OCD Reflections

Reality:  there's really only one way to find my way back, and it's not by constantly retracing where I've been... It's that time again.  I'm stuck in that post-home session funk where I try to decide what to do next - whether to dig myself out or to give up for the day.  I'm going to try to sort my thoughts out about it here so I can do what I need to do to get better! Today I did a lot of good exposure work with one of my therapists.  The big exposure of the day was...showering!!  Woo.  My showers are now under 30 minutes but still heavily ritualized, meaning that I do everything in a very specific order, in a specific way, a specific number of times.  Deviation from this routine or lack of focus while completing it can lead to repetition until I'm sure I got it "right."  Well, today we took a nice big wrecking ball to my shower regimen.  And this is how we did it:  my therapist timed me as usual, but instead of just calling out h...

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...

I'm about a week and a half into my intensive therapy program and I am feeling tired .  There are things I would like to write about but I've been kind of exhausted as of late and also haven't had that much time to just sit, reflect, and write.  However, hopefully I will have time for all that again soon...in between all the home visits, therapy sessions, and exposure homework.  It's going well, but I think that constantly feeling "off" and slightly anxious exhausts me more easily than I expected or am used to.  Just as I start to adjust and get comfortable, it's always time for my next session, time to climb the next stretch up the hierarchy of the many challenges ahead of me. I'm still here.  Just spending more time than ever battling my OCD.  I'll keep chugging along and hope to have more time and energy to write here and comment on others' blogs soon!

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...

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...