My Compulsions Continued...Wash, Rinse, Repeat...

a lot of us OCD folks have a type of compulsion called "feel right" compulsion. in many ways, all our compulsions are "feel right" compulsions. usually the "feel right" component is an add on to a more defined compulsion. for instance, i have a compulsion to flick the switch three times when turning off the light. but my "feel right" compulsion might make me carry out the flicking of the switch three times over and over until i think it feels like it was done properly. another feel right compulsion relates to my prayers...i will often have to pray over and over until it feels right or at least repeat parts of the prayer. i also have to situate clothes on my body properly until they feel right. if they don't feel right, my anxiety overwhelms me to a bursting point. (a side note: right now i am hardly able to properly situate my clothes due to my broken arm and i'm quite upset by that!!!) during my pregnancy, my feel right compulsion revolved around my sitting on the couch properly. i would stand and sit over and over until i got it right. and i mean for a while.

another compulsion i have is to check faucets. i turn them off and then i must stare at them until it "feels right" to me. yeah, there's the damn feel right thing again. i will turn off faucets, go in the other room, start something, and have to return to stare at the faucet. during the staring i will usually repeatedly count to 3 or in multiples of three. its not a compulsion i want, but one i am literally driven to carry out...its like the drive to scratch when you have poison ivy. such silliness!!!

i will end tonight saying thank you to those out there reading this. not too many i'm sure, but nonetheless it helps. how does it help? well, it just means one more person is aware of this disorder and the toll it takes. actually, next time i am going to talk a little about that toll it takes...take a break from compulsions...see you  then!!!

My Compulsions...Things I Do Anxiously

okay, folks, i broke my arm the other day, so i am writing this up one handed. thus, please forgive the sad manner in which you must view these words...all lower case...

today i thought i'd talk about my compulsions. a friend asked me tonight what my compulsions were and for some reason i had a hard time telling her. it's not like i don't do them much...i do them quite a lot...i just had drawn a blank. for this reason, i thought i would jog my memory and share about my compulsions.

my main compulsion is hand washing. i will usually wash my hands 50-75 times a day. i wash for the normal reason of cleanliness, but i also wash due to thought contamination. what the hell does that mean? well, basically, when i have a bad thought or touch something i deem inappropriate (could be as simple as accidentally brushing my pants zipper), i have to wash the contamination of that bad thought away. if i think i might be dirty for any reason, even if i know i am so not, i wash my hands. i usually wash my hands at least two times a washing...but maybe more. handwashing is truly my go-to compulsion.

another compulsion i have is to seek reassurance. this is a big one for those with ocd. i no longer fully trust my though patterns at all times, so i will constantly seek reassurance from loved ones. for instance, "you were with me at the mall today, i didn't hit anyone with my car when we left did i?"...or maybe "can you check the faucets, i already did but don't know if they are really turned off"...constant reassurance really stinks, mainly because we know that there is nothing wrong but we don't trust ourselves, because the ocd works to kill that trust.

i will continue next time with more of my compulsions...exhausted from typing one-handed...lol

My OCD Types: Magical Thinking...Abracadabra huh?

In 1999, I studied abroad for a semester in Reykjavik, Iceland. It was a magical time for me, once I got past the culture shock and homesickness that is. I met new people. Really awesome people that I still love. And I learned new things and saw beautiful lands. It was great. However, at the time I was suffering from undiagnosed OCD and I didn't realize the disastrous effect it was having. Obviously it never got disastrous enough for me to be diagnosed, but it was still quite awful. 

I started to worry about the well being of my family back in the USA. I started worrying that if someone was hurt or, even worse, died, I wouldn't be able to get home or at least not that quick. I started to pray every night. I prayed the Lord's Prayer for lack of knowing the words to say. I mean, let's face it, there was nothing wrong at home...I was just worried about the impending doom. Then I got a call one day. It was a rather sad call. I learned that a second cousin had passed away. I had never been super close with him, but yet I felt sad. 

Someone who has OCD with magical thinking will often link their thoughts to things that occur in the world outside their brain. For instance, I could have started to blame myself for my cousin's death just because I had worried about someone dying while I was out of the country. Luckily, I did not do this or it may have lead me down an even worse path. I did, however, start having much more trouble with the idea of being away from family and friends, especially my parents. I started to pray even more. I would say the Lord's Prayer 3 times every night. It had to be three times. And it had to feel right as well. That is hard to explain, but if the prayer didn't feel like it was said right, I would have to start over and pray all three times again. I would also at some point during my praying ask God to watch over all my different family and friends by name. I would ask for each person to be watched over by name. That's crazy. Every night I did this. Every night!!!

But it didn't stop there. I was certain I needed to keep praying and praying properly. I was certain if I messed up in the praying that something could happen to my parents. I thought, if something happened to them and I hadn't prayed properly it would have been my fault. It got worse. I figured the best way to make sure I properly said the prayers was to write them in my journal. So every night, after I had written something about my day, I would write out the prayers. And yes, I would write them 3 times. I would guess that a lot of my journal from that time isn't worth much reading as it is just me writing down the Lord's Prayer over and over. It got so exhausting. But I had to do this every night. When my parents came to visit with my friend, it was one of the worst times. I was worried the entire night before they arrived. In some ways, I was certain their plane would crash. I prayed and prayed like crazy. And nothing happened to them. But, of course, in a way this kept my compulsion alive. Of course, they were alive because I had prayed properly. 

I still have this problem...but not as much thankfully. But there is a lot more to magical thinking than just believing someone will come to harm because you didn't pray properly. For instance, I also have a magical belief that I must kiss my son good night in a particular way and my husband gets a particular kiss goodbye in the morning to ensure their safety. And I must not step on cracks in the sidewalk if I can in order to keep things okay in the world. And I must not lose my favorite picture of myself with my grandfather or something bad will happen to me. And if I am afraid of something, sleeping holding my Bible like a teddy bear will keep me safe. And if I do things in 3s than all will be okay. Crazy, huh? Well, that's good old OCD and magical thinking.

Some folks have different magical thinking patterns. It is hard to list every single one. And I am sure there will be new ones added all the time. Needless to say, it is an exhausting way of thinking and can drive you quite mad. But, of course, we hold on and work through it and make it through another day with our disorder. It's all we can do.

My OCD Types: Harm OCD...It's okay, you can hug your husband...

Sorry for the delay my mysterious audience, I was gone for quite some time back east for the holiday season. But I am back and ready to write!!!

I have decided, the time has come for me to discuss my Harm OCD. It is the most prevalent aspect of my OCD. It is often referred to as Pure O, because many folks who suffer from Harm OCD do not exhibit outward signs of OCD compulsions. However, most folks with Harm OCD still carry out compulsions, they are just mainly done in their own mind. For instance, if they think a thought about hurting someone, they will compulsively think a reverse thought about hugging that person. Or if a person thinks a thought about harming their husband, they must quickly recite three Hail Mary prayers in their head. Thus, with these folks, myself included, you might not see the outward signs of OCD.

Getting back to the type of OCD. Harm OCD is rather widespread within the OCD community. It is a horrid form of OCD to deal with, not that any of them are very fun. However, I would have to say, for me, the Harm OCD is the hardest for me to deal with and the part of my OCD that brings me the most pain.

With Harm OCD, the person will think images of harming others, such as hitting someone with their car or touching someone inappropriately or hitting their girlfriend. These images are not images that the person wants and they will generally create an enormous amount of fear, anxiety, guilt, and depression. Why is it that people get these thoughts if they don't want to think them? Unfortunately, everyone in the world gets bad thoughts. They might not even recognize the thoughts, because the majority of people, if they get a bad thought, can filter out the thought just as quickly as it entered their brain. Those of us with OCD have ZERO filter for our thoughts. We can not simply let a bad thought slip on through our thought process and not worry about it. Our brain, our OCD brain, snatches each and every bad thought we have and rotates it in our brain like a broken record. One mights ask, why in the world would someone feel guilty about something if they don't want it to happen and didn't want to think it in the first place? Well, the problem is that these thoughts don't just hit once and then go away. These thoughts, images, words, etc. continuously bombard the brain of someone suffering from Harm OCD. There often seems to be no escape. For me, it often feels like a machine gun is firing off bad thought bullets. So, when you have thoughts constantly bombarding you, you worry that you are somehow a bad person, even though you are far from it.

Harm OCD is painful both physically and mentally. Actually, all OCD is painful in this way. Mentally we have the pain of near constant fear and anxiety at times. The pain of obsessive guilt over things we should have no guilt for at all. The pain from the depression that many of us suffer from due to OCDs endless attacks. Physically, we have the pain of constant muscle tension from the anxiety and fear. Many of us have headaches often. Our hearts race and we often feel breathless, due to panic attacks. For me, when I have a bad thought, I can feel my entire body tense up to a point where I want to sometimes cry. Well, I do sometimes cry. Also, when I have a particularly bad OCD day, I will often have horrid headaches. It is an exhausting disorder to have and deal with every day, every hour, every minute.

One of the most disagreeable aspects of Harm OCD, is that many of us folks who have it will find ourselves avoiding the folks we have the thoughts about, for fear that the thought might happen. For instance, a person who has unwanted Harm OCD thoughts about stabbing their roommate with a knife might avoid touching knives altogether and may avoid any close contact with their roommate. It may even lead to them having to move somewhere else, for fear they might inadvertently harm their roommate. It's maddening, mainly because we all know we would never hurt that person that is present in those thoughts. But, yet, we might uncontrollably fear their presence near us. It can lead to the ending of friendships, romantic relationships, good parenting, etc. Just imagine for one minute if you were bombarded with unwanted harming thoughts about your spouse or children, how well would you get through the day?

Needless to say, even though I suffer from this form of OCD, I triumph over its devastating effects time and time again. It is hard, it is painful both mentally and physically, but it is something I know I must combat each day of my life and I have started, luckily, to learn the skills to do that.