Acceptance

The jist of my former lost post was this:

The goal is not the absence of fear, but the acceptance that things can happen and that life goes on anyway.

Living my life in fear of what might happen is not living my life. These things may never come to fruition. Or they might. But either way, giving in to ocd means trading the possibility of something undesirable happening for guaranteed misery.

Acceptance. Not the absence of risk, but the healthy acceptance of healthy levels of risk. Yes, a few shitty things happened to me a couple of years ago. Some of them could not be prevented with any level of effort on my part. The things that could have been prevented required no extraordinary risk avoidance, I just failed to do the bare minimum. I put myself in a situation that was very likely to end up badly (not by ocd standards, but by actual standards). And considering the level of risk, what happened was pretty mild. The fallout was not, but that was all ocd.

Yes, my intellect works just fine. But the other part of my brain, the one which operates on more primal urges like fear, is having a much more difficult time catching on.

Acceptance. That is my mantra. Reasonable risk. Acceptance. Not absence of fear. Just acceptance.

Would You Like Scabs With That?

Oh, ocd, you tricky bastard.

It's become clear to me time and again that ocd does not want me to enjoy my life. It's like having a bully 24/7. Mostly, I am regaining control, but there are times when all hell breaks loose. One of those times was Monday, when some clothing items I ordered from a favorite store arrived in the mail. I opened the package, thoroughly (to the point of ridiculous) inspected each item, and placed them in the "safe" pile. And then it happened.

As I was unfolding a pair of pants, something was inside of the last fold which looked exactly like a chunk of scab picked off of a wound. I froze, broke into an instead sweat, and felt paralyzed with fear. Of course, everything in the bag was then considered contaminated, and every item was returned. I have no idea what that actually was, but it was disgusting. My ocd tells me there aren't many things which look exactly like a scab, but in reality I'm sure there was a perfectly logical explanation. But ocd wouldn't have it. I will not be able to order again from that store for a very long time.

(Edit: this entry was about three times as long, but when I published it, Blogger ate the rest of my f#%king post. I'm not pleased. I'm also not re-writing it, because I spend enough of my life redoing shit because of the goddamn ocd. I'm not doing it here, too.)

Band-Aid Success

My kitchen is clean. Boxes are dealt with as they arrive.

And today I removed a band-aid which has been in place since 2009. I cried the tears of a person being released from prison. Because, in a way, I was.

My progress hasn't been without difficult days, nor has it been particularly fast, but it continues to move forward.

Oh how my brain craves certainty. But nothing in life is certain, except possibly that one can drive oneself mad seeking it.

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.

Out With The Old Obsession, In With The New

An interesting thing I have noticed about OCD, through my efforts toward recovering my personal control, is that my mind quickly finds something else once a compulsion or obsession is calmed or eliminated. My mind will literally scream at me (well, not literally, just in the sense of a very intense stream of worried thoughts bombarding my consciousness) new, random things to worry about. For example, if the price total of several things I am buying doesn't feel right, or if something about one or more of the items feels wrong, I will be afraid that something bad will happen. I have struggled with that one before, but it mostly vanished when replaced by the more severe contamination fears. It is attempting to return, which I take to mean that the contamination obsessions are loosening their grip on my brain. At least with the magical thinking variation of OCD, I was functional and happy.

A Fungus Among Us

I think things are improving. However, I do find that it is very easy to slip backwards and to become a bit of a hermit by not leaving the house. I suppose dropping the decontamination ritual upon returning home would eliminate the whole desire to stay inside (which, in turn, exacerbates the OCD). But that will take some effort.

I have decided to set small daily goals, even if it is something as simple as packing a healthy lunch for my daughter instead of having her buy those disgusting school lunches. It is something we both want, and it will help me overcome some contamination issues with the OCD. It is currently difficult for me to touch most things because I fear that either I will contaminate it, or it will contaminate me. Which, of course, is absurd. I need to start living my life again and I know I can beat this.

My current goal is to pack a healthy lunch for my daughter each day this week, in addition to the typical exposures I have to deal with on a daily basis using the 15-minute rule (wait 15 minutes before acting on a compulsion). The 15-minute rule has worked wonders with my need to constantly mop the kitchen floor. I managed not to clean the floor for the entire duration of Thanksgiving break (that's Thursday through Monday, y'all!). Five days - a record for me. My lungs are thankful, and my hands are almost fully healed.

Quite unfortunately, due to all of the handwashing and the acrylic nails I was wearing, I managed to acquire onychomycosis (a fungal infection of the nails), which I understand is a bitch to get rid of. It's funny, because in all of my efforts to avoid contamination of various sorts, I ended up with a friggin' nail fungus.

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.

Diet and OCD

For as long as I can remember, I have been addicted to sugar. It isn't just that I like sugar, I go through withdrawal symptoms and have serious cravings without it. All of the information out there that says you feel better and the cravings diminish after a few days have proven completely irrelevant to my situation.

I appear to have reactive hypoglycemia; my blood sugar rises with a meal, but plummets like a rock right after. I get extremely sleepy and cold after a meal, unless I quickly follow with sugar. Problem is, eating candy or consuming a sweetened beverage like cocoa just sets me up for an even more precipitous drop in blood glucose - sometimes into the 40s and 50s. The solution? Perhaps not the best one, but I just keep on eating sugar.

It doesn't take a genius to ascertain that this plays havoc with my moods and energy levels. And, since adrenaline shots are the body's natural way of dealing with hypoglycemia (low blood sugar levels in the body), this diet can quickly and easily create an anxiety nightmare. In fact, at one point during my eating disordered days, I began experiencing actual panic attacks from the surges of adrenaline brought on by the extreme hypoglycemic episodes that resulted from consuming a pint of fat-free ice cream (which is not, by the way, sugar-free) and then rejecting it.

On days when I was having a particularly awful time with the OCD, I started looking for what" bad days" had in common. The answer? Yep, you guessed it. Sugar. I recently had one of my best run of days in two years in terms of rituals, obsessions and general OCD symptoms. Coincidentally, or not so much, I had run out of candy three days earlier and had been forced to snack on healthier sweet snacks like bananas and apples.

Though it is incredibly difficult, I am now doing my best to follow the hypoglycemic diet. This is basically a diabetic diet. I still allow myself some sweet things, but I make sure I have eaten protein or complex carbohydrates before indulging and I keep those indulgences small. It seems to be helping so far.

I was rather astonished at the amount of information on the internet about the connection between sugar and anxiety disorders, and diet and many so-called psychological disorders in general. It seems to me there is a great deal that our diets can do to heal us...and to destroy us.

While sugar avoidance is uncomfortable (and requires a heck of a lot more healthy food to replace those empty calories and keep my glucose levels balanced out), OCD compulsions and the nightmare grip it can have on my life is much worse.