OCD Reflections

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...

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...

UGH. UGH. UGH.  I hate how OCD can lead me to rage almost instantaneously sometimes.  Of course that rage is misdirected.  I should be getting mad at the OCD, but instead I get mad at the person who unknowingly got between me and my compulsive avoidance.  When I take out the trash, I avoid touching door handles.  Before getting the trash ready to go, I go downstairs and unlock and open the door so that I won't have to touch the door handle with my contaminated trash hands when I actually carry the garbage out of our house.  I did this as usual after doing my regimen of exposures that I have started attempting daily as part of my new intensive CBT program.  So downstairs I went, passing the girlfriend of one of my housemate's along the way.  As I passed her I thought, "She better not have closed the door!  I opened it for a very specific and deliberate reason..." And of course, like most normal people would probably do when they see an ope...

Some days I feel like I have somehow managed to bury myself by means of excessive avoidance and procrastination.  When I don't have things I HAVE TO do or HAVE TO be at, it is hard for me to find the will to do the things I dread - to shower, brush my teeth, clean, etc.  Even when there are places I had planned to go or things I had planned to do, there are times when the consequences of missing those things still isn't motivating enough for me to face the dread they stir up.  And so my life is put on hold, tasks accumulate, and time slips by as I sleep the day away or search my computer, numbly looking for something to entertain me, something to fill the time until I muster the courage to go face what I'm avoiding.   I seem to go through cycles.  First there is the dread that arises when I either actually need to do something or when OCD says I need to do something.  Usually it goes something like, "I can't do x until I have taken care of z ."...

It's amazing how fast things can go sour.  One minute I'm at least considering compliance with my homework and exposures, and the next, I have given up completely.  Annoyed and frustrated, feelings which I am starting to recognize as signs of my "anxiety," I rebel, furiously scorning any further attempt at cooperation with my therapist's recommendations.  I am angry.  Angry and frustrated.  So I metaphorically throw my hands up in the air and basically say, "Fine OCD!  Fine!  You win.  Are you happy now? Huh?  Are you happy now?!  I give in.  I'm done fighting for the day.  Congratulations.  Look! I'll give you everything you wanted and more."  And that's how I end up compulsively showering, washing my hands, re-washing clothes, or sleeping on the floor.  Push me a little too far and over the edge I go.  Tonight I'm already off the cliff. My therapist would tell me to fight back.  To use that anger no...

I'm not exactly sure why, but I've been feeling a bit sad now and then lately.  Nothing in particular causes it - in fact, things have been going fairly well, for the most part.  But sometimes my feelings slosh around freely - up and then down, down and then up - without any real rhyme or reason.  But I know if I get up and make myself busy, if I engage my mind in things I want to get done, my mood will lift. There was a time in my life when I couldn't depend on such things to bring my spirits up.  Though I wasn't diagnosed, I really believe that I suffered from depression as a child and then later, in early adolescence, as well.  I also suspect that the depression that set in was related to my then undiagnosed OCD.  At that time, I didn't have a name for the fears that swam around in my head, the irrational worries that made me feel sick to my stomach and very, very alone.  It was only when I felt like I just couldn't go on anymore that I would fina...

Ever since I learned about the concept of "entropy" in my high school physics class, it seemed to sum up nicely the enemy I faced - the tendency of the world to move towards lower energy states - aka disorder and disorganization - in the absence of outside influence.  OCD is all about demanding order, certainty, finality and completion; thus, this concept, entropy, is really OCD's arch-nemesis.  The world isn't meant to be perfectly ordered and complete.  Things naturally move towards messiness - dust collects, dirt and grime build up, things come unsorted, messes get made as the world gravitates towards lower energy states.  It's only through the constant investment of additional energy to keep things "in their place" that we manage to temporarily stave off the crumbling of our highly ordered lives. As soon as we stop our energy-taxing efforts to keep things organized, that natural process seems to take over again.  It's only a matter of time. Oka...

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...

Over the past several days that I've been out of town, I've missed writing here and having the chance to read and respond to others' posts.  It actually makes me a little anxious being away, which is why I have been half trying to keep myself away intentionally and half avoiding it unintentionally because I don't want to write something incomplete.  I don't want to begin putting my thoughts down if I might have to stop before those thoughts have been captured accurately.  And, I have been avoiding reading and commenting on others' blogs because I have difficulty looking at just a few if I can't read them all.  I am always too anxious and eager to read more.  So, for the most part, I have been avoiding it altogether. Nevertheless, I think this has been good for me.  I still have a couple days more of my trip and separating myself from this site and the internet in general is probably a healthy change of pace.  Getting out of my head, out of my usual r...

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 ...