OCD Reflections

Though I probably don't have enough of it to warrant a label, I think I do have some social anxiety.  It's gotten a lot better over the years - when I was a kid it was really so much worse.  Back then, I was often labeled "shy" or "quiet" and hated it because every time someone used one of those adjectives to describe me, it just seemed that much harder to overcome my difficulty of speaking up.  Those jolts of anxiety I got from voicing my opinion were intensified when I discovered that, despite my desire to be talkative and efforts to be outgoing, I was still perceived as being "quiet."   I had a hard time as it was being more vocal when not at ease, but when someone commented on how I was "shy," the self-consciousness would flare up even more, creating an even bigger hurdle to overcome when I wanted to express myself. Like I said, it's a lot better now.  I think through accidental exposure and repeated confrontation of social situ...

Sometimes I feel like I should just come with a disclaimer taped to my forehead for any potential roommate, apartment-mate, house-mate, or whatever: WARNING:  Proceed with caution.   This individual may exhibit odd behaviors and may spend an excessive amount of time washing/showering/doing laundry/avoiding dirty things.  Will do best to limit strange behaviors around you and to avoid inconveniencing you.   Roommate will initially seem normal and will go out of her way to be a polite and considerate roommate, but odd behaviors will begin to become apparent over time. I'm in the midst of packing and there's a lot to do, but I thought pausing to write about some of my worries would be a bit stress-reducing.  In fact, I suspect the immense pressure I feel to act "normal" during this stressful time will be leading me here frequently over the next few days and weeks.  So much is changing, and it's exciting.  But it's also overwhelming - especially f...

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...

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...

This guy's fooled many a fruit loop-bearing hiker or cheetoh-offering friend into thinking he's a chipmunk...but we know the truth tiny rodent...someone forgot their face stripes and WE know that he's just another squirrel like the rest of them.  Now get your paws off my shoe!!   And while you're at it, go wash your paws before eating anymore food begged off unwitting strangers!  What an audacious (and filthy) little fraud...I bet he didn't wash after using the restroom either ;). This morning I woke up after a particularly long night of sleep only to be greeted by my good old friend, more commonly known as the "fear of not really having OCD and somehow faking out the world as well as my self..."  Umm, yeah. The exposures for this sort of fear, as I have mentioned before, are the same as my usual exposures - do my homework successfully, because, if I can do my OCD homework successfully, then I must be a "fraud," right?  I mean, if I ca...

There are weeks where I really just feel like I am moving forward for the sole sake of moving forward.  Step by step, inch by inch.  This is one of those weeks.  I am finding that even the simplest of things are starting to feel like monumental tasks again - brushing my teeth, making my bed, washing my face, getting dressed.  Even writing here, which is usually quite enjoyable, seems somewhat like a task I must goad myself into doing. I think a lot of it has to do with the ups and downs of progress in fighting my OCD.  As I get better there are periods where I really challenge the thoughts I have and the urge to perform compulsions.  I feel free and alive.  The shackles seem temporarily removed.  And then I get used to that level of freedom.  It is no longer exciting, and those chains that still remain seem like an even heavier burden to bear.  What suddenly seemed easier with less weight to carry, starts to seem harder again.  T...

Though I have been looking for part-time jobs and have some promising prospects, I am gradually becoming a little bit more nervous about my financial situation.  I have savings - gifts from relatives from over the years given for holidays and birthdays, extra savings here and there from summer jobs.  I was a relatively frugal kid/teen and my parents took care of paying for my food/clothing so I didn't need to spend a lot of money.  But now, well, I am paying for almost all my expenses, BUT I don't have a job! On the one hand I feel like I should consider myself lucky - I don't have student loans to worry about paying back like many of my friends.  Scholarships greatly reduced my college tuition and my parents could afford to pay the difference and were kind enough to do so.   But even though I don't have to worry about loans, it's hard watching my savings gradually disappear - mostly to rent and health insurance and the cost of therapy.  Rent is sort of ...

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 ...

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...

So I've heard anxiety and discomfort described in a number of different ways:  panic, stress, nervousness, disgust, shame, etc.  Tack on the word "attack" after any of the above descriptors and you have a name for those episodes where said feelings overwhelm the person experiencing them.  While I have most certainly experienced all of these emotions as part of my OCD, they don't quite capture the essence of what I feel when when my anger and frustration is not directed at a certain event or situation, but rather at myself.  Those times are more like "self-hatred attacks."  That's really the best way to describe those times of pure self-loathing and reproach.  Not pleasant.  Not at all. I'm sure everyone experiences self-hatred from time to time, or even frequently.  But sometimes I feel like I have molded it into a highly refined art in and of itself.  Don't get me wrong.  I certainly don't presume to have the market corned on self-rep...

Today was a ROUGH day for me, as much as I can let myself admit that.  I overslept this morning and got to my therapy appointment late.  Normally I can deal with this because I am just so glad to be there getting help, even if my time is cut short by my tardiness (often a product of some sort of OCD business...).  But today, wow, I just shut down.  I just didn't know what to say. Normally I am overly loquacious when it comes to therapy appointments.  I always seem to have a million things that I want to say or ask for which there is never enough time.  So it must have been strange for my therapist indeed, when I just kind of sat there, looking down at my exposure log, listening but making limited eye contact and not saying much in response.  I was just so wrapped up in my frustration and anger at myself.  I just couldn't seem to pull myself out of it long enough to really think and engage in the conversation.  Meanwhile, it seemed like the ...

Maybe I am young and naive to believe such a thing, but I like to think (and sincerely hope) that I will never work as hard as I did in high school ever again.  High school, looking back, was like one long OCD marathon that kept me constantly exhausted and feeling like I was on the verge of emotional breakdown.  I pushed myself so hard because the alternative seemed unacceptable.  I wasn't sure how I would be okay with myself if I didn't.  So I pushed, and pushed, and pushed, and as such, my life was school, and school was my life.  It was a love/hate relationship - a relationship saturated with the compelling force of a mental disorder. I'm pretty sure that at times my teachers both appreciated and were simultaneously annoyed by my dogged attention to detail, perfectionism, and tendency to push my limits - theirs and my own.  I was almost always the last one to finish a test, making the rest of the class wait in impatient silence long after most others ...

I often have a hard time knowing what to do because I sometimes feel like I am forcing myself, or even choosing, to perpetuate my OCD through the performance of rituals.  I get confused and go around in circles in my head, wondering if, unlike everyone else out there with OCD, I should be held more responsible for my symptoms and am less deserving of help because I might actually be "making myself" have the disorder.  However, trying to figure this question out is next to impossible, and I suspect that needing an answer is really just another compulsion - feeling like I need to know the answer to this before I can engage fully in treatment is just another OCD trap. On the flip side, I often have a hard time with myself because I feel like I should be performing more rituals and doing them better.  Instead of feeling bad for choosing to do compulsions, as described above, I feel bad for not choosing to do them, as well.  After all that I have learned about OCD, ...

(Image via Wikipedia) There is an analogy that strikes me as being particularly representative of what it is like to fight OCD in the moment, and sometimes I have to remind myself of this analogy before I begin something that I know will catch OCD's attention and lure it in.  For lack of a less nerdy reference, this analogy involves a scene from the 6th Harry Potter movie (and maybe the book, too, I just haven't read that far in the series, so I wouldn't know if it happens the same way in the original).   Though it is probably a common movie scenario, the Harry Potter version is just the one that comes to mind. If you have read Harry Potter, you will probably know what I am talking about better than I do.  Forgive me for any inaccuracies.  If you haven't, well, like I said, I think it's probably a common theme. The scene to which I am referring is one in which Harry Potter has accompanied headmaster Dumbledore on a mission to retrieve an object of particular i...

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...