or triple-checked it, could be symptoms of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder or OCD.
OCD is a mental health condition that creates a...