The Cold Pool of OCD

Why can't I just stop?

Can I just stop?

How do I stop?

I've come to a few realizations. One is that you can't just stop having ocd. The other is that you must just stop doing ocd. Habituation is jumping into a cold pool; at first, the shock to your body from the cold water is unpleasant. You might have the urge to jump right out of the chilly water and back into the warm air. However, you also probably want to swim and enjoy being in the pool. To get there, you have to wait. You have to allow habituation to occur. If you wait, you'll eventually realize that the water no longer feels uncomfortable. After a few minutes, the water will feel quite comfortable. You will no longer experience the urge to leap out of the pool for the sake of escaping the unpleasantness of the chill.

Now, the water temperature has not changed; the only difference is that habituation has occurred. The unpleasantness, the cues from your brain telling you, "Holy crap, this water is COLD!" have stopped coming. Again, nothing has changed about the situation, the water, or your physical self, per se. Nothing, that is, except habituation. You've "gotten used to" the pool water and you are now free to enjoy whatever activity you jumped into the pool for in the first place. Even if you get out of the pool, say to use the diving board, you will still feel acclimated to the water temperature. Unless you stay out of a few minutes, in which case you will habituate to the air temperature around you. Which is why it is important to keep going back into the pool.

Which is why it is important to keep going back into the places that scare you or make you feel uncomfortable. Avoiding jumping into the pool will not make the water any warmer, and avoiding contamination will not make something any less contaminated.

Habituation also happens much faster if you just jump right the hell into the pool. Easing your way in a little at a time just allows the process to last longer, your mind to consider the coolness of the water longer, your body to experience the unpleasantness longer. The person who jumped in at the same time you started tiptoeing in is already having fun and enjoying the water, while you're still standing there thigh-deep, re-experiencing the shock of the chilly water one step at a time. Whose experience of getting used to the water is likely to be more negative? Who is more likely to avoid the unpleasantness in the future? The tiptoer, of course.

And OCD is the same.

I have the power to either strengthen or take the wind right out of the sails of ocd. Every time I react to an obsessive or frightening thought (i.e. OMG, that red dot is blood!) by washing or performing some compulsion or ritual, I am telling my brain that it was correct in its assessment of the risk. In doing this, my brain takes my action as confirmation, and the compulsion is deemed "necessary" in the future. An unrelated pair of things becomes related, and OCD gains strength and validity. Now all red spots are dangerous and require a decontamination ritual - even if they're easily recognizable as simple polkadots in a pattern on a dress.

I went to sleep two nights in a row with no soap & water handwashing. None. I did briefly wipe my hands with a cloth, but that was it. Will this continue? Likely not quite yet. But I am hoping it will help me break the 4-hour handwashing ritual that nightmares are made of. Time will tell. And meanwhile, I will keep reminding myself of the cold pool.

Britney Spears, a Book, and Contamination

I'm kind of obsessed with Britney Spears for the past few years. Not because I'm a fan or anything, and not in a stalkerish kind of way, but because this beautiful girl who was on top of the world had such a public breakdown in what had to have been an unimaginably painful way for most people to comprehend. My life began to crumble not long after, from ocd, and since it is speculated that Britney has bipolar, it's made me feel as if no one is immune to the cages our brains can lock us into. And I have to admit, I still keep hoping the "old Britney" will re-emerge, because that would give me more hope for myself. But I look at her now and see a shell of what once was.

Of course, I have no idea what goes on in her own world, what her everyday successes look like, or if she even has bipolar disorder. But, maybe because we are so close in age, I compare myself to her a bit. I'm certainly not famous and would never want to be, but Britney shows us that we all struggle. I choose to learn from that. And I will continue to hope that she makes it through whatever it is she's still obviously dealing with and finds real happiness. Everyone deserves to have some happiness, and I think she's suffered a lot.

Or maybe I'm projecting. Because I've been suffering deeply with the ocd lately. I am currently reading a great book called Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life: The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy by Steven C. Hayes, PH.D. with Spencer Smith. I have read a lot of books on ocd, and this one is not ocd-specific, but it is absolutely the best self-help book on any topic that I have ever read. If you're struggling with anything, from anxiety to addiction to ocd to just things in life that drag you down, this book is life-changing.

I feel a bit odd saying that since I have really been dealing with some major ocd junk lately. The past three weeks have been some of the worst since contamination ocd began. I've been absolutely convinced that blood is on multiple things, which led to multiple rituals, which led to me feeling contaminated, which led to me not sleeping in bed and eventually me sleeping on the floor without so much as the comfort of a blanket or sheet. Life basically sucks right now.

Also, I'm convinced that I have an infection on my thumb, which has not changed much in the past year and a half that I've been convinced it was there. But I am afraid of doctors' offices, because sick people with diseases and infections go there, and I might come home with something worse than what I went there for...so I don't have any confirmation on the infection. Or lack thereof. But if I could get past the stupid thumb issue, which creates a plethora of bullshit side issues (keeping the bandaging clean, the HOURS it takes to re-bandage, the fear that the infection will somehow seep out and infect the whole damn household...I swear, I should make a site called Crazy Sh*t OCD Says), I think life would be pretty sweet.

But that's the problem, right there. If only and What if are the two phrases that prevent me from living fully. I want to sleep in my bed, take normal showers (instead of going through an hours-long disinfecting process), and get outside. All the time! Like I used to. Sigh. Why can't I just stop?

Okay, something mildly positive. I've been able to get to sleep the past three nights without a massive handwashing ritual. Just a quick wash or no wash at all. For about three days prior to that, I had spent approximately 3-5 rolls of paper towels, 1/2 a bottle of soap, and 4 or so hours washing my hands just to feel clean enough to go to sleep on the chair in the living room. Before I found blood on the back of the chair (seriously, wtf was that from!?) and started sleeping on the living room floor instead.

Just a Quick Wash...

We've all been there (us ocd people); you feel you've touched something contaminated and you just want to do a "quick wash", or you think you heard something in the house and you just want to do a "quick check". Haha, right.

That "quick" wash starts out okay, until you realize you've splattered "dirty" soap water onto the floor. Then you have to clean it, so you dry your hands and grab the floor cleaner. Then you have to start over with the hand washing. But now you're running out of paper towels or hand towels, or you've contaminated what you've got and need fresh ones. So you go get what you need and start again. By now, you've washed so many times you forget if you got each part of your hands...and wait...did you really clean up after the soap splatter, or did you just know you had to? Shit. You need to do that again. Meanwhile, you think your hair touched the contaminated cleaner bottle, so you have to clean that part of your hair. And because of all of the contamination you've been in, you'll need to change your clothes.

Or maybe you went to check out a noise you heard. And you did, but when you got back to bed you couldn't remember if you checked the window lock. So you went back to check. And once you were back in bed, you weren't sure if you really checked it or if you just went into the room and thought you checked it but really looked at something else. So you check again. But wait...did you check on your child? What if there was a blanket wrapped around his or her neck? You run out of your bedroom and into theirs. The kid is fine. Lather, rinse, repeat. You finally get done with this "quick" wash or check about 3 hours later. You're so exhausted you're asleep before your head hits the pillow.

This is why I have come to realize that "just a quick..." never is, no matter what it is, when you have ocd. The epic tidal wave of anxiety and exhaustion that could potentially (and probably will) overtake me if I decide that I need to do just a quick wash or check is often far worse than just sitting with the anxiety of whatever it is I'm trying to avoid. In fact, the experts would recommend going a step further and sitting with the anxiety while simultaneously imagining my worst case scenario. Honestly, I don't do the latter most of the time. I did once, and the result was kind of funny. But usually, just sitting with it is enough.

For example, I have a thing about contaminated water. Sometimes, when I am filling my coffee or tea cup with water in the morning, my ocd says, "Stop! Where did that water come from!? Were you paying attention to the faucet? Did it come from there? Or did you pick up a soaking cup full of old coffee and who knows what else?" Of course, this is absurd, and it sounds even more absurd when I externalize it by speaking it or writing it (the reason I came back to blogging!). There are a number of things I could reassure myself with. But, as absurd as it is, ocd is a powerful naysayer who can dismiss any measure of comfort and destroy my peace of mind in seconds. So I've stopped listening about the water. Because I've decided that drinking junk water is going to be more pleasant in any circumstance (even if it did, in fact, sit overnight soaking in a cup) than listening to ocd tell me I have to refill my damn coffee cup countless times before it feels "right" and I am allowed to be fully convinced of the safety of the water. Sometimes I even say aloud, "F%ck you, ocd. I'm using this water. I'm putting it in the microwave. See? Right there. And you can kiss my ass." Of course, I only say this if I am alone, which I usually am in the early morning. I don't know why, but when I talk back to ocd aloud, I feel more powerful. Eh, and maybe a little crazy, but whatever.

ERP is awesome. Well, maybe not the E (exposure) part, which is why you might often see me say just RP or response prevention. My ocd, this episode, has been what I would consider severe. I was housebound for 6 months, and wore only one pair of shoes for 2 years. I washed my hands for sometimes 3 hours at a time, and could not touch laundry without plastic gloves on my hands at one point. So for me, and I'm guessing some of you, simply preventing the response part of my constant friggin' anxiety and stress is huge all by itself. I don't need to seek exposures; simply getting out of bed and going pee in the morning constitutes an exposure for me. Really. But anyhow...

Recently, I found what I think is the best book ever written on the topic of ocd. It is called Coping with OCD: Practical Strategies for Living Well with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, by Troy DuFrene and Bruce Hyman. This book is fantastic; it hits all of the important points, stresses the importance of maintenance, and gives practical advice anyone can use. In short, it basically affirms that you're not alone, that they "get it", and gives you some very easy-to-follow instructions on how to set yourself free. Or, as they put it, to quiet the "Doomsayer". And ocd is a doomsayer, yes? And a bitch. And a bully. And so many other things. I find metaphor to be helpful in explaining my struggle with those who are unfamiliar with ocd. I like to say I have a bully living in my head 24/7, who only shuts up when I sleep. And back in the day, not even then! The bully even made its way into my dreams! Not lately, though.

Anyhow, I highly recommend the book. I'm not paid or encouraged to say that, I don't make money from my blog, and I'm not here for anyone's benefit but my own. And, if I am blessed enough to make a difference in someone else's life, your benefit. If I help even one person, even a little, by sharing my own struggle, it's all been worth it. And I sincerely mean that. I truly wish all of you who suffer with ocd a life free of it, where you can be you again. I don't even know you, and I want that for you. No one deserves this. I hate bullies, and ocd is one of the worst.

So this week, my goal is to avoid (as many times as possible) the "quick" wash, or the "quick" check. Want to join me? I'll be happy to cheer you on! If you're reading along and have a blog, I'd love to read yours, too, so leave a link in my comments. I add my regular reads to my sidebar.

Best to all of you.

Logical Brain vs. OCD Brain

It's so easy to backslide. And to make excuses. And to be in free fall before I even know what the hell hit me. I am becoming more adept at putting the brakes on. And it never ceases to amaze me how something that has me at a 95/100 on the ocd fear scale can lose the power to frighten me if I simply encounter something else that puts me into fear mode. That realization is helping me get some perspective on the degree to which ocd has control over my thoughts and feelings.

Blood and anything which looks skin-like are the two things I struggle the most with. Well, those and public areas which are wet. If I am in public and suddenly part of me gets wet, the fear that grips me is crippling. My most recent blood freakout exposures were a used item I ordered and a bag from the grocery store. There was a drop of what could only be (at least in my mind) blood on the ordered item, all rusty and droplet-shaped and there as if to challenge me. And second, what appeared to be a light smearing of blood on the grocery bag. I'm absolutely ashamed of how many groceries I threw away. I can fight a lot of things, but blood isn't one of them. The ordered item also found its way to the trash. This disorder, between cleaning supplies, ruined clothing from cleaning solutions and excessive washing, and things that just don't pass inspection and end up garbage, is a sickening financial burden.

I miss my life. I think of how I used to be, all of the things I used to do. Now, simply getting some sleep is a challenge. I often stay up all night because dealing with the bedtime routine where I simply wash my face and hands and brush my teeth is something which can turn into an hour-long mentally torturous mess if I do the least little thing wrong. And while I know that ERP is the absolute surest way to freedom, it is so counter-intuitive. Instinct is a damn strong thing. We are hard-wired for self-preservation and avoidance of danger. The stupid ocd is sending false messages to the danger centers of my brain, which in turn alert every other part of me, so the whole sensation becomes extremely real. And very powerful. Fighting my whole body as it screams DANGER feels like holding my breath when I need to breathe and expecting that I will receive all the oxygen I need by doing so; there are very real physiological urges there, and my brain doesn't seem to be able to easily make sense of why it should ignore these particular signals. My brain does not know they are false. Well, my logical brain knows they are false, but the part of my brain that is in charge of the fight-or-flight response doesn't know.

Nothing like realizing people have had two babies in the time you've spent mostly inside your house doing nothing at all because you're too afraid you might get contaminated if you do anything else. I think part of me is still waiting for this to go away, just the same way it seemed to sort of happen all at once. I don't believe that will happen, but it sure would be nice.

For now, I fight on.

Another Casualty of OCD

Nearly 10 years ago, I opened an account on eBay. I had no idea what I was doing, but a lot of people I knew were making a few extra bucks selling items there and I thought I'd give it a try. Within a short time, I turned my curiosity into a business with nearly 4,000 customers. That figure still boggles my mind.

The past couple of years have been overtaken by ocd, and just attempting to survive in a somewhat normal life. I didn't sell much of anything on eBay, until the end of last year. When I did, because I was having serious contamination fear issues, I did carrier pick-ups and did not actually go to the post office. Long story short, someone stole packages I put out overnight for our carrier to pick up in the morning, I was not aware of it, and the first I heard about it was through some very angry negative feedback. I did my best to compensate buyers with refunds or replacements, but a couple of people just weren't having it and the negative feedbacks stood.

As a result of the negative feedbacks, eBay's new DSR system, and my low selling volume, my seller account was permanently suspended. After learning this, I opted to close my nearly decade old account with almost 4,000 feedbacks. It no longer exists.

While eBay has become a shady place where I don't want to do business, there is still a part of me that mourns something I once worked so very hard to achieve. If not for ocd, I would have simply gone to the damn post office and there would have been no need to leave my packages out for the carrier to pick up. My customers would have received their items. My account would still have 100% positive feedback, and would still exist. Nearly a decade of effort and work is gone.

And that makes me kind of sad.

Can I Just Stop?

Sometimes, when I start thinking about how normal my life was just three short years ago, I wish so desperately to go back to that time. I wonder if it will ever feel like that again, if it's even possible. My mind wanders to the many people living that way right this very moment, and I wonder, why can't that be me? And then I think...yes, why can't that be me? And I wonder, between my handwashing ritual and the ritual where I need to bleach a spot on the floor over which I opened a piece of mail which seemed especially contaminated, if I could just do it. Is it that simple?

About 8 years ago, I was a smoker. A smoker who had long before decided that she would never smoke as a parent (because mine smoked around me and I was always sick and hated the smell). A smoker who suddenly found herself pregnant after being told it was unlikely to happen. So, after much deliberation on how I would quit, I realized that I was making it much more complicated than it needed to be. And I quit. I literally stopped mid-cigarette and just quit. Done. Was it easy? Oh, for the love of all that is holy, no. By the third day, I seriously thought there was no way in hell I could ever quit for life. But I never touched another cigarette again, not even once.

I wonder sometimes if it is like that, giving up the ocd. Painful, scary, empty in all of the places which used to be filled by old habits...but eventually it becomes normal again. Would it be possible to just do that? Has anyone ever done that?

Of course, logic tells me it has to be possible. Prior to my development of this mind-warping fear of contamination, I did live without all of these restraints on my life. I lived free, outside of this mental cage. I was happy. I did not wash my hands to the point of pain or even bleeding. I did not use so much chemical cleaning solutions that my nails were literally eaten right off. I did not have to wash shoes before entering the house, only to remove them anyhow. I did not check everyone I came into contact with for signs of contamination. I did not have a fear of opening packages mailed for fear of what kind of contamination might be on or inside of them. There were no "safe" places and "risky" places. And the worst part of going out of the house was poor weather, not the 3+ hour ritual to get back in the house.

I've never tried this. I've attempted it in bits and pieces, but never with full level commitment to doing it. Typically, it just takes one small sign of potential contamination to send me spiraling instantly into a cleaning frenzy which lasts hours and leaves my hands painfully raw and often bleeding. I just keep trying to imagine my mother, and all of the pointless stupid shit she did - all in vain - to appease her own ocd. None of us did those things, and strangely, we were cleaner and healthier than she was. It's amazing, that. The ocd rituals tend to bring more risk than just living.

I fucking hate this disorder. It takes everything. And while it is possible to get one's life back, I deeply resent the fact that I have to struggle painfully with shit that is completely normal for everyone else.

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.