OCD Reflections

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...

So life has been a bit all over the place as of late, and I haven't been writing as much.  I think it's partly because I feel pressure to write the "right" kind of post - you know the kind where I come to some new level of self-awareness in the process of writing or where I finally put into just the "right" words the thoughts I've wanted to share about OCD.  I haven't been feeling super "inspired" by my OCD or by the process of fighting it as of late, (perhaps because I am gradually getting better and spend less of my time cloistered in a room with my laptop writing posts :), or perhaps because I've been a bit down lately).  But in reading one of Pure O Canuck 's posts this evening,  Here we go Again - More OCD ERP experiences. , I was struck by how nice it was just to hear about how she was doing and what specific ERP homework assignments she is now courageously tackling.  So perhaps I will do the same, so I feel a bit less out of...

So, I haven't written in a while.  I started a few posts and then either fell asleep or gave up, lacking the energy and drive to continue.  Lately the urge to "perfectly" capture the chaos in my head and my feelings about it has been strong.  Strong enough to drive me away from writing.  But I'm going to try to finish a post for once, whether or not it is the most perfectly accurate depiction of the inner workings of my mind. Lately I have been feverishly applying to jobs, sending out resumes left and right, and scouring the internet for more possibilities.  I've been going through a similar process in trying to find a new place to live.  My lease is up at the end of May (though I may be able to stay for June, as well), so the question of where I will live (and where I can afford to live) has been weighing heavily on my mind.  Meanwhile, I have drastically less work because my job is somewhat seasonal, and the combination of trying to find a new plac...

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...

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...

Life has been a bit crazy-making lately.  A few weeks ago I started to titrate down from my uber high dose of Zoloft (sertraline) so that I could try out Prozac.  And as I much as I feel like the Zoloft never really noticeably affected my thought patterns or my ability to fight my OCD, I have been hesitant to proceed in going down in dosage.  Meanwhile, my psychiatrist is out on leave, and I have been further hesitant to call the psychiatrist covering for her in her absence.  But I haven't proceeded with the schedule for decreasing medication dosage, and I should probably talk to someone about it. Part of my hesitation to going down in dose is rooted in OCD, I believe.  OCD is probably also the reason I stayed on the Zoloft (and my super high dose) for so long.  It didn't seem to be harming me.  I WAS getting better, albeit ever so slowly, as I continued to move forward in CBT.  And if my ability to progress was, in fact, facilitated by the meds...

Oh, how I have missed you, OCD blogging community!  I have missed a lot of things.  My life has become so busy as of late (in a good way), that I haven't had much time to reflect on my OCD and my progression in fighting back.  Let's just say that the work is going well, and that explaining further would require more explanation than I currently have time for.  But as usual, this is still where I turn when I feel like I need a place to express my feelings related to OCD, and the trials and triumphs in battling it. Instead of writing further this evening, I have been wanting to share a couple things I discovered when I went to my parents' house over the holidays.  By "things" I mean high school writing assignments.  These particular assignments caught my attention because they struck me as my attempt to try to capture, in words, this invisible and intangible thing forever keeping me bound and restrained - OCD that is. Back then, I didn't have a name for i...

It's been an interesting week.  I've been pretty busy and haven't had so much time to devote to blogging (or to think about blogging) as I usually do.  I start to feel "off" if I don't write as much - like I have something I want to say and am afraid I will forget if I don't write it down soon enough.  This is probably OCD in and of itself, but it's hard to know where the boundary lies between something you want to do and something you just feel you need to do because of OCD.  Writing probably falls a little bit into both categories. Anyways, one of the things I have been doing a lot since arriving at my parents' house is sorting through old papers - souvenirs, old school report cards, notes and cards from friends, etc. - that I had been stashing away for about a decade before I left for college.  Now every time I go home, there is a certain amount of de-hoarding to do.  This particular trip I happen to be tackling all the papers and documents I...

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...

Today I did a field session with my therapist at the mall where we proceeded to hit up just about every restroom in the place.  Correction, I hit up just about every restroom.  There was no therapist there to hover over my shoulder as I washed my hands.  No one to turn the water off.  No one to wipe the soap off my hands when I used too much.  No one to tell me stop.  No one to make me touch things.  But I did.  I washed my hands in, and even actually used , a public restroom. Some background:  half the battle for me in using public restrooms is the hand-washing part.  I never know what the conditions will be like:  Will there be enough soap?  Will I have to touch sink handles to turn on the water?  Will I have to touch the paper towel dispenser to get a paper towel?  Will there even be a paper towel dispenser or just those hand dryer things I don’t like to use (partly because you often have to touch them!)?  ...

As the holiday season arrives, I sometimes think about how OCD affected this time of year for me in ways I never knew.  When I was struggling with scrupulosity, there was of course compulsive prayer surrounding the religious holiday of Christmas.  That was the most obvious form my compulsions took.  I felt compelled not only to pray, but to pray "right."  If I had bad thoughts while I was praying or if forgot important parts (or if I simply suspected that I might have forgotten important parts),  I had to start over.  So, secretly in hidden in my bedroom with the door closed, I prayed, hoping no one interrupted. Because, if they did, I would then have to stop, pretend like I had been doing something else, only to start over yet again as soon as they were gone. Sometimes if I couldn't seem to get the prayer "right" I would begin reciting the words aloud, hoping to make them stick, hoping to make them somehow seem more final and sure so that I wouldn't ha...

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...