Ignoring The Lion

My ocd evolved quite rapidly from one very specific concern to a spiderweb of relationships to other illnesses, people, places, objects, and experiences. While I wasn't relieving myself in bottles in a dark room like Howard Hughes at my worst, I'd still call it severe. Being housebound for six months qualifies, and I was.

Even eating got to be too challenging; there is always the risk for an unexpected exposure if something doesn't look right or appears to have been tampered with in some manner. For a period of time, I was sleeping on the floor with no blanket or pillow, eating nothing but bottled water, coffee, and snack crackers, and not even stepping out my front door to retrieve packages or mail. The wake-up call came when the "diet" ocd had imposed on me started making me retain fluid in my ankles and my kidneys started hurting all the time from constant dehydration. While I drank the bottled water, it wasn't much. Opening the caps was an exposure for me, and I avoided it until my thirst was so intense it was almost unbearable.

I utilized a broom to reach items placed on the wrong side of the door when mail packages arrived. Literally every single moment of my day consisted of cleaning and washing rituals, and even my sleep was invaded by contamination nightmares. If I came into contact with anything on myself which I believed to be an infection of any sort, a minimum of 4-8 hours of ritual body cleaning and disinfection of the area around me and the area around that would follow.

At my worst, I truly believed suicide was the only way out. I thought my life was over and I was left with an existence of suffering and watching like a ghost as my life, he one I once enjoyed so much, kept going on without me. This was before I experienced the results of response prevention.

If someone had told me five years ago that I'd be living that way, I would have laughed and said, "There's no way in hell I'd ever do that to myself." I completely understand why people have such difficulty imagining why we do the things ocd tells us to do. The worst of it, I think, it the fact that lessening the grip ocd has on me involves reacting to and doing things in such a way that it feels wildly counterintuitive. Common sense says wash if you feel dirty, and our biology has us programmed to react to fear in a certain way. I always say that reducing the ocd's power involves something akin to having a hungry, roaring lion in your living room and knowing that the only way to avoid being consumed is to ignore any urge to respond to the lion or fear the situation causes. Doing anything to placate the lion will only cause it to grow and become angrier. Mindf_ck.

But it is what it is.

I went to sleep last night without washing my hands at all. I didn't plan it that way, but I sat in the recliner feeling like I just needed a break for a moment, then I woke up hours later. I decided to skip the rituals I knew I'd need to go to my bed and sit with the fact that I hadn't washed my hands because it was still a step in the right direction. In all, I slept over 10 hours in the chair. After being awake for two straight days, I guess I needed it. I washed my hands when I got up, but for less than 5 minutes. Feelin' good. In the past, falling asleep with dirty hands might have worked briefly, but it would have been on the floor only and I would have had to spray the floor with disinfectant, change my clothes, and wash any uncovered part of my body as I cannot know what I touched in my sleep. None of that happened, and I don't really feel the need.

Correlation: Stress Level and Finding What I Fear

I'm pretty sure I found blood and pieces of skin or scabs no fewer than 20 times yesterday. I felt the overwhelming need to change my clothes after bringing in the mail and opening a "scary" package. But I didn't. I also felt the urge to change after part of the grocery bag hit my sleeve, but I resisted. And when I stepped on a cold spot on the floor and was convinced it was wet, which is terrifying to me because I can never be sure why it was wet, I was sure I'd have to change my sock and quite possibly wipe my foot with bleach water. But I didn't. And I wore the clothes and the socks to bed.

Yesterday's exposures included, total:

• handling visibly dirty laundry, some of which I've been too afraid to tackle for months


• putting away groceries


• grocery bag hitting my sleeve


• bringing in the mail and opening a package which "looked contaminated"


• finding things that looked like scabs or blood


• stepping on a spot I believed was wet with an unknown substance


• cleaning the toilet


• going to bed in "dirty" clothes


• Washing for <20 minutes

For the fourth night in a row, I washed for no more than 20 minutes and subsequently slept in my own bed. I did stay up rather late last night, but being Saturday I was able to sleep in and still got a good night's sleep. Sleep is magical when it comes to dealing with the stress that ocd brings. Being exhausted makes everything so much worse and leads to a lot of, "Screw it, I just don't have the capacity to deal with this today." Sleep is absolutely critical, non-negotiable.

It is the weekend, and I suspect my typical Friday anxieties had a great deal to do with why I felt tense and found so many things scary yesterday. I still feel a bit stressed because I don't care much for weekends, but I'm determined to stay on track. If ocd gets an inch, it'll take a trip around the globe.

Some Big Stuff

Typically, when groceries come into the house, it is mandatory that they (the containers) are cleaned with bleach. This results in a nasty bleach odor, runny nose, and raw or even bleeding hands and fingers. But even soap was not acceptable. Well, no more. I started with washing just half of the groceries with soap, the other half with bleach. Now, I am washing pretty much everything with regular soap. Eventually, I would like not to wash my groceries at all, but this is huge progress.

In addition, I am now no longer using gloves to handle the laundry. At all. And while that went easier than I expected, I had a really difficult step backwards immediately after. I found something on my daughter's pants that I was sure was something awful. I went on a massive cleaning spree after that, including discarding the pants. Not proud of that. And it totally took the joy right out of my accomplishment (I have not handled all of the laundry glove-free in approximately a year and a half).

I am beginning to feel present again in my life. I'm not where I want to be, but I am feeling happier. I am beginning to enjoy things I used to enjoy before I hit rock bottom. I spent hours today listening to music and singing, and even dancing with my son. It was great. Smiling genuinely feels so good!

There is still the matter of my not leaving the house in quite some time. Oh, I have plenty of excuses, but none of them really justify it. The difference now is that I really would like to go out, and I am nowhere near as fearful as I was before. The weather just really sucks.

Oh, and I don't have nail fungus. I have nail psoriasis. Heh. Either way, my nails look like shit. One of these days I will polish them and take yet another step toward feeling like my former self. Not there yet, but working on it.

ERP Works

I think I am still in shock. Yes, all of the experts will tell you that ERP is the gold standard for OCD treatment, but when you are staring into the hopeless abyss that is the reality that becomes of a life turned living ritual hell, it is really difficult to believe that anything can set you free.

I am not free yet. In fact, I have a lot of work ahead of me. But doing ERP the way I am supposed to has restored something that OCD stole from me: hope. I have been able, through doing ERP, to do things I have not done in two years. I am stunned that this works, mostly because it feels so counter-intuitive at first. I mean, come on, forcing myself to do things that my brain is screaming at me to avoid? Things that the mere thought of result in my heart racing, my palms sweating and feelings of near panic? How can making myself suffer heal me? But it does.

Today, I was able to confront one of my biggest fears. Two of them, actually. Not only was I able to proceed with what I needed to do without getting into major rituals, I tackled both of these things with minimal anxiety symptoms. Typically, even after my rituals, these two things leave my pulse pounding and my breathing shallow and quick. Not today. And, at least two or three times, something happened that absolutely, unequivocally would have sent me back to do things over again. A couple of months ago, nothing would have gotten done tonight. This time, I completed the task.

Despite the fact that I am still in the thick of this and anticipate my share of difficult days and mistakes, I feel...hope.

Consistency is Key

If anyone reading this is suffering through the nightmare that is OCD, and you are wondering what the trick is to ERP, I can tell you: consistency and ritual prevention.

For a few months, I did what I thought was ERP. I would force myself to do exposures, then I would either ritualize for hours afterward or I would take days off between ERP exercises to "recover". The only thing that recovered was OCD; I was getting worse for my efforts. The experience reminds me of a quote that really stuck with me, though I can't for the world recall where I found it. It basically stated that you cannot recover from OCD within the parameters of OCD. It is such an important thing to remember, because it is 100% true.

I have been feeling better lately, but not without hitting a new rock bottom first. One day, completely undone by my own anxiety, kneeling on the floor as bleach dissolved the skin on my hands and knees, I was howling in agony...and still could not stop the ritual. In fact, the pain was so severe (my chemical burns were so bad that I was bleeding) that I kept becoming distracted and having to start over. I was pleading for it to end, and I no longer cared how.

Over the days that followed, I knew I had two options; I either had to take control of my life back, or the self that had existed for more than 30 years would cease to be forever. I asked myself a very critical question; Is anything worth this? Anything? And I thought about that for a while. I examined the question, every terrible possibility, allowing myself to become immersed in the fears that had spawned this demon OCD. And the answer, unequivocally, was no. Even my very worst case scenario was almost laughable by comparison to the hell I had inflicted upon myself for two years.

Now, just having this realization is not a cure, and the feelings don't go away. However, it has served as a catalyst for me to begin doing the real, hard work of ERP. And, much to my astonishment, ERP does work. It really does. I know this because there are things I am doing now with a fair amount of ease which would have crippled me with fear to even think about a few months ago. Often, I find myself smiling because the work is becoming less like work and more automatic.

I faced a fear today that would have sent me into days of compulsion hell. I still did some precautionary measures, but it was not a full-on ritual disaster and I am not overcome with stress and anxiety. That alone is amazing. I don't think I'm out of the woods yet; I will never underestimate the power of OCD. But ERP, well, it's pretty powerful, too.

Eh, So What?

I recall sitting in the counseling center office on my college campus a few years back, emaciated and battling anorexia, nervous about, well, everything. The counselor made the profoundly obvious and wildly understated remark that I appeared to have some anxiety. As I discussed the what-if tune that is often on repeat in my mind, she said to me, "Have you ever just said to yourself, 'so what if'?"

So what if? My first thought was that this woman clearly had no grasp of the seriousness of my concerns. I was not your typical college student, with my most pressing worry being my roommate or whether I was going to get an A or a B on the mid-term. I was married, living off-campus, trapped somewhere between college life, full-on adult life and a nervous breakdown. I had an ocean of issues from my past, none of which had ever been properly addressed or dealt with - and they were swallowing me whole. My mere presence on campus was triggering, and the PTSD was the catalyst for the severe anorexia which had brought me to the office in the first place. My problems were beyond the scope of this hippie, feel-good, tree-hugging woman in the college counseling office, and her statement proved it. I felt...hopeless.

Fast forward a decade to present day. A divorce, re-marriage, children and a whole host of new issues later, and I have a relapse of my holyshitIfeelhelpess need for control. This time, it manifests in fear of contamination. And oh boy, did it manifest. It seems that, when I do something, I don't do it small. This need for control, turned fear, turned disorder has swallowed my whole life much like the anorexia did. Oddly enough, that gives me hope; I recovered from the eating disorders. And let me tell you, I was obsessed to the most infinite degree you can imagine. Weigh, measure, exercise, eat, purge, weigh, measure...repeat. If my mind can switch off of that, it can do the same with this, I'm sure of it.

It frustrates me that anything has a grip like this on me. For all my fear of contamination, my excessive handwashing led to a fungal nail infection. And with that, a member of my household ended up with a tiny patch of ringworm, probably from my doing the laundry with still-damp fingernails before I treated the nail infection. Nothing a little Lotrimin can't handle. The funny thing about that is that, had I just been doing things normally, a typical daily routine would not have been as likely to result in my spreading a fungus among us. So ironic. Good thing fungus doesn't totally trip me out. Interestingly, it used to.

Tonight I was reading some blogs. A woman casually mentioned that her child had caught something I fear. She mentioned it as something annoying, something to be dealt with and moved on from like so many difficult days. I think I would have totally lost my shit. But that's when I realized something - shit happens. To all of us. Even when we live in a bubble of disinfection and washing until our hands bleed, perfectly sterile is just not possible. No wonder we drive ourselves to the brink of insanity (or worse) trying.

My mother tried. My grandmother used to always say to her, "You can't put pillows around them forever," and she was so right. You end up focusing so much on the pillows that your kid ends up getting hurt because of the pillows, metaphorically speaking. Maybe not physically, but most definitely psychologically. I never once witnessed my mother taking a "meh" attitude toward anything; everything we encountered, from tonsillitis to injuries, always resulted in a massive overreaction. We lived in emergency rooms, she totally abused the healthcare system and I have taken so many antibiotics in my lifetime that I had developed sensitivity reactions to most of them by the time I was in my early 20s. Overkill is not a good idea, clearly, but I never learned otherwise.

Time is teaching me, though. Tonight I was thinking about one of my fears. For the second time in recent weeks, I thought to myself...okay, so what? Is it really as bad as what I have been doing to myself? And it makes me tense just typing that, but increasingly often I am beginning to truly feel that way. I could fear anything. Anything. You could fear anything. Is there a little bit of truth to some of it, like contamination fears? Sure. But is it worth un-lived lives, lost hope, bleeding hands, missing out on everything we once enjoyed?

CERTAINTY IS NOT AN OPTION.

Sticking With It

Some goals are too embarrassing to bother posting. However, since I have made some progress, I will fess up now. A few challenges - some new, some old, dealt with in the past several days:

My children have a new swing set. Things not within my home are not within my control. Thus, the thing feels like a source of possible contamination to me. I am afraid of it. They, however, are not. And the thing is awesome. The mere thought of having such a something in my backyard at their age nearly gives me butterflies just thinking of it. They must play on it. Though my 0 - 100 anxiety level was a 90 when it arrived, I am now at about a 30.

My kitchen has been relatively clean. Back in the day, before this contamination OCD took over my life, my home used to be the envy of others. It's not big, it's not fancy, and it's not even new. But it was nice and tidy all of the time, even when my children were babies. Funny how fear of touching everything makes keeping a tidy home impossible. Dust accumulates, dishes pile up, crumbs sneak up on the kitchen table and seem to multiply while there. But my kitchen is currently, aside from a few dishes in the "soaking side" of the sink, clean. And it has been all week. I have been touching the dirty dishes, loading the dishwasher, putting clean dishes away, all like clockwork. Easy? No. But it is getting easier. I am really proud of myself for sticking with it.

I have gone full 24 hour days without washing my hands, 3 times this month. Now, I am not going out of the house on these days, nor am I doing laundry, but I am doing other typical household necessities. The episode of The OCD Project where everyone had to give up their rituals inspired me. These exposures, I think, have led to massive progress elsewhere. A couple of months ago, this would have been unthinkable.

I cleaned the kitchen floor. There was a semi-permanent layer of film over the floor from accumulated floor soap. It took me all day today, but I did it. And I did a load of laundry - after messing with the nasty floor all day. And I cleaned my kids' summer sandals and shoes and they are ready for wearing, also after the floor. Exposures, exposures, exposures.

And I am really feeling good.

Habituation Happened!

If there is a time of day when my rituals are at their worst, I would have to say right before I go to sleep. The thought of contaminating my bed is more than I can handle. Typically, my pre-bed handwashing ritual alone takes 25 minutes and half a roll of paper towels, and that isn't even considering the clothing change - the duration of which largely depends upon whether I do it correctly, and in the correct order. Being so preoccupied with those details, it is often that I make a mistake and touch something I "shouldn't" and have to start over from scratch.

The other night, I encountered a cashier at a convenience store with a very obvious infection on her hand. I was horrified, put down my items and immediately left the store. I now feel like that set of clothing, my car, my seatbelt, my purse, and anything I touched before I scoured my hands is contaminated. Last night, as I was about to head off to bed (all clean and ready), I touched a door with my bare hand - a door that I felt was contaminated. Initially, my anxiety was a 95 of 100. I felt that I had to change clothes and go through my handwashing ritual immediately. But I didn't. I sat with it. I kept reminding myself of all the times I have heard and read that the rituals are not necessary to reduce the anxiety, and eventually habituation will occur - and that is the key to freedom from this crap!

It took nearly an hour for me to even consider not washing before going to bed, but I began considering it. I calculated my stress level in my mind and figured it had come down to around 60. Impressed with the drop, I forced myself to wait longer. Not long after, maybe 20 minutes or so, I realized that I was comfortable going to bed without doing anything! Well, I did wipe my hand on my PJ pants, but clearly, that wasn't washing or changing so I will let it go for now. By the time I put my head on my pillow, my anxiety was about a 10. I am still kind of amazed about that. Equally interesting is how empowered I feel today, and how much quieter that bully is than usual.