You Can Recover Your Life From OCD

When I was at the absolute rock bottom of my OCD battle, I began to wonder if I could ever climb back out.  I tried everything I could think of, from reading all the books I could find about people who had recovered their lives, to doing the OCD Workbook, and everything in between.  While there were helpful bits and pieces, I think most of it really failed to address the situation in the way I needed. 

Counseling was not an option, as I could not leave the house at all; I couldn't even retrieve a package from my own front porch unless I could reach them by leaning out the door.  It struck me that there really needs to be some sort of phone-based counseling service for people who suffer from the truly debilitating, confining form of OCD that I went through.  Because no such thing exists, at least that I could find in my area, I was truly, utterly alone.

I turned to alcohol at one point; I couldn't handle the pain of what my life had become, of what I was putting my family through, or the way my husband dealt with his frustrations about OCD by blaming me, shaming me, and using my fears against me.  That was a bad idea.  Not only were my problems still there in the morning, the rebound anxiety as you recover from drinking the previous night is a major bitch.  My anxiety was already over the top and I effectively made it worse by trying to escape.  Alcohol is not an escape. 

At the absolute worst of my disorder, my rituals started the moment I woke up and culminated with a handwashing ritual that lasted anywhere from three to five hours nightly.  I dreaded going to sleep because of what I had to do to get there.  When the ritual became too much and I didn't want to contaminate anything by not going through it, I finally started sleeping on the floor.  No blankets, no pillows, often shivering through the night in pain from having no comfortable position.  My life was a living hell.  I cried everyday.  I considered suicide constantly.  The longer it went on, the more distant "normal" seemed to be.  I would watch my neighbors come and go, envious that they could and that it was so simple for them.  While my husband thought I derived some pleasure out of my OCD (otherwise, in his assessment, I would have stopped what I was doing), I wished that my life was so easy that I could make such an asinine statement as he did and actually mean it.

Laundry, a point of serious arguments for us, was my nemesis.  I had to wash every load many times, and I could only handle it with plastic baggies over my hands.  I destroyed so many clothes from the constant, relentless hot water washes.

I bleached the absolute shit out of every corner in the house, to the point the baseboards were destroyed, the metal registers were completely rusted and crumbling apart, and there was a constant latent odor of Clorox in the air.  I even washed my hands in bleach.  Yes, my hands.  Bleach.  I would clench my teeth in pain as my hands bled.  My nails were gone.  I could barely type or touch anything because my hands were raw.  I looked like a burn victim who had fallen hands-first into a fire pit and stayed there for a few seconds before moving away.  I couldn't bend my fingers.  There was a distinct line above my wrists which marked the frequent washings and chemical burns I had inflicted upon myself in the pursuit of comfort and feeling clean.  That comfort never, ever came; it was only exhaustion and a tearful submission to accept the fear that ever brought an end to a ritual.  I wondered if my hands would ever be normal again, if I would ever regrow fingernails, if I would ever leave the house again.

All of the books tell you to sit with the fear and let it be.  Feel the fear.  Don't try to avoid it, because if you do, it'll fucking drown you.  That's the truth.  I knew it, in theory, but I didn't know it.  "Take a normal risk, and simply don't do the ritual.  You will realize that nothing bad happens, and you will get better the more you do this."  Yes, and no.  This is what is always spewed, almost verbatim, by people who want to help.  Thing is, what they fail to address, at least in my own situation, is that OCD will have a "yeah, but..." for everything.  My fears were not the "simple" ones I used to say recovered OCD sufferers must have had.  If I don't flip this light switch exactly 247 times, my dog will explode tonight.  When the dog hasn't exploded by morning, it's all good.  Most people can make it 24 hours without totally losing their minds.  But what about those of us who are afraid of some far future consequence?  Kevin from the OCD Project comes to mind; he was afraid he was going to go to Hell for doing or not doing something.  My fears were not religion-based, but also future.  What if I unwittingly do something today that has a negative consequence weeks or months from now?  Better safe than sorry...was always the way my mind was attacking me.  That fear was crippling; literally every waking moment of my day was about making sure to take every precaution.  Even my dreams were infiltrated by this monster.  There was no escape, not the way I was doing things.  It was a lot like anorexia; there was no such thing as thin enough.  With OCD, there was no such thing as clean enough.  And ironically, the very things I was doing to protect myself were making me more vulnerable!

At some point, I realized I did, in fact, have a choice.  While I couldn't choose to not have OCD anymore, I could choose to adopt a new mantra: do it anyway.  It was a slow start.  I started by attacking things I knew would be easier for me, like switching my cleaning fluid of choice from bleach to something less caustic and destructive.  That was extremely difficult at first, but I did it.  Feeling a bit proud of myself, and with renewed hope that I might be able to climb out of the abyss after all, I tried new things.  What I learned is that I cannot get complacent with OCD.  To conquer it, you must do something every single day that scares you.   The moment you don't push through something fear-provoking, OCD is fast at work weaving it's vines through your brain and tightening its grip on your thoughts.  Do not get comfortable.  Comfortable comes later.

I no longer do laundry with plastic baggies on my hands.  I mop my floors every couple of weeks, and sweep as needed.  I wash my hands before bed, and sometimes I do it more than once, but it's five minutes, maybe ten on a really bad night - which is fortunately rare.  I can retrieve my own packages, take out the garbage, run to the grocery store - even if there is no self-checkout, pump gasoline.  This past summer, I took care of a garden, mowed the lawn, spent time outside with my kids, went hiking through the woods, bought and rode a new bike, and visited with some friends.  Recently, I started doing volunteer work for a local animal shelter.  There are no elaborate rituals when I come home; just a quick hand wash and I usually even stay in the same clothes I went out in until it's time for bed.  I'm living a fairly typical life.  I do still have OCD, and I always will; the difference is that now it doesn't have me.

When I used to search the web for OCD blogs, I always desperately hoped to find one where someone who had been at the absolute bottom of rock bottom came back and actually did normal things and had normal thoughts again.  I wanted to come back and say that, yes, it IS possible, you CAN do this, and please, please do not give up your hope.  OCD occupied probably 95% of all my thoughts for a very long time.  Now, it's more like 5-10%, depending on the day.  I'm here to tell you that if I could do this, YOU ABSOLUTELY CAN DO THIS.  My OCD was extremely severe and completely debilitating.  I did not have counseling, I did not have medications, and I did not have support from my husband (I had, in fact, quite the opposite).  I still have things to work through and I probably always will to some extent, but I enjoy my life now.  I want that for everyone who is suffering through this.

Every time we give into a ritual or an OCD-related fear response, we're rewiring our brain to give OCD control.  Giving in to the fear tells your brain that the fear assessment was correct.  Humans are excellent learners, especially where fear is concerned.  By not responding to the fear, you tell your brain that the assessment was inaccurate, and you wire your brain to give you back your control.

Another thing I learned through this journey is that, when you take a break, delay a ritual, sit with your fear, you absolutely cannot just sit there and think about how you are sitting there thinking about it.  The OCD will take advantage if this time to build your fear up to utterly intolerable levels.  The key is to outwit OCD by going and doing something else.  Take a walk, read to your kids, play with your dog or cat, anything that will actively engage your mind and leave little to no room for the previous fear.  Much of the time, I no longer feel the need to do whatever it was I was concerned about, and this is true for most people with OCD.  It may take a few tries, and it will not work perfectly every time, but it will be victories here and there which ultimately win the battle.

I don't know how often I will update from now on.  I wish everyone success, happiness, peace, and freedom from OCD.  Again, you CAN do this.

Do It Anyway

• I haven't kept track of the exact number of days, but it's been weeks since I've done one of my hours-long hand washing rituals. While I have, probably 3-4 times, washed my hands for longer than a normal person would, the longest I've done that is less than 10 minutes.

• I've been putting all the groceries away as they come home. Nothing has stayed on the floor for a very long time.

• I've been having a healthy breakfast and taking a multivitamin every day for a while now, and I'm feeling better.

• I'm exercising much more regularly.

• I'm doing more things I enjoy.

• I finally got that blanket out I was working on for my daughter, the one I was afraid to touch because it was "contaminated". I'll continue working on it now.

• I've allowed a visitor to stop by twice now. That's huge, and a first since 2009.

• I finally got the living room arranged just the way I want it! That's also been on hold since 2009.

• I've been asking for less reassurance, and almost never asking for a "spotter" to watch me do things. Major improvements on that front.

• I'm cooking more! And eating healthier in general.

My fingernails are growing - not just back, but kind of long! I have not had any length to my nails in years. Kinda makes me want to paint them. I just might.

My mantra, as I press on through this week, this journey, this fight, is: be afraid, and do it anyway.

DO IT ANYWAY.

"Courage is simply the willingness to be afraid and act anyway."

Medications, Me, and OCD

At the risk of potentially offending some people, and I sincerely hope I do not, I felt it time to address the issue of medication as it relates to me and my ocd and my beliefs. I emphasize my because I do not want people to think I am forming opinions of what they do, casting judgment on what works for them, doubting their success, or suggesting that anyone stop or avoid the use of medications for the treatment of ocd or any other psychiatric disorder. However, due to the frequency at which people are recommending I go get myself on some medications (every time I post), it's something I need to discuss.

First, I know the people who suggest this to be are doing so out of kindness and compassion, so I hesitate to even post on the topic because I do not want anyone to feel that I am being dismissive of their genuine, caring attempts to help me. I take these acts for what they are, as an attempt to offer me a beacon of light and some hope on this very dark journey through ocd. We know this road, we walk it together, and I believe we all only want the best for each other.

Second, I realize there are people for whom life would be unbearable without certain medications. Medications have their place, and undoubtedly there are situations in which they greatly improve lives and are a necessary tool in a person's quest for health and wellness. I would never try to convince anyone otherwise.

And finally, your life is not mine to live. I have no right to say what you should or should not do. These choices are your own, and I respect them - particularly when they are part of a desire to improve your life.

Now, with all of that said...

My stance on medications is that I will not use or try them unless I have completely exhausted every other option.

I do not like SSRI medication. I think they are profoundly over-prescribed. I think we, as a society, are far too over-medicated. I've had everyone from doctors to friends to strangers trying to shove SSRI medication down my throat for everything from anorexia to restless legs during my pregnancy to PMS and cramps ever since they gained major popularity back in the 1990s. But I have studied these drugs, I know what they do, and I realize that they are truly a last resort.

I have seen far too many people overuse and abuse medications. I also realize that the bottom line remains the same; at the end of the day, I will still have to do my exposures, feel the fear, and press on. Also, I have managed to get through, sans medications, everything that people have tried to cram SSRIs down my throat for. This does nothing to bolster their case.

All feelings aside, there is also the matter of my spiritual beliefs. I am a Buddhist. The fifth precept advises that we should abstain from intoxicants. Now, I do have an occasional drink. Clouding my mind for a mere few hours versus weeks or years on a medication is a huge deal-breaking difference for me. Alcohol also does not chemically restructure my brain. SSRIs do. I believe that my faith and the use of psychotropic medication are mutually exclusive in all but the most unavoidable cases. I'm not saying that good people who follow the Buddhist way of life cannot take necessary medications, I just find it far too difficult to take SSRIs seriously considering their copious overuse, the kickbacks received by the medical profession, the endless indiscretions of Big Pharma, and the fact that (as I stated before) I've been offered SSRI medication for so many things that I find it more than a little disconcerting. The lawsuits spawned by the prolific "popularity" of SSRI medications is enough to scare anyone to their bones. I encourage you to Google this, only for informative purposes. I believe many people are far too uninformed about what they ingest daily, be it medications or even genetically-modified food.

I hope that clears things up about where I stand on medications for me personally. As I said before, I do thank you for the concern and kindness. I realize these things come from a positive place. I hope you, too, will understand that we all think and do differently. This is the path I've chosen to go.

Onward

I am just getting back into the groove here, so forgive my if I haven't given your blog any attention just yet. I like to read them when I can take adequate time to consider the words you've written and respond.

Yesterday wasn't too bad. I realize much of this comes down to choices I make. Some of those choices are extremely scary and painful, but only until I adjust. The rewards are substantial. This journey must be taken one step at a time, as much as I would like to jump to the finish line and be done with it or refuse to acknowledge that this is a path I may be on for a lifetime - to one degree or another. Acceptance is crucial, I think, not of allowing ocd to ravage my life but of myself as someone who has ocd. Yes, I still struggle with that.

Ufffgh

I took an unintended break. Things are much the same with most of my issues. I think the laundry might be taking a backslide. Scratch that, I know it is. But my hands! I went without washing them at all for several nights. It's been weeks since I did one of my hours-long pre-bed rituals. My hands have shed layers of dead crap which had basically created a shell. I have feeling in my fingertips again! The backs of my hands are so incredibly soft. They have no bled in weeks. My nails are beginning to thicken to a point of near-normal, and some of them even look...dare I say pretty? But I still have redness. I don't get that. I no longer have the ring at at my wrist, clearly indicating where I repeatedly and painfully wash to to many, many times per day. That makes me feel like I've conquered at least something.

However, I am on the floor again. I've been taking the easy way out. I've been letting the bitch ocd win far too often. But I didn't really want to be in my bed. Not after the things he said to me at the beginning of this month. Hell, I didn't even want to exist after that. Sure, sure, he followed it all with sometimes I feel that way, but the damage had been done. Those words had been etched into my very freaking soul.

It's a slow climb, and one I'm not completely sure I want to make. I feel like I have done this so many times, only to have the rug yanked out from beneath me. There's only so many times a person will run after a 10 mile goal, only to get to 8 miles and have the marker moved to 30. Lather, rinse, repeat. I'm tired, people. Tired. Bone tired, and mentally exhausted. I ask what the hell I am fighting for when (a) it seems like everything I thought I had is gone and (b) it never seems to really matter anyhow.

I've been in a dark place, not suited for blogging. And yes, I know I have potential. I know I could do great things. I know I could have a good life. Thing is, half of me feels like it's missing. I feel shattered and broken. It's an effort to summon the desire to live every day, let alone do anything else.

But, I got up today and ate a healthy breakfast. I took a vitamin. I ate a healthy snack. I started thinking about healthy recipes. I forced myself to tackle a couple of chores that scared me. I guess I am trying again. However, if I am to be honest here, I am so close to breaking point that I don't know what will happen if this all falls apart and something like what happened at the beginning of the month happens again. At that point, I think I'd like to crawl up my own ass and die. It usually takes days to a couple of weeks for me to find my center again. It took a month this time, and I can't even say I'm really there even now. I'm forcing myself. I have to. I keep hoping there's something to all of that "fake it 'til you make it" shit.

OCD

Today was difficult.

Meat Blood and Skin Pieces

I woke up today feeling pretty good and clean. Which is, with ocd, a bad thing. The urge is to stay as clean as I currently am, and that gets me nowhere but into a fearful avoidance routine.

On the menu for dinner tonight was a roast, which I was to make in my newly-cleaned slow cooker. The slow cooker had spent the past couple of years in a cabinet beneath a drawer in the kitchen which previously was home to many a band-aid and thus it and anything in the cabinets below it was considered "contaminated". The other day during my mass cleaning spree, I said screw it and got my slow cooker out and ready for use.

Now, I'm not a big fan of meat. I don't care to eat it, and I really don't care to touch it uncooked. Red meat is much worse because it looks all bloody - and if you've been reading my blog for more than a day you know that blood and I don't get along particularly well. But even that is something I can usually deal with; I slice open the bloody meat package with a knife and use said knife to stab the meat and lift it ever so carefully into whatever thing I'm cooking it in. But today, as I was rather confidently slicing the package open, I noticed wet blood on the outside. The out-freaking-side of the package.

So shit. I have a difficult enough time dealing with meat blood on the inside of the goddamn package. At least when it's on the inside, I can be reasonably certain that it is from the meat and not an injured human being handling the meat. The fact that it was still wet blood didn't matter much to me, because I'd had it stored inside of the plastic grocery bag in the fridge overnight. Conceivably, this could have kept the blood wet if it was not from the meat. Likely? No. Probable? Unlikely. Possible? The ocd can make anything seem possible. And the way ocd works is something like this:

Most obscure, tiny possibility, no matter how remote ---> It's possible, therefore it is not 100% safe ---> Possible means probable ---> Probable means likely ---> Likely means almost certainly ---> Almost certainly means the risk here is about 99% ---> BAM! PWNED by OCD

I wanted more than anything to throw that meat away. I didn't. I put it in the cooker, added all of the veggies and seasonings, and moved on. I didn't change clothes, I just washed my hands for about 2 minutes. And because I already felt pretty freaked out, I went ahead and got some things done that I'd been procrastinating about touching.

Earlier this morning when I washed my hands, I had a ton of dead skin come off. This happens occasionally, being the massive user of soap that I am; every week or so, the skin on my hands all sheds like a snake. I rubbed off the extra bits which remained after I dried them, and didn't think anything of it...until I returned later and found pieces of skin all over the sink. And of course my mind starts running races around the potential disasters this could bring about. I mean, sure, I saw a ton of dead, dried up skin come off of my hands - but what if it wasn't from me!? You know, because that makes all the damn sense in the world.

I'm really getting tired of ocd living rent-free in my headspace.

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.

Goal Check-In and Tackling Doubts

Do you ever get the feeling you've touched something when you haven't? Do you ever believe you've sabotaged yourself? One of the biggest ocd issues I struggle with is being unsure of my own actions and behaviors. Did I get this paper towel off of the roll, or was it a used one from the sink or counter? Did I really put soap in the dishwasher or washing machine? Did I use my hand instead of my covered arm to switch off the light? Did I reach over there and touch the garbage with my clean hands? I'm always convinced of these things, it seems. I ask for reassurance a lot about them.

Now that I am getting more comfortable with my daughter helping me with laundry (she's really good at it, too!), I am getting things done much faster and no one is running out of clean clothes. She had been asking for her own chores for a few months, but ocd kind of makes me feel like I have to do everything myself and I hadn't been able to allow her to help with anything. I finally asked her what she would most like to do, and she said laundry. Of course, it had to be the thing I fear the most, right? But it has turned out to be a very good thing for both of us. I love seeing her confident little smile as she carries the towels to the linen closet and sets them inside, folded a little less perfectly than my ocd would prefer, but wonderfully nonetheless. "Did I do a good job, mom?" she asks. And I tell her, "The best ever. Way better than I do!"

So currently, the biggest obstacle between me and the damn laundry is my doubt. My most debilitating, time-consuming ocd brainfart is that I become absolutely convinced that I either didn't set the washing machine on the full cycle, or I went out there, opened the door, stuck in a dirty hand toward the end of the wash cycle, and contaminated everyfreakingthing. My daughter always says, when I speak this brainfart aloud, "Mom, why on earth would you do that?" I have no idea why I would, but I sure am afraid I did - especially if I happen to be working with something "contaminated" while the stuff is in there.

It seems that just thinking about something, like what if I touched something in the washer near the end of the cycle with that blood I found on my hand from some unknown source? Then BAM, ocd turns what if I did into I must have done. When that happens, I typically tell myself that resistance to the thought is futile, the risk is just too big to take, and I immediately run out there and restart the effing machine. This is something I need to work on because it is an extremely strong compulsion I have an extremely difficult time talking myself out of or avoiding. I feel like it owns me, and it's gotten to the point where I will close the door to the laundry room, check the time so I know exactly when the machine should be done, and put something (like a big bag of cat food) in front of the door so I know I would have had to go through multiple obstacles to contaminate the clean laundry. I guess they call it "the doubting disease" for a reason, eh?

So, moving on. Goals progress for the week (even a shitty week). To review:

* Put away the holiday decorations. Done!
* Get living room how I want it. 90% Done!
* Read every day from my Kindle or a real book. Didn't do.
* Start taking better care of myself, including daily exercise and multivitamin. Improved.
* Go to bed at a reasonable time, regardless right now of where "bed" ends up being. Eh.
* Avoid taking the "comfortable" route as much as possible, with the awareness that doing so is what fuels ocd. I am in a fight for my life. Was improved, backslid.
* Do at least 3 loads of laundry per week, reasonably spaced so I am not freaking out and doing an all-nighter every Sunday so people have clothes for the week. Did it!
* Ask for reassurance less. I must say, "Did I just touch that?" or "Did you just touch me?" 500,000 times a damn day. I'm sure it annoys my family even more than it annoys me. Was improved, backslid.

On a cool note, I also tackled a goal from my "later" list of goals, and I have been sleeping in bed exclusively ever since I started again over a week ago. That's huge. I'm proud of that one.

BAM. Wall.

Saturday was complete shit.

I'll write more when I hate myself and life in general a little less.