OCD Reflections

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...

my favorite dysfunctional brain... I've been avoiding writing lately because I'm beginning to notice that it brings a sense of anxiety.  There's the idea that sparks the urge to write, followed by the desire to "perfectly" explain it all so that it feels "right" when I'm done, so that I feel "whole" and "complete" once I've finished spitting out all my thoughts.  Attempting to write a post with that goal in mind is starting to become more daunting than the idea of just holding all those thoughts in.  As often happens as my compulsions grow and take on a life of their own, I make myself perform them until the idea of DOING them finally becomes more onerous than the idea of NOT DOING them, at which point I just start avoiding whatever it is that I feel must be done in that compulsive way.  And I think that's what's begun to happen here.  I'm slowly starting to avoiding writing, even when I would like to, because I...

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...

So, I've been meaning to do this for a while, but never managed to actually put it together.  Just like I enjoy reading others' blogs and learning about their experiences with OCD, I am also somewhat addicted to learning as much as I can about the disorder in general - I love reading about some of the latest news and findings on OCD, and have also read several books on the disorder and related topics. In college, I studied neuroscience, and though in the short time since I graduated I have forgotten much of what I learned, I am still fascinated by the brain and its functioning - both on the biological level, as well as on the more behavioral side of things.  Add OCD to the mix, and I get abnormally excited when reading about some of the latest research and clinical studies on the disorder.  Of course, I like reading about OCD because it has a strong element of personal significance, but when I find that things I learned in school help me understand what we do know about...

There is a blog about eating disorders that I like to read which I have referred to here before.  I like reading this blog because a) I can relate in the sense that, for a brief stint in my life, I suffered from an eating disorder in addition to OCD, and because b) the author has a wonderful writing style an ability to capture her thoughts and feelings in a way that draws many parallels with my OCD way of thinking. I was reading some of her past posts today and found one titled " Seeing the ED as the Problem ."  In this post she discusses how she had to fight to identify the ED, the eating disorder, as the issue, and not the various things that got in the way of her desire to exercise and restrict.  Her behavior and attitude towards the eating disorder were described as being " ego-syntonic " or basically in line with her self-image.  It wasn't something she shuddered at and wanted banished from her life completely (in which case the ED would have been ego-dy...

        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...

Today I'm having one of those moments where I feel incredibly presumptuous - presumptuous to believe that I have had a rough time with OCD and even more presumptuous to believe that I ever had an eating disorder. So this is off topic, since this is supposed to be a blog about OCD, but I was reading about EDs today and began to doubt whether I really had a diagnosable case of an eating disorder when I was younger. I mean, I definitely had disordered eating, but I got over it fairly quickly, and though I always believed that I had anorexia nervosa, I'm not sure if I was ever technically diagnosed. I've been told that people who are anorexic usually have to fight for years to overcome their problem and many never fully recover. I recovered fairly quickly, meaning that I gained the weight back, even if my eating habits didn't really get back to normal for a few years. But I didn't receive extensive treatment. It didn't take endless cajoling to get me to coope...

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...

I realize that I have already written far too many times today, but I have also been productive in other ways, so I suppose I will allow myself excess in this area (as long as I move on to a few other things I need to do after this). So I was reading a blog about eating disorders. When in high school I had my own stint of excessive dieting and exercise that eventually landed me at my doctor's office and then in therapy...the latter of which I considered pretty useless. Now had that therapist recognized my co-existing OCD , she probably would have been of much greater help. I know eating disorders and OCD are considered separate disorders, but I feel like the way I went about my anorexic behaviors was very OCD in nature, and simply encouraging me to return to normal eating habits did nothing to address the debilitating perfectionism in other aspects of my life. One of the triggers for eating disorder behaviors that this blogger mentioned caught my attention as I could relate to...