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...

So I realize that I haven't really kept up with summarizing my journey on through my intensive treatment program.   I am now at the close of week 3 and much of weeks 2 and 3 were like week 1.  Each week has had its ups and downs but the overall product is certainly progress, progress which at times feels like frighteningly much and at other times like far too little.  Hopefully presenting a brief snapshot of the experience and pulling out some of the highlights will help me focus on the areas where I have succeeded as well as those that still need a lot of work. I have three home visits each week.  During these sessions, we have sort of been going room by room through my house doing exposures.  Of course, we started with my bedroom which is where I spend most of my time.  I now have an established "circuit" of exposures that I am supposed to do each day in my bedroom.  Mostly it involves touching a lot of things I consider dirty and then indiscr...

Sometimes we are so focused on battling OCD on one front that we hardly notice when it sweeps in from another angle, offering deceptively sweet new reasons to engage in compulsive behavior... Oh no!  What if I no longer have OCD???   Now those, I think, are officially the words of a crazy person.  Of course, this theme is far from new for me, but it's finding fun new ways to try to integrate itself into my recovery. Earlier this evening, as I did some of my exposure homework, I noticed something:  Windex doesn't seem to cause me as much discomfort as it did in the not-so-distant past.  I feel like the appropriate response would be:  "Woo hoo!  Hooray!  I must be getting better!  I can do this without it bothering me so much!  Things are getting easier!  Take that OCD!" Hah.  Wouldn't that be nice.  It's more like: "Wait, hold on.  Does this not bother me so much?  I don't think it does.  Oh no!  ...

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...

I periodically do this thing where I decide that it's just not worth it to go to bed.  It's a bad habit, and I'm perpetuating that bad habit once again tonight.  I'm no longer in school.  The need for all-nighters has passed, and yet I still pull them, and mostly because of OCD. This is how I ended up making the decision tonight:  I have an appointment at 8am.  Before I go to that appointment I'd like to shower, which means that, even though I have gotten my shower time down to under 30 minutes, I should probably be sure to be up and about by about 5:30 to make time for all the other OCD shenanigans that usually end up taking place before/after my shower and while I get ready.  That way I can be ready to leave by about 7:00/7:15 for my 8am appointment.  Woo. Still not really a reason to stay up all night, right?  Well, there's more.  I woke up late today and had to head out to my office session without showering, which is something I like...

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!