OCD Reflections

Though I probably don't have enough of it to warrant a label, I think I do have some social anxiety.  It's gotten a lot better over the years - when I was a kid it was really so much worse.  Back then, I was often labeled "shy" or "quiet" and hated it because every time someone used one of those adjectives to describe me, it just seemed that much harder to overcome my difficulty of speaking up.  Those jolts of anxiety I got from voicing my opinion were intensified when I discovered that, despite my desire to be talkative and efforts to be outgoing, I was still perceived as being "quiet."   I had a hard time as it was being more vocal when not at ease, but when someone commented on how I was "shy," the self-consciousness would flare up even more, creating an even bigger hurdle to overcome when I wanted to express myself. Like I said, it's a lot better now.  I think through accidental exposure and repeated confrontation of social situ...

It's been an eventful few weeks.  I can hardly believe it, but I have been in my intensive treatment for almost a full month now and am about 2/3 of the way through the program.  Four hours a day, five days a week, I've been in treatment for OCD.  And I think I'm finally getting what I needed to propel me forward - a more aggressive, thorough, and persistent attack on my disorder, a sort of fight that I struggled to make with just one hour a week of therapy. Perhaps I'll write more in depth on the actual experience of being in the program later, but right now I have another topic on my mind:  what will I do when I am out?  My number one fear:  slipping, losing not only the gains I've made but the forward momentum I've collected.  What I hope to take away with me is not necessarily the ability to face any one specific fear, but rather the willingness and readiness to do what it takes to get better.  It's so much easier to do what needs to be done...

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...

I don't know how to handle my anger sometimes.  It's both OCD related and not I think.  The OCD part comes in with beliefs like, "I must never show my anger."  "I must, at all times, maintain composure."  "I must act cordial and polite even if I am incredibly furious."  "Letting anger affect your actions and decisions is unacceptable."  "As an adult, you cannot let emotions affect your ability to do your job and do your best."  "You can't show your anger or express your frustration unless completely, 100% certain you are justified in being upset." These are the kind of should/must type statements that I have known as a common OCD pitfall ever since the day my therapist handed me a list of some of the cognitive distortions often found in OCD.  The perfectionism takes the original anger and fuels it.  It stokes the fire by adding to the initial anger another kind of anger:  anger at myself for not being able to sta...

Sometimes (like now), I find myself disproportionately angry with the world.  At times like this I feel like society, our culture, has set me up for disappointment.  I feel like I have been taught, indeed instilled with, certain beliefs that are later turned on their heads.  I feel lied to.  I feel betrayed.  I'm angry.  And then I have to watch and bear witness as others merrily go about their day, unaffected by these things that society promotes, blissfully unaware of any sort of duplicity that others might see and experience.  Or, if they are aware of the incongruent messages and actions of society as a whole, they remain somehow unfazed by the anomalies and can proceed with their lives unruffled by the discordance. The particular subject of my anger today is a bit too personal for me to describe here.  (Yes, I know it is anonymous, but still, I already have a hard enough time talking about this particular thing with my therapists.  Put...

Bad advice is everywhere when it comes to dealing with OCD.  Today I ran across one of those yahoo question/answer deals where someone described taking extra long showers with a great big helping of compulsive avoidance.  This person asked:  how can I make my showers more pleasant?  What can I do?  I never answer those sort of things, but as I read the answers that had been provided so far, I quickly changed my mind. The answers angered me.  And it's not the fault of those answering - they just don't know better.  Answers like "try listening to music to relax yourself," "dance in the shower," or "maybe take a bath instead so even if you don't want to touch certain parts of your body to wash them, they are at least getting a little bit clean."  These are the kind of answers that I got from the first therapist I saw when this all began.  Answers like, "Why don't you try to do some deep breathing exercises to reduce your stress?" o...

Sometimes it seems as though everywhere I go, whatever I do, I come across things that remind me of OCD.  Then again, I think there is a lot of selective abstraction going on - I mean, I do pretty much have OCD and its treatment on my mind 24/7.  Literally.  I frequently dream about OCD predicaments, and it used to be all I would dream about!!  Every night it was another OCD nightmare, a dream that only I (and others with similar OCD fears) would find terrifying.  I recognize the absurdity of it, how silly it seems that such inconsequential things could be the central subject of a nightmare, but that's how it goes!  And I'm glad I can step back and appreciate the comedy in it after the fact. It's funny how when you are focusing on your OCD, the universe seems to leap out and offer you exposure wherever you go.  I was talking to a friend who has contamination fears, particularly with blood, and as she told me stories of the challenges she faced, it se...

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...

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 ."...

I probably think too much.  In fact, I probably think about thinking too much, too.  But amidst all those thoughts about thinking, I also wonder:  Where do I end?  Where does OCD begin?  And then I think about thinking this thought a little more and...okay, maybe I do have OCD.  At least I think I might... But this question does have some value - where does the boundary fall between me and my OCD?  It's at least interesting to ponder, anyway.  I am always mystified by those who say that they "suddenly" developed OCD one day and never had it before, that they were suddenly overwhelmed by strange thoughts accompanied by urges to do things to relieve the anxiety those thoughts caused.  And I'm left thinking (yes, thinking, who would have thought?  Me?  Think?  Never!), "Wait.  So one day you just started processing everything in this new, disordered way?  As if something foreign had swooped in and somehow noticeably c...

So I've heard anxiety and discomfort described in a number of different ways:  panic, stress, nervousness, disgust, shame, etc.  Tack on the word "attack" after any of the above descriptors and you have a name for those episodes where said feelings overwhelm the person experiencing them.  While I have most certainly experienced all of these emotions as part of my OCD, they don't quite capture the essence of what I feel when when my anger and frustration is not directed at a certain event or situation, but rather at myself.  Those times are more like "self-hatred attacks."  That's really the best way to describe those times of pure self-loathing and reproach.  Not pleasant.  Not at all. I'm sure everyone experiences self-hatred from time to time, or even frequently.  But sometimes I feel like I have molded it into a highly refined art in and of itself.  Don't get me wrong.  I certainly don't presume to have the market corned on self-rep...

Today was a ROUGH day for me, as much as I can let myself admit that.  I overslept this morning and got to my therapy appointment late.  Normally I can deal with this because I am just so glad to be there getting help, even if my time is cut short by my tardiness (often a product of some sort of OCD business...).  But today, wow, I just shut down.  I just didn't know what to say. Normally I am overly loquacious when it comes to therapy appointments.  I always seem to have a million things that I want to say or ask for which there is never enough time.  So it must have been strange for my therapist indeed, when I just kind of sat there, looking down at my exposure log, listening but making limited eye contact and not saying much in response.  I was just so wrapped up in my frustration and anger at myself.  I just couldn't seem to pull myself out of it long enough to really think and engage in the conversation.  Meanwhile, it seemed like the ...

Maybe I am young and naive to believe such a thing, but I like to think (and sincerely hope) that I will never work as hard as I did in high school ever again.  High school, looking back, was like one long OCD marathon that kept me constantly exhausted and feeling like I was on the verge of emotional breakdown.  I pushed myself so hard because the alternative seemed unacceptable.  I wasn't sure how I would be okay with myself if I didn't.  So I pushed, and pushed, and pushed, and as such, my life was school, and school was my life.  It was a love/hate relationship - a relationship saturated with the compelling force of a mental disorder. I'm pretty sure that at times my teachers both appreciated and were simultaneously annoyed by my dogged attention to detail, perfectionism, and tendency to push my limits - theirs and my own.  I was almost always the last one to finish a test, making the rest of the class wait in impatient silence long after most others ...

I often have a hard time knowing what to do because I sometimes feel like I am forcing myself, or even choosing, to perpetuate my OCD through the performance of rituals.  I get confused and go around in circles in my head, wondering if, unlike everyone else out there with OCD, I should be held more responsible for my symptoms and am less deserving of help because I might actually be "making myself" have the disorder.  However, trying to figure this question out is next to impossible, and I suspect that needing an answer is really just another compulsion - feeling like I need to know the answer to this before I can engage fully in treatment is just another OCD trap. On the flip side, I often have a hard time with myself because I feel like I should be performing more rituals and doing them better.  Instead of feeling bad for choosing to do compulsions, as described above, I feel bad for not choosing to do them, as well.  After all that I have learned about OCD, ...

(Image via Wikipedia) There is an analogy that strikes me as being particularly representative of what it is like to fight OCD in the moment, and sometimes I have to remind myself of this analogy before I begin something that I know will catch OCD's attention and lure it in.  For lack of a less nerdy reference, this analogy involves a scene from the 6th Harry Potter movie (and maybe the book, too, I just haven't read that far in the series, so I wouldn't know if it happens the same way in the original).   Though it is probably a common movie scenario, the Harry Potter version is just the one that comes to mind. If you have read Harry Potter, you will probably know what I am talking about better than I do.  Forgive me for any inaccuracies.  If you haven't, well, like I said, I think it's probably a common theme. The scene to which I am referring is one in which Harry Potter has accompanied headmaster Dumbledore on a mission to retrieve an object of particular i...