If ever you've felt the need to constantly count the syllables of your speech, or deconstruct your food before you eat it, or maybe had the fear that your life is really a secretly constructed reality show, ?la "The Truman Show," you are not alone.
All of these irrational habits are confessions of anonymous blog contributors, published on iamneurotic.com, a site dedicated to sharing obsessive tendencies and quirks.
Spun from the popularity of the blog comes the book edition: "i am neurotic (and so are you)," which includes highlights of the best blog contributions alongside photo illustrations.
And iamneurotic.com is just one of many blogs that allow Web surfers to spout off anonymously about their daily dilemmas and deepest desires.
Similar blogs — which have also gotten book deals — include the likes of PostSecret.com ("Extraordinary confessions from ordinary lives"), and FMyLife.com ("Get the guts to spill the beans").
The reason behind the secret-spilling blog phenomenon is up for debate, but UCLA student and iamneurotic.com creator Lilanna Kong said she has a few guesses.
"They [blog contributors] want to get things off their chest and lessen the burden of knowing they have these secrets," Kong said. "They share things they wouldn't normally share, and they don't have to reveal their identity, so they feel protected."
Still, Kong said, she started the blog with her friends not as a form of therapy but as a light-hearted joke that wasn't meant for anyone else to see.
But when another blogger came across the site and linked to it from his blog, traffic started coming in and reached a peak mid-2008.
Kong started posting submissions from other readers on the site, adding icons that let readers "heart" a particular post or say "me, too."
"The icons make it so people don't feel so alone in their neurosis or feel unique and special," Kong said.
She said the site isn't meant to cure anyone's neurotic habits, but it seems to give people peace of mind that there are other people out there with similar habits.
"I'm not a psychologist, but I think if someone has a neurosis that isn't detrimental to his way of life, it's not a terrible thing," Kong said. "They make us different. They are practices that help us get through the day, in a way."
As for people who have detrimental, diagnosed psychiatric disorders, the Internet still seems to be a safe haven — though not necessarily via confessional sites like "i am neurotic," said psychiatrist Fred Rymer.
Rymer, who works in the psychiatry department at the University of Utah, said he has never had a patient use any of the aforementioned sites, but many of his otherwise socially phobic patients "do fine with the Internet."
Having little interaction with other people in the real world, many people with psychiatric disorders are able to connect with people more easily on social networking sites like Facebook or Second Life, Rymer said.
"They have more control. They can start out slowly, and if they don't want to be involved, they can remove themselves," he said.
Similarly, confessional blog sites may be productive in allowing people — with or without diagnosed psychiatric disorders — to put problems or odd habits behind them and move on, Rymer said.
With his own patients, Rymer said, the sites could be valuable in allowing them to discuss issues he doesn't need or want to hear about.
Alan Holding, moderator for Fmylife.com, a site where contributors share the unfortunate events of their daily lives, said his Web site is based on the theory that people have a real need to share their troubles with others.
Fmylife.com started out much like iamneurotic.com — with a few friends wanting a place to tell each other "the crappy things that happened to them that particular day," Holding said.
And though the key to the site is giving people the ability to laugh at their mishaps of stolen bikes and cheating boyfriends, sometimes the benefits are a little deeper, Holding said.
"It's quite touching to read certain comments, people bringing support to others," he said.
So, if you're not ready to tell your friends about your obsessive mail checking or dread of cotton balls just yet, there are a slew of blogs out there to give you, your deepest secrets and your irrational fears a little company.
e-mail: bbrown@desnews.com