Back to the Start

When I last posted, I had made so much progress in my OCD therapy. But as my schedule became hectic, the holidays neared, and my routine changed, I encountered a number of setbacks. Now I am in a place where I feel almost as much anxiety as when I started therapy.

I have maintained my progress in not using sanitizer, putting on my own shoes…and well, that’s about all I can think of. I’m trying not to beat myself up and remind myself of what my therapist has told me: “I would be surprised if your OCD wasn’t affecting you right now.”

Why the setbacks? Well, first a hurricane hit New York City. Fortunately, my apartment wasn’t in serious danger. But it still meant school being closed for a week, the office where I was an intern being closed for a week, and numerous other businesses being difficult to get to. I spent a week on my couch. I did make some progress, in that I cooked, but I haven’t maintained it. I couldn’t get out to the gym or work out outside much, so I started to lose the exercise habit that had been so good for my mind.

Because of the hurricane closing work, I had to work extra days the next two weeks. I had no time to exercise between work and school, so my routine really fell off. I need the workouts like medicine, and without them, I just lost what had kept me going.

My husband had to leave town for a weekend, and for that weekend, I had to scoop the cat’s litter and take out the trash. These items were very high on my hierarchy, much higher than anything I’d worked on so far. Seriously, on a SUDS scale, they were in the 80-90 range. But they had to be done, because there was no one else to do them. I managed okay, but I haven’t maintained it.

My mom arrived the next week. She has been staying with us for the holiday season. Six weeks. At the time we booked the trip, I had been making so much progress that I thought it would be fine. But then everything went haywire, and it turns out it might have been a bad idea at this time. I’m just not strong enough yet. I don’t know how to deal with stress, especially massive amounts, in a healthy way yet. But I’m trying.

After Thanksgiving, I had a horrendous few weeks of school as I prepared for finals. I have never been so stressed. There were all-nighters, tears, and a hell of a lot of guilt because I wasn’t able to take my mom out. All this is too much for someone suffering from perfectionistic obsessions and compulsions.

On top of this, there was some other news that has thrown my world completely off. It’s a very stressful time for my little family, and there’s not much I can do to help. I hate feeling powerless, and even more, I hate that I feel like no one truly understands or cares how this bit of news affected and still affects me. I understand why what’s happening is happening, and I’m not angry. Just scared. Scared that I’ll have to give up my therapy. Scared that I will never be granted the opportunity to get better from OCD. Scared that I will spend every day of my life crippled by this disorder. Scared that every minute will be consumed by anxiety and that I will eventually break and lose everything I ever wanted.

No wonder my OCD is in high gear.

My mind is filled with obsessive thoughts again. I can’t get a handle on them. I’m washing my hands a ton because I can’t shake the anxiety. I can’t clean, I can’t do trash. I feel closed in all the time. I wake up and want to stay in my bed. I mentally check and repeat everything. I’ve started checking the locks again. I lock the car door multiple times again. I’m still not exercising regularly. The other day, I nearly broke into tears when some washcloths were out of place. I feel like I’m falling apart again, like I am made of glass and can shatter at any moment with just a tiny disturbance.

But I’m hopeful things will get better. My mom is about to head home, so my home life will return to normal. I love my mom dearly, and I adore spending time with her. But it’s very difficult to have three people in a one-bedroom apartment in New York for more than three weeks. It gets cramped, living styles clash, and it becomes stressful. I’m also about to go visit my friends in Oklahoma, who are like family to me. I see them as sort of a healing balm for my soul. Every time I’m with them, it’s like everything in the world is all right again. They make my burdens feel light, and I need that so much right now.

I’m also not taking on an internship this semester, and I’m not starting a job until I graduate. I have enough money from school to live on. Hopefully the situation doesn’t change, because I really need this time off. I only took internships in the first place because I felt like something was wrong with me if I didn’t. Everyone else seems to have one, or to be working, and I felt like a loser. But the truth is, I need some time off to really work on conquering my OCD. Working and going to school makes my schedule too full, and I can’t do all the things on my hierarchy as a result. This is the best time in my life for me to focus on conquering OCD, and I need to do it for my future. I keep trying to remind myself that I have to do this for my mental health, that I am not being lazy or selfish or anything negative. It’s hard, because I feel like I’m not being perfect. But I’m not supposed to be perfect, so says my therapist.

I’m working on not being perfect. I’ve finally realized that perfectionism is the strongest area where I struggle. I have had perfectionistic obsessions and compulsions since I was a child. A degree of perfectionism can be good, but people who struggle with this in terms of OCD go overboard, feeling like the world falls into chaos or that no one likes them if they’re not perfect. This is incredibly hard for me, and generally it’s what has caused numerous nervous breakdowns over the years. I have tried and tried to be perfect, and I feel like I have to be. I just always have felt like I have to be perfect. There’s always some burden on me. And I’m finally realizing most of those burdens have been created by me. It’s time to learn how to let them go.

So I’m back to the start now. I’m going to try working my way back through my hierarchy and start working on perfectionism. I’m going to make exercise a priority again. Most importantly, I’m going to accept that setbacks will always happen. That’s what my therapist keeps reminding me. I will always have times when my OCD gains a little control again, when life gets stressful and my brain wants to rely on the old routines. But it’s important at those times to remind myself of what I’m doing well (I’m not using sanitizer, and I can put on my own shoes) rather than berate myself for what I’m not doing well. My therapist also told me I should just accept the anxiety at these times, rather than thinking I should be doing better at fighting it, because thinking negatively about it only makes it worse. That’s very hard for me to do, but I’m trying.

So here’s to a new year, in which I hope to conquer my OCD and begin a new life, without all the stress and anxiety.

A Contamination Milestone

About a month ago, I was headed home after a long day of work and class. I usually carry my phone as I’m walking because I’m usually listening to music or checking text messages. You should know right off that I was wearing a skirt and heels. Not super high heels, but still fairly substantial ones. Seeing as I’m normally a flats-wearing girl, I was having some difficulty getting around with any degree of ease.

I have to head down some steps to get to my train home. I hate these steps when I’m in heels because they’re covered partway with steel–not all the way, just partway. Which is prime heel-catching design. On this night, as I descended the steps, phone in hand, the steel step caught my heel, and I started to fall. My adrenaline rushed, which led to me to reaching out to grab the railing so I wouldn’t end up as a broken heap at the bottom of the steps. This was, naturally, the hand holding my phone. My phone fell with a crash.

Fortunately, at this particular moment, no one else was going up or down these steps. This gave me a moment to regain my composure. And then I realized what happened: my phone had come out of its case and was on the steps on the other side of the railing. In the dirt and grime.

Given my contamination fears, the subway, especially steps, is one of my worst nightmares. Thousands of people walk those steps every day. Those people could have stepped in anything. After all, NYC is a place where people will pee on the sidewalk, and sometimes the train smells like poo. Dirty people sleep on trains or spend the day sitting on the steps. Bird poop is everywhere outside. Not to mention grime from all the other rodents. And I know that most of those people are not careful like I am. They don’t watch where they walk to avoid the gross stuff. They just walk. So if I touch the ground, there’s no telling how many germs I’m touching.

Which all leads to why, when I realized my phone had fallen, that I lost all sense that I had just saved myself from a nasty fall and was overcome with immense fear. I was all alone. I couldn’t avoid picking up my phone, because hello, it’s an iPhone. You can’t leave that behind, no matter how terrified you are. So I made my way to the other side of the railing, heart racing, dread setting in. I was not ready for this level of exposure yet.

Just my luck, as I crossed over, people started coming up the steps. Luckily, the first few watched their steps and noticed my phone. But of course they made no move to pick it up for me. Thanks for the forced exposure, universe. I had to yell at one guy so he wouldn’t step on it. After that, people sort of realized what was going on and used the other side of the steps. Now I had to pick up the phone.

When I bent over, I noticed every filthy thing: every bit of stuck-in-the-steel grime, a discarded used Band-Aid, and everything else my mind could imagine. I almost started to cry right there, but I knew I needed to get off the steps. I picked it up and walked down to board the train.

I knew I couldn’t put my phone in my purse. Then it would contaminate everything else. So I sat on the train forcing back tears, shaking with the fear of the germs I held in my hand. I held my phone the whole way home. All I could think about was how germy my hands were and how much I feared that. I wouldn’t be able to get my keys out or touch anything. I felt paralyzed. I wouldn’t get home without help.

My husband was at the laundromat. I texted him and asked if the laundromat had soap and water. In my panicked state, not even sanitizer would cut it for my hands. I knew he’d have sanitizing wipes because we use them to clean out our hampers before putting the clean clothes in. He said yes, so I told him I would meet him there. When I arrived, he immediately took my phone to sanitize it, and I washed my hands. I headed home after, still shaky and upset from the whole business.

***

Cut to today. For almost three weeks, I have not used hand sanitizer, and I have been forcing myself to expose myself to “dirty” things, like my shoes and doorknobs. It has drastically changed my life, though I didn’t realize how much until today.

This morning, I was carrying a lot of stuff to work. I had my laptop in my briefcase, which was super heavy, plus my purse. I usually keep my phone in my purse with my headphone cord coming out of it because it keeps me from having to juggle too many things. So I had my headphones in, phone in purse as I was exiting the train. Somehow my arm hit the cord wrong, and the cord pulled the phone out of my purse. Even though the phone is pretty light, it was too heavy for the cord and fell to the floor of the train. Fortunately, I had time to grab it and get off the train before the doors closed.

Here’s the amazing thing: when I picked the phone up, I didn’t panic. I just picked it up and walked off the train. After getting a few steps, some obsessive thoughts did start to creep in, and a bit of the familiar anxiety threatened me. But it wasn’t as strong as it had been before. I was able to keep going without shaking, without crying, without my heart racing.

After I got to my desk, I did go wash my hands, but I only washed once. I could not sanitize my phone because I had no wipes. And my therapist had told me at some point I would have to just drop things and pick them up without cleaning them. I would have to put these items in my purse and touch all the things I wanted to be clean with the contaminated item. This is the point of exposure and response prevention (ERP). I’d been able to do it at home, which is still sort of a safe environment in my mind, but I didn’t expect myself to be able to do it in public places.

I used my phone all day without sanitizing it. I ate my lunch after touching my phone, without washing my hands or using hand sanitizer. I didn’t sit at my desk thinking only about my fears of contamination; I focused on work. When I got home tonight, it was a challenge to not go ahead and sanitize my phone. In the past, I would have done that because I could and I would want to be on the safe side. But I didn’t tonight. I felt I’d already made it this far, so I should keep going. And I’ve felt remarkably calm about it all.

I’ve still experienced waves of anxiety throughout the day. I know I’m supposed to; my therapist has reminded me that it’s important I feel the anxiety but let it subside so my brain starts to learn that things will be okay. The more I expose myself to the anxiety and avoid engaging in my compulsive responses, the better I’ll get. But the anxiety is not as powerful as it once was. Today I really started to see how much progress I’ve made. I know I wasn’t using sanitizer and that was a big deal, but I somehow didn’t get how much it had really started to change everything. Now I know.

It is amazing to be able to drop something and not be paralyzed by fear. It is amazing to touch things and not feel like I desperately need to clean myself. It is incredible to keep moving, that one instance does not destroy my whole day. That I can keep going as though nothing happened. I’m so happy about this that I’m almost crying. Even last weekend, I was still having trouble dealing with contamination fears. But today was a breakthrough. I honestly don’t know the last time in my life when I was able to drop something on the ground and touch it without anxiety. It might have been high school. Possibly early undergrad years. I graduated high school nine years ago. That’s a long time to be living with such a high level of anxiety.

And I’m finally breaking free. I’m starting to see how beautiful life is when risk is embraced, when not every moment has to be defined by careful measures to avoid risk. I’m starting to feel like a normal human, and it’s the best feeling.