OCD Reflections

It's been a long time since I posted and even longer since I've made posts regularly.  But, tonight, well I'm feeling in the mood to write, and goodness, there's plenty to write about. A couple weeks ago now I began an intensive treatment program.  I'm basically in treatment about 20 hours a week.  And in the time since I started that program, well, I have done things that I am not even sure I would have done BEFORE my contamination OCD flared out of control.  As I write, I feel dirty, but I am also determined to keep going, to resist the urges to avoid and perform other compulsions that would be so easy to give in to.  I feel as though I'm finally making a solid effort to wholeheartedly commit to doing ERP as I know it needs to be done.  I'm finally breaking the rules that, for so long, I felt couldn't be broken, even while I was doing active exposure work in the past.  I am rebelling against my OCD and doing what I know, deep down, I want to do - ...

This week I have something to look forward to as I plan and prepare for my short trip to San Diego for the International OCD Foundation's Annual Conference !  Woot!  I'm pretty excited, I have to say. :) In case you don't know what this is, let me give some quick background:  every year the International OCD Foundation (IOCDF) , a fantastic resource for learning about OCD and finding treatment, hosts a 2 and a half day conference with TONS of presentations and panels, all of which address aspects of OCD and related spectrum disorders and their treatment.  Basically, it's my chance to totally geek out for an entire weekend while immersing myself in OCD education.  What makes the conference even better is that, for a couple days, I feel like I can let my guard down a bit because I am surrounded by people who understand OCD and have first-hand experience with this disorder, either as sufferers themselves, as friends and family members of sufferers, or as treatmen...

A fierce wave of apathy and a new level of busyness in my life have led me away from blogging recently.  This lessening of interest creates additional anxiety on top of everything else:  why am I not so interested in writing anymore?  Am I losing my fascination with OCD?  Am I losing my identity as someone who has suffered and continues to suffer from OCD?  Is finding out that I have OCD no longer an intriguing life revelation and now just one thing more thing to deal with?  I hope not.  Of course, that's exactly why I start obsessing about it. As I mentioned in a previous post, so much has changed in my life recently.  I have a new apartment and a new roommate.  I also have a new job.  However, with the initial training period for that job now complete, I have drastically fewer hours, and the limited number of hours and my somewhat unpredictable schedule have me feeling less useful than I'd like to feel.  Lack of purpose breeds a...

I'm not even sure what to say.  Other than the fact that I'm definitely in new territory.  I'm finally committing to a more extreme method to ERP (at least what seems extreme to me), and I'm not sure what to do or how to feel about it.  Let's just say it's not as bad as keeping myself out of contact with water for days on end, but it feels that way to me.  I still get to shower and wash my hands, but not in a way that really provides any sense of cleanliness.  It seems all wrong, and it's only been a few hours since I started this new regimen. How did this all get started?  Well, after I ended my outpatient intensive treatment program back toward the end of February, I went back to the standard once a week therapy regimen.  I improved a lot during the few months that I did the intensive treatment, but little by little, things have begun to slip again  over the last month and a half.  So yesterday I scheduled a last minute session with my th...

As much as I believed there would come a point in time when I would feel ready to climb the hierarchy of exposure to minimize my OCD, a time when it would feel "right" and "easy," that time has yet to come.  It seems that I can't reach the top without first having to commit to exposure whether or not I'm sure it's "okay" or "right."  I had hoped I would find another way, but it appears the only way to go is, in fact, up.  Sometimes no matter how many times you read things, they don't start to make since until you've gone through them yourself.  I am admittedly a huge nerd when it comes to OCD and OCD treatment.  I love reading about this disorder - in books, through articles, on others' blogs :), you name it!  And yet, despite all I have learned from all the reading I have done, despite all my time spent in therapy, and despite the fact that I BELIEVED in what I had read and what my therapists recommended, some thin...

I need this.  And by that I mean - time taken for myself.  Time taken doing something soothing and familiar like writing here.  Something to bring me back to a place and state of mind I know.  Life has been so busy lately that writing hasn't been on my mind.  Or, if it has been, I just haven't had the energy and will to do it. This past week I FINALLY began a new part-time job that I have been waiting to start for months now.  For reasons related to OCD, I had to wait a long time from the time I was hired and trained to actually begin working. (Apparently my excessive washing over the last year and a half has wreaked havoc on my fingerprints, making them pretty much impossible read digitally.  Digital fingerprinting was required for my job, and since mine were dreadfully unclear it took FOREVER to jump through all the necessary hoops for approval.  I had been interviewed, hired, trained, and had all the necessary paperwork in line, but for month...

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 ...

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...

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!  ...

 Intense.  That describes some of my feelings right now as well as... my new treatment program . After a really bad week which surmounted in several long showers, far too much hand-washing, and a lot of frustration, I told my therapist that I felt like I couldn't keep going like this.  Something had to change.  I needed more help.  And what did he do?  He told me that if I wanted more help there were basically three options:  I could go to a residential treatment facility, I could enroll in an intensive outpatient program, or I could try something new - an intensive treatment regimen put together by him, his boss, and another therapist at my treatment center.  And I went with option number three.  It means several home visits every week and treatment in some form 6 days a week. In short, it sounds AMAZING. I am thrilled to have this opportunity.  Though it will initially take a toll on my wallet, it is worth it to have my life ba...

I have a fear of overcoming my OCD. Like a shadow, OCD will probably always be following me, changing in shape and size over time.  I can choose to fight it, to attempt to chase away the discomfort it causes, but it's not going anywhere.  There will probably always be different OCD fears that come and go throughout my life, and the less I fight those fears, those obsessions, the less likely they are to bother me, including my "fear of overcoming my OCD."  The less time I spend trying to make my shadow go away, the less I will notice its presence.  Or, conversely, the less time I spend making sure it is still there, the less I will fear losing it. Wait what?  No, that's right.  I'm actually afraid of losing my OCD sometimes.  And I feel bad about this because so many people would probably love to be rid of their OCD and would be quite content never to see it again.  What kind of person "chooses" to keep a mental disorder?  "C...

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...

A lot has happened for me this week - a lot of change and growing momentum pushing me forward into recovery.  And of course there is a fair share of anxiety to go along with this process, and that anxiety doesn't arise solely from cutting back on the rituals that brought me comfort, either.  There is also secondary anxiety created by the time that suddenly seems to be laid out in front of me - time that was previously occupied by compulsions is slowly be re-released for other potential uses.   I am not used to feeling like I have excess time.  Even without a real job, OCD can be a full-time occupation.  Fighting OCD (or giving in to its demands) has literally been my all-day everyday job for many months now.  Just the necessities of daily life took up my time for almost a year.  If I had free time, there was always something else I could be doing, there was always another load of laundry, trash to take out, general cleaning to do.  Just keepin...

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...