OCD Reflections

And somehow I find myself here again...needing to sleep but unwilling to shower and also unwilling to sleep in my bed because I'm not "clean enough."  Of course, "clean enough" doesn't really mean anything.  It's useless OCD fluff, but it somehow still has a strong hold over me, even though I can recognize it for what it is. So I'll be sleeping on the couch.  My roommate is out of town so it's easier to avoid doing those things I find so onerous - i.e. showering.  I don't normally feel comfortable sleeping out in our living room when she's here, so eventually the desire to have somewhere besides my bedroom floor to sleep drives me to the shower.  But with my roommate gone, I am far too comfortable sleeping on the couch, and the procrastination of the showering goes on and on and on. So...the couch it is...

Oh, how I have missed you, OCD blogging community!  I have missed a lot of things.  My life has become so busy as of late (in a good way), that I haven't had much time to reflect on my OCD and my progression in fighting back.  Let's just say that the work is going well, and that explaining further would require more explanation than I currently have time for.  But as usual, this is still where I turn when I feel like I need a place to express my feelings related to OCD, and the trials and triumphs in battling it. Instead of writing further this evening, I have been wanting to share a couple things I discovered when I went to my parents' house over the holidays.  By "things" I mean high school writing assignments.  These particular assignments caught my attention because they struck me as my attempt to try to capture, in words, this invisible and intangible thing forever keeping me bound and restrained - OCD that is. Back then, I didn't have a name for i...

As the holiday season arrives, I sometimes think about how OCD affected this time of year for me in ways I never knew.  When I was struggling with scrupulosity, there was of course compulsive prayer surrounding the religious holiday of Christmas.  That was the most obvious form my compulsions took.  I felt compelled not only to pray, but to pray "right."  If I had bad thoughts while I was praying or if forgot important parts (or if I simply suspected that I might have forgotten important parts),  I had to start over.  So, secretly in hidden in my bedroom with the door closed, I prayed, hoping no one interrupted. Because, if they did, I would then have to stop, pretend like I had been doing something else, only to start over yet again as soon as they were gone. Sometimes if I couldn't seem to get the prayer "right" I would begin reciting the words aloud, hoping to make them stick, hoping to make them somehow seem more final and sure so that I wouldn't ha...

Reality:  there's really only one way to find my way back, and it's not by constantly retracing where I've been... It's that time again.  I'm stuck in that post-home session funk where I try to decide what to do next - whether to dig myself out or to give up for the day.  I'm going to try to sort my thoughts out about it here so I can do what I need to do to get better! Today I did a lot of good exposure work with one of my therapists.  The big exposure of the day was...showering!!  Woo.  My showers are now under 30 minutes but still heavily ritualized, meaning that I do everything in a very specific order, in a specific way, a specific number of times.  Deviation from this routine or lack of focus while completing it can lead to repetition until I'm sure I got it "right."  Well, today we took a nice big wrecking ball to my shower regimen.  And this is how we did it:  my therapist timed me as usual, but instead of just calling out h...

Sometimes we are so focused on battling OCD on one front that we hardly notice when it sweeps in from another angle, offering deceptively sweet new reasons to engage in compulsive behavior... Oh no!  What if I no longer have OCD???   Now those, I think, are officially the words of a crazy person.  Of course, this theme is far from new for me, but it's finding fun new ways to try to integrate itself into my recovery. Earlier this evening, as I did some of my exposure homework, I noticed something:  Windex doesn't seem to cause me as much discomfort as it did in the not-so-distant past.  I feel like the appropriate response would be:  "Woo hoo!  Hooray!  I must be getting better!  I can do this without it bothering me so much!  Things are getting easier!  Take that OCD!" Hah.  Wouldn't that be nice.  It's more like: "Wait, hold on.  Does this not bother me so much?  I don't think it does.  Oh no!  ...

With tempting and shiny promises of "just one more step...and then another..." OCD lures me on down its path of "sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice."  Often refusal or resistance to doing exposure seems to be equated with an unwillingness to tolerate discomfort in the area of life that OCD affects.  Sometimes I squirm under under this assumption.  I want to say, "Wait, but being able to tolerate discomfort is what I pride myself on - my ability to force myself to do things when I really, really don't want to do them, especially things like compulsions.  Yes, compulsions can make things seem 'right.'  But often I really, really just don't want to do them, and yet I feel like I 'should' or 'have to' and I do them anyway despite the inconvenience they cause, despite their extremely onerous nature, and despite all the time and sacrifice they require.  I do this not so much because I don't want to deal with the discomfort...

Well, it's that time.  Operation "Destroy My One and Only Pristine Sanctuary of Cleanliness in this Dirty, Dirty World" is well underway (go here for further explanation).  Here's a recap of day one, in my therapist's words: Touched bed with unwashed hands Stripped bed, put bedding on floor, then remade bed Dumped dirty laundry on bed Removed bedding from bay window and placed on bed Confiscated sanitizers and bag of hoarded receipts Sat on floor Briefly touched toilet seat and handle, then returned to bedroom Touched items in "condemned corner" Walked on bed in bare feet Touched clean clothes with unwashed hands, touched clean clothes to dirty clothes, touched clean clothes to floor and put away with other clean clothes Ate dried fruit with unwashed hands Touched flute with unwashed hands (esp difficult) Touched all areas of bedroom in no particular order with unclea...

This guy's fooled many a fruit loop-bearing hiker or cheetoh-offering friend into thinking he's a chipmunk...but we know the truth tiny rodent...someone forgot their face stripes and WE know that he's just another squirrel like the rest of them.  Now get your paws off my shoe!!   And while you're at it, go wash your paws before eating anymore food begged off unwitting strangers!  What an audacious (and filthy) little fraud...I bet he didn't wash after using the restroom either ;). This morning I woke up after a particularly long night of sleep only to be greeted by my good old friend, more commonly known as the "fear of not really having OCD and somehow faking out the world as well as my self..."  Umm, yeah. The exposures for this sort of fear, as I have mentioned before, are the same as my usual exposures - do my homework successfully, because, if I can do my OCD homework successfully, then I must be a "fraud," right?  I mean, if I ca...

As many probably already know, the International OCD Foundation hosted an event tonight called " OCD Stories:  An evening of reflection, humor and education about OCD ," and anyone with an internet connection could watch from the comfort of their own home via the above link.  It all began at 7pm EST.  The night consisted of several speakers with each telling stories about their experiences with OCD.  Some were doctors or mental health professionals.  Others were sufferers themselves.  But each related their own examples of how OCD has affected their lives and the lives of those around them. I did in fact watch these stories, and plan on writing more about that later, but I wrote most of this post in advance, reflecting on how I felt about this upcoming event - what I was experiencing prior to watching.  That said, these were my thoughts and feelings about watching, and the ideas that followed from them: When I see or hear others' stories about OC...

Though I have been looking for part-time jobs and have some promising prospects, I am gradually becoming a little bit more nervous about my financial situation.  I have savings - gifts from relatives from over the years given for holidays and birthdays, extra savings here and there from summer jobs.  I was a relatively frugal kid/teen and my parents took care of paying for my food/clothing so I didn't need to spend a lot of money.  But now, well, I am paying for almost all my expenses, BUT I don't have a job! On the one hand I feel like I should consider myself lucky - I don't have student loans to worry about paying back like many of my friends.  Scholarships greatly reduced my college tuition and my parents could afford to pay the difference and were kind enough to do so.   But even though I don't have to worry about loans, it's hard watching my savings gradually disappear - mostly to rent and health insurance and the cost of therapy.  Rent is sort of ...

Some days I feel like I have somehow managed to bury myself by means of excessive avoidance and procrastination.  When I don't have things I HAVE TO do or HAVE TO be at, it is hard for me to find the will to do the things I dread - to shower, brush my teeth, clean, etc.  Even when there are places I had planned to go or things I had planned to do, there are times when the consequences of missing those things still isn't motivating enough for me to face the dread they stir up.  And so my life is put on hold, tasks accumulate, and time slips by as I sleep the day away or search my computer, numbly looking for something to entertain me, something to fill the time until I muster the courage to go face what I'm avoiding.   I seem to go through cycles.  First there is the dread that arises when I either actually need to do something or when OCD says I need to do something.  Usually it goes something like, "I can't do x until I have taken care of z ."...