OCD Reflections

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...

This is my life.  I live with OCD day in and day out and suspect that I always have.  And because I have lived with it for quite some time, I have a hard time seeing it and just how much it affects my life.  I forget the cost, the toll, of giving into OCD's wishes, because, frankly, I have grown used to the sacrifices.  Indeed, I'm not even sure I know what it's like to not make SOME sort of sacrifice to keep this disorder appeased.  The more I learn about myself and how OCD has wriggled its way into the nooks and crannies of my life, I begin to wonder - how many of my decisions, in the past and in the present, have been based on my attempts to quell OCD's insatiable need for certainty, for feeling "right"? I have been a bit more reflective on these things this past week as I decided to take some time off from therapy.  I'm not giving up.  I'm certainly not done with treatment by any means, but I have been feeling, well, complacent, lately, and I fel...

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 ...

 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...

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....

I was excited to come across this article on childhood mental health on Time magazine's website, an article that does a good job describing sexual orientation OCD, how it all too often begins at a young age, and how it can affect the sufferer over the years.  The reason I was so excited and surprised to see this type of OCD mentioned and intelligently explained was that, all too often, OCD is portrayed in a fairly one-dimensional manner by the media.  We hear all about the stereotypical washing and checking compulsions, while other forms often get ignored.  OCD can latch onto almost anything that we deem important in our lives, and the corresponding compulsions are equally infinite. As more types of OCD are given attention, perhaps more people will understand that OCD is not really about being a germophobe or being afraid of setting the house on fire.  It's about uncertainty and the strong desire to eliminate it; that's what unites all sufferers with the disorde...

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...

Earlier this week I tried to write a few posts but never ended up finishing them.  I'm not sure if I was just feeling daunted by a growing need to feel "right" in order to write, or if I have just been busier lately and have had less time to think too much (which translates into less time to write too much). But things are beginning to seem different these days, so I thought I'd reflect on that a bit here.  I feel like as I gradually come out of the OCD haze that I've been living in for a year and attempt to re-enter the "real" world, there is a certain amount of pain that comes with it.  There's the pain of trying to figure it all out again.  There's the pain of real life concerns rediscovered, pains that have laid dormant for quite some time as the angry wrath of OCD made caring about such things impossible.  I was too spent on just getting by, on just navigating the requirements of everyday life.  Just managing to shower, eat, and take care ...

So one of the things my therapist has asked me to do between now and my next session is to write down the things that I have lost due to OCD, the things that I am currently missing out on, and things that I could lose in the future if I continue to feed, through my compulsive behavior, this feeling that I NEED my OCD.  Although I have always felt this way to a certain extent, I suppose this feeling that "I need the disorder to be me" has become one of the core reasons I now continue to engage in some compulsions, in addition to my original contamination fears and my version of moral scrupulosity with cleanliness.  My therapist warned me that this a dangerous path to go down - the idea of just resigning myself to OCD's demands because it is "my cross to bear" is a slippery slope that can easily lead to unnecessary loss.  With that in mind I thought I would begin contemplating the things that I have lost, continue to lose, or could lose in the future if I simply...