OCD Reflections

Sometimes I feel like I should just come with a disclaimer taped to my forehead for any potential roommate, apartment-mate, house-mate, or whatever: WARNING:  Proceed with caution.   This individual may exhibit odd behaviors and may spend an excessive amount of time washing/showering/doing laundry/avoiding dirty things.  Will do best to limit strange behaviors around you and to avoid inconveniencing you.   Roommate will initially seem normal and will go out of her way to be a polite and considerate roommate, but odd behaviors will begin to become apparent over time. I'm in the midst of packing and there's a lot to do, but I thought pausing to write about some of my worries would be a bit stress-reducing.  In fact, I suspect the immense pressure I feel to act "normal" during this stressful time will be leading me here frequently over the next few days and weeks.  So much is changing, and it's exciting.  But it's also overwhelming - especially f...

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...

My trip has only just begun and already exposures are presenting themselves.  I used a public bathroom at the airport because I DO NOT want to have to use the bathroom on the plane.  A public restroom v. plane bathroom.  It’s like choosing the lesser of two evils.  Neither is preferable at all, but this is what I “trained” for.  And I’m glad I did – using a public restroom was less of a hassle because I practiced being less compulsive when using public restrooms earlier this week with my therapist.  Pair this with the fact that I have done other restroom exposures without actually using the restrooms, and even though I may not be super duper excited about using them, I can at least get by.  I don’t have to sit for hours on end worrying that I will have to pee before I get to my destination. But my mind is still reeling from this exposure all the same.  At least my version of reeling.  As usual, I’m terrible at identifying and labeling my an...

Today I did a field session with my therapist at the mall where we proceeded to hit up just about every restroom in the place.  Correction, I hit up just about every restroom.  There was no therapist there to hover over my shoulder as I washed my hands.  No one to turn the water off.  No one to wipe the soap off my hands when I used too much.  No one to tell me stop.  No one to make me touch things.  But I did.  I washed my hands in, and even actually used , a public restroom. Some background:  half the battle for me in using public restrooms is the hand-washing part.  I never know what the conditions will be like:  Will there be enough soap?  Will I have to touch sink handles to turn on the water?  Will I have to touch the paper towel dispenser to get a paper towel?  Will there even be a paper towel dispenser or just those hand dryer things I don’t like to use (partly because you often have to touch them!)?  ...

Just thought I'd share my discomfort with the OCD blogging community, just in case anyone out there wasn't experiencing enough of their own... So I just finished a home visit and was permitted a quick hand wash supervised by my therapist at the end of my session.  Yet, of course, that hand wash didn't seem like nearly enough to me to rid my hands of all the gross-ness collected on them from the things we did.  Maybe this isn't that gross. Maybe it's just me.  But we used rags and 409 to clean off a kitchen counter and stove top that have not been cleaned in oh, like forever.  My hands felt as if they were soaked in solution of 409, kitchen counter top debris, burned grease, and the collected film created by the gas that's burned by the stove.  We rinsed the rags out at the end, and thus, my hands were rinsed a little at that time.  But after that I was only allowed that one 30 second or so hand wash that I mentioned before.  With only two pumps of s...

So I realize that I haven't really kept up with summarizing my journey on through my intensive treatment program.   I am now at the close of week 3 and much of weeks 2 and 3 were like week 1.  Each week has had its ups and downs but the overall product is certainly progress, progress which at times feels like frighteningly much and at other times like far too little.  Hopefully presenting a brief snapshot of the experience and pulling out some of the highlights will help me focus on the areas where I have succeeded as well as those that still need a lot of work. I have three home visits each week.  During these sessions, we have sort of been going room by room through my house doing exposures.  Of course, we started with my bedroom which is where I spend most of my time.  I now have an established "circuit" of exposures that I am supposed to do each day in my bedroom.  Mostly it involves touching a lot of things I consider dirty and then indiscr...

UGH. UGH. UGH.  I hate how OCD can lead me to rage almost instantaneously sometimes.  Of course that rage is misdirected.  I should be getting mad at the OCD, but instead I get mad at the person who unknowingly got between me and my compulsive avoidance.  When I take out the trash, I avoid touching door handles.  Before getting the trash ready to go, I go downstairs and unlock and open the door so that I won't have to touch the door handle with my contaminated trash hands when I actually carry the garbage out of our house.  I did this as usual after doing my regimen of exposures that I have started attempting daily as part of my new intensive CBT program.  So downstairs I went, passing the girlfriend of one of my housemate's along the way.  As I passed her I thought, "She better not have closed the door!  I opened it for a very specific and deliberate reason..." And of course, like most normal people would probably do when they see an ope...

Whew!!  Clearly I am not used to having daily commitments because I feel super busy keeping up with my daily therapy appointments.  OCD is used to having all the time it wants, just about anytime it wants, and that's beginning to change.  Sorry OCD, don't have as much flexibility in scheduling to allow my entire life to revolve around your whims... I've been meaning to recap days #2, 3, and now #4, so here goes: Day #2:  The Protective Shield of Novelty Begins to Wear Off My second day of intense CBT treatment began with me waking up in a state of confusion, which I wrote about here .  The novelty and exhilaration of breaking all the rules had worn off considerably and I was left to face the reality of the consequences of my actions.   But I survived despite the fact that I felt really "off" and like I needed to somehow undo all the exposures that had taken place the day before.  I didn't do any "undoing" and I went on to get up and go about m...

This morning, I woke up not knowing how to proceed.  I was overwhelmed by the feeling of being "off," of not knowing exactly how I had violated all my rules and how to compulsively solve them.  Normally my solution to this problem is to mentally and physically wipe the slate clean by taking a shower and washing whatever I am wearing.  In my mind, showering washes away whatever OCD transgressions I committed so that I don't have to sit there in vain, trying to remember each an every one.  I can let go if I can just shower, and condemn whatever I am wearing to the dirty laundry.  It's my mental restart button, and it seems to reset my life and my ability to discern what is clean v. dirty. Once I am myself "clean" it is easier to think clearly and start fresh.  I feel like the world has been returned to its "right" state at that point.  I feel like "myself" once I have performed these compulsions and I feel "clean enough" to go...

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 has been a rough weekend.  As much as I usually like to keep the day to day ups and downs of my progress to myself, it's been a rough couple of days filled with tough situations and some bad decisions. Earlier tonight I just laid down on the floor and cried.  I didn't know what else to do.  I felt too dirty to lay anywhere else, so onto the floor I went, which sealed my fate - at that point I was "contaminated" in my mind, beyond all repair.  I would have to shower.  Again. But at that point I just didn't feel like I had the strength left in me to face showering.  To do anything.  Paralyzed in my "dirty" state I just laid there and cried as quietly as I could, hoping none of my housemates could hear.  I couldn't get up.  I couldn't sit anywhere else.  I couldn't touch anything.  The only place to go from there was to wash my hands and then shower.  And yet it just seemed too difficult.  Too dirty touch anything....

As much as I would like to write a cohesive post on some theme related to OCD, these days I haven't been as, well, reflective, I suppose.  So I'm just going to spit out the thoughts that come to mind - the things that are bothering me right now - so that I can try to get myself back on board. I am lethargic today, both mentally and physically, and I don't know why.  Well, maybe I do know why.  It comes from procrastinating the things I don't want to do - like showering.  And the longer I procrastinate, the dirtier and more stifled I feel.  Everything seems less satisfying with the thing I am procrastinating looming on the day's to do list.  And on top of that, I have OCD labeling me as "dirty" until I do, even if I only really need to shower for OCD reasons in the first place.  It's like waking up and lounging around in your pajamas all day.  You never feel like you have "gotten up" and started your day until you have gotten dressed.  At le...

Having recently heard and read about others' experiences with having OCD as a child, I wanted to write a bit more about my own experiences growing up with the disorder. I have wanted to share these experiences for a while now, especially because these stories from my childhood are the ones that I have talked about the least, since my therapy and exposure work focuses largely on my current symptoms. But as I have alluded to before, I have had experience with different types of fears - different obsessions and different compulsions to accompany them. Some of these fears lasted for only a short while. Others gained momentum, took over my life, and then gradually faded away over the years. And then there are still others whose tyrannical legacy lives on to this day - obsessions and compulsions that are not my primary problem right now, but which wait in the background to be tackled as I overcome my most recent OCD issues. As I begin to write, I am realizing that I feel a lot of ...