OCD Reflections

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...

Goodness, I don't do well with free time.  What happens when I have a wide open expanse of time in front of me?  Well, it looks something like this. Step 1:  Plan on getting things done - dishes, showering, laundry, decorating, etc. Step 2:  Avoid the above because I am feeling unsure whether I am "clean enough" and am unsure of how to do complete the activities mentioned - the compulsive way or the non-compulsive way.  So, with the possibility of having to do said things the compulsive way looming in front of me, I have a hard time finding the motivation within me to just get up and face them. Step 3:  Spend all of my free time thinking about how above tasks are not being completed while searching my soul for the drive and courage to face them. Step 4:  Wishing I could sleep the weekend away and or find something to distract me from my avoidance and/or motivate me to actually just get things done. That's how I've mostly spent my Saturday, an...

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...

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...

So I haven't seen a therapist in the last two days.  That makes this officially the longest I have gone without a session since the beginning of November when I began intensive treatment.  It's weird and it's not.  I am at home visiting my family.  I am in a completely different (less definitively trigger-laden) environment, and there are a lot of distractions.  It kind of scares me how at ease I am sometimes.  But at the same time, I haven't been doing much exposure either...and that certainly makes things easier.  So the decrease in therapy comes with an increase of other things to do and things to hold my attention.  But at the same time, like I said, haven't been doing much exposure :/. One thing that has been on my mind a lot (and a bit more than usual) is my weight.  Here at home with my family I can weigh myself (I have resisted buying a scale over the years because I know it would probably only lead to bad things, but here at my par...

This is the part of getting better that I hate.  When you start to see a noticeable difference, an improvement, and you hate yourself for it.  You hate yourself for letting it go all too easily.  Right now I am continuing to struggle with this.  I am noticing that the need to keep everything perfectly in line with my rules is getting looser.  I don't seem to care as much about them.  And I don't seem to care as much about the fact that I don't care as much!  Ahh!  I feel like I am losing the ability to make myself do things.   And I want it back.  Sure adhering to my completely arbitrary rules makes me dysfunctional.  It's not a self-sufficient way of life, but I start to long for the perfection again, and already it seems unattainable, like I couldn't make myself adhere to the rules again even if I wanted to. That last part is really what bothers me.  The ascetic deprivation and self-denial that living the OCD life requires ...

  "If you're going through hell, keep going." Someone in one of my support groups mentioned this saying recently in reference to OCD.  I get the point (or at least I think I do) - if you are resisting a compulsion and experiencing the anxiety that it causes, keep going.  Face it, and don't try to undo it if you want to come out on the other side.  To engage in compulsions is to head back and ultimately detain yourself in OCD hell.  Trying to escape may seem like the best thing to do in the moment, but pressing onward through the anxiety is ultimately the better option. I've heard this saying used in this way before, and I have issues with it, along with the idea that learning to deal with OCD is learning to "better tolerate feeling shitty" because its an inevitable part of life and you can't escape feeling discomfort.  Maybe it's because I still struggle with this, but I really, really don't like this point of view (and it is a point of v...

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 ...

     Like this sign, exposure therapy might seem a bit odd at first glance.  You mean I am supposed to walk through the mud?  You mean I am supposed to not wash when I feel like I should?  Why on earth would I want to do that?  A big theme for me this week has been the issue of trust, and by that I mean, trusting my therapist.  I agree with his exposure recommendations.  I don't think that the things he asks me to do are ridiculous or unnecessary.  And I really do believe that, if I were to go with his suggestions, I would get better.  I have had enough experience with this disorder, recently and in my past, to feel confident in the use of CBT.  If it means I have to temporarily walk through the mud, so be it, I understand the purpose and know enough to believe that it works. I have also read lots of literature on OCD, am quickly developing my own little OCD library, and even went to the International OCD Foundation's a...

        As I sit here munching away at my dark chocolate covered espresso beans, reading the latest updates of the various blogs I follow, I begin to get that all too familiar feeling of crawling in my skin...I want it off, NOW...and by that I mean any excess fat on my body. Unlike feeling dirty, there is no immediate fix for suddenly feeling fat out of the blue.  I can't just go wash it off to purge the feeling of panic,  nor can I perform rituals, that though time consuming, can, at least for a short while, banish the feeling of disgust.  I suppose there are methods that some people use - laxatives, diuretics, vomiting - that have fairly quick results, and thus I can see the appeal of them, but even when I was wrapped up in my eating disorder and at my worst, I never used these compulsive methods to make myself feel better, to get rid of that feeling of disgust.  My perfectionistic tendencies and eating disorder-related OCD told me...

My thoughts are somewhat scattered at the moment. I feel like there are so many things I could write about, and my thoughts flit from one topic to the next. Half of me wants to write about recent exposures of the past two days and the other half of me wants to write about something more abstract...we'll see where I end up. I have been thinking about my weight more lately so perhaps I'll go with that. Like OCD, I could write volumes on my experience with weight control, my acute decline into anorexia (8 years ago now!), and what happened after my fairly abrupt "recovery." It is another one of those mental health issues that I have never gotten to talk about much, one of the elephants in the room from my past that I rarely acknowledge outside of the mental health world. And when I do, I often work daintily around the subject, sort of obtusely hinting at what was actually going on without saying it outright. One thing that occurred as I spiraled down into severe con...