OCD Reflections

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...

Sometimes (like now), I find myself disproportionately angry with the world.  At times like this I feel like society, our culture, has set me up for disappointment.  I feel like I have been taught, indeed instilled with, certain beliefs that are later turned on their heads.  I feel lied to.  I feel betrayed.  I'm angry.  And then I have to watch and bear witness as others merrily go about their day, unaffected by these things that society promotes, blissfully unaware of any sort of duplicity that others might see and experience.  Or, if they are aware of the incongruent messages and actions of society as a whole, they remain somehow unfazed by the anomalies and can proceed with their lives unruffled by the discordance. The particular subject of my anger today is a bit too personal for me to describe here.  (Yes, I know it is anonymous, but still, I already have a hard enough time talking about this particular thing with my therapists.  Put...

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...

Sometimes I think I have a hard time seeing just how much OCD I have and have always had.  Today I was reading an article from my Winter 2011 IOCDF newsletter.  There was a personal account from a parent whose son had suddenly starting exhibiting OCD symptoms after apparently acquiring a strep infection (I still find the whole concept of PANDAS intriguing - in college, I did a fairly in depth project on a related neurological issue also caused by strep, Sydenham's chorea).  Anyways, when she mentions the things her son suddenly "convinced" himself he had to do, like twirl past his sister's room to prevent something bad from happening, the degree to which OCD has been part of my life for YEARS, since I was also a kid, becomes more apparent. I'm caught off guard by accounts like this one, thinking, "Wait!  But doesn't everyone do that?"  My day is probably filled with all sorts of these little compulsions that hardly even register anymore because I ...

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...

Bad advice is everywhere when it comes to dealing with OCD.  Today I ran across one of those yahoo question/answer deals where someone described taking extra long showers with a great big helping of compulsive avoidance.  This person asked:  how can I make my showers more pleasant?  What can I do?  I never answer those sort of things, but as I read the answers that had been provided so far, I quickly changed my mind. The answers angered me.  And it's not the fault of those answering - they just don't know better.  Answers like "try listening to music to relax yourself," "dance in the shower," or "maybe take a bath instead so even if you don't want to touch certain parts of your body to wash them, they are at least getting a little bit clean."  These are the kind of answers that I got from the first therapist I saw when this all began.  Answers like, "Why don't you try to do some deep breathing exercises to reduce your stress?" o...