OCD

I've had a lot of thoughts lately about things I want to discuss here, but finding the time to put those thoughts into words has been a real problem for me over the past six months.

Today, I read two interesting articles on memory (specifically forgetting) and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The first article discussed willful forgetting and the second discussed compulsive behaviors. Related, but not directly and interesting to me because they applied to me equally.

My experience with OCD revolves around compulsions, not obsessions. Once, I was dumped by a boyfriend. I know. But I didn't see it coming. At all. It took my legs right out from under me. And in response to this, he and I began an exchange of emails. It may seem silly, but I couldn't make myself stop re-read those emails. It was borne out of stress and, according to my therapist, the re-reading was somehow calming to me. Perhaps I was looking for clues. Perhaps I was hoping the words on the screen would change to something I wanted. I suppose I was calmed or maybe I was just distracted from the pain, but that sense of calm was erased by the anxiety I developed over not being able to make myself stop. I spent hours at a time reading the emails. Four hours. Five hours. Six hours. I had to make myself get up and go to school. I had to make deals with myself that I would let myself do this for X amount of time, but that I would NOT allow it to cause me to miss school or work. After a while, the anxiety over the email time became a bigger issue to me than the boyfriend.

I only had extreme anxiety one other time in my life and that was during my divorce. My now ex as determined to crush me. It worked. I wanted nothing more in life than to erase that man from my life. To this day, I never want to lay eyes on him again. I have never hated anyone in my life so thoroughly, for so long, or with such venom as I do my ex-husband. If I saw him on the street today, I'd wish inside that something would hurt him.

And for those of you who know me, that isn't me at all. My divorce wasn't a normal kind of stressful. I feared for my life and that kind of fear, when dealing with a paranoid, impulsive ex is a kind of constant fear that doesn't go away. I was afraid to stay in my home. I feared that he'd show up at work and try to hurt me or my coworkers. He was a monster. He was purposefully driving my anxiety over the cliff. It wasn't fair. It wasn't nice. It was extreme. It was, in a word, my own personal holocaust. It ended three months after the divorce when my brother pulled out a shotgun, ordered my ex off his property, and the man finally drove away.

I don't remember what I did at that time. I do remember not wanting to go home and driving for hours until I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer and then I'd fall into bed. Those behaviors were not, of themselves, problematic. Driving a car around or reading emails harms no one, not even me. But, the time that I had to devote to these useless activities was problematic. Life is all about how you choose to spend your time and I didn't envision my precious down time being devoted to reading emails that conveyed no new information and conjured up bad memories or driving in circles on the highway. It was obvious that these were counter-productive stress relievers. For the first time in my life, I almost wished I was my sister.

My sister suffers from OCD regularly. If her compulsions are borne of stress, then she is under constant stress. As far as I can tell, most of it is self-induced. To her credit, she is a tireless worker. She shares our family trait of not enjoying being idle. She cares about her family and does everything for them. But she also worries a great deal about what other people think, about other people's behavior, and she has an extraordinarily strong moral compass. She always believes that her way is right. She is, quite simply, vastly judgemental of herself and others. She cannot seem to let things go. So when, for example, my mother was dating two men at the same time, my sister was beside herself with disgust and could barely contain her anger in any interaction with my mom. My mother said sister was practically spitting on the phone when they spoke. In response to this steady stream of stress, my sister cleans. It's like it's her hobby. She looks forward to it. It calms her.

That's the thing about compulsions. You feel almost powerless to stop. But the difference between me and my sister, relative to our compulsions of course, is that I saw them as disruptive and she sees them as productive. Now from my perspective, a house can only be so clean and only needs to be be so clean. For my sister, it is never clean enough. She will worry and fret and lament about the shape of her house on days when I wished my house looked that nice. And I know where that feeling comes from. There is this electrical impulse in your gut that makes you feel the need. It is different than an addiction. I was addicted to cigarettes and that impulse to smoke came entirely from the brain. But this compulsion literally makes your stomach knot. And it can only be relieved by giving in. But here's the thing. The relief is marginal. It doesn't go away; it is just held at bay. Because the minute you stop, there is that tingly little knot again. You must keep at it. It makes you keep washing clean hands. Or straightening something that no one has moved. Or wiping down clean counters.

In college, my sister was anorexic. She compulsively exercised, too. You cannot tell me all these things are not related. My sister needs therapy, but she'd never admit it. She needs a more productive way to relieve her stress. She needs to exercise. But to my sister, with her absolute moral compass, to admit a need for help would be as foreign as taking a mud bath. As she has told us time and again, she's been like this her whole life, and just wants to be left alone.

So what does this have to do with forgetting? For me, it has everything to do with it. It was only when the pain of the breakup subsided that I was able to walk away from the emails. It was only after deep reflection on my ex's behavior that I have been able to come to terms with that stress he brought. And since then, I've had no recurrence. So mine was a coping mechanism borne out of high-stress traumatic events (let's say). But my sister. Poor thing. Her's is a coping mechanism borne out of daily stress. Out of the slightest difficulty. Out of this self-imposed rigor. This article indicates that we can willfully forget. Through practice.

I have often maintained that we must protect our mental health and work at keeping our emotional lives in shape just as rigorously as we do our physical health. For me, with a family history that includes compulsive hoarding, compulsive cleaning, and compulsive email re-reading and compulsive overeating, I'd do well to watch for warning signs that stress is getting the better of me. I'd do well to exercise regularly, avoid sugar and caffeine, and keep tight control on my diet.

That's my take on mental health. Watch for the warning signs and head them off at the pass. I don't allow myself obsessive thoughts. I think of other things. Sort of the way you try not to remember some tragic wreck you saw on the highway, or beating yourself up for saying the wrong thing.

Several things have helped me cope with stress in my life. The first is the acceptance that I am not perfect. I don't have to try to be perfect. I am not expected to be perfect. And I have no desire to be perfect. So when I fuck up, it's part of life. I don't have to obsess over it. I don't have to beat myself up over it. I need to recognize mistakes for what they are, try to make right what needs to be made right, apologize if necessary, make up work if required, and move on. Guilt, I am convinced, is one of the most useless emotions we carry. To be humane is to forgive.

Secondly, I have learned to keep control over where my mind goes. I don't always succeed. Sometimes it gets two steps ahead of me and I'll lose a day or two to thoughts I'd rather not have. But once I recognize that those thoughts are getting in my way, I work to get them gone. I set schedules for myself. I make myself do the things that have to be done. And in doing my needed activities, I find my mind eventually lets go of the obsessive thoughts.

I do mental housecleaning. I look at the behaviors that have manifested themselves in my family. Compulsive cleaning. Hoarding. Controlling. And I look at the outcomes of these behaviors. Guilt. Shame. Unsanitary conditions. I don't want those outcomes to be part of my life so I must guard against letting those behaviors creep in. When thoughts of the ex's behavior come around, I push them out. I don't allow myself to judge other's behaviors. I don't care if my mom is dating two guys at the same time or sleeping with the entire second string of the Dallas Cowboys. It's just not my business. And while I am concerned about my sister's happiness, if she wants to spend her entire life cleaning counter tops, who am I to tell her she is wrong? I take things to the Goodwill rather than let them pile up. I look at things before I buy them to determine if I really need/want them. I tidy up my mental condition when I tidy up my house, you might say.

I don't know how common this problem is. I do know that I am not powerless unless I just give in to it.

I'm curious though. Do other people have similar struggles? Do other people have to work at their mental health like I do? Are there actually people out there who just go through every day without having to do mental sit ups?

The Freezer Rules

So I was making pizza dough for Liv's visit (surprise!), and while pulling out the pizza flour, I realized I didn't have a lot of room in the freezer. How could I get my string beans from the farmer's market in if something else didn't come out?

Let's face it. Some of this food has to go.

It's hard, but these are desperate times. I have had to implement the Freezer Rules.


They're pretty simple really.

1. If you pick it up and don't know what it is, you have to thaw it and eat it for dinner.
2. If you pick it up and notice that its been in there over a year, you have to thaw it and eat it for dinner.
3. If you have more than 4 pkgs of the same thing in the freezer, you have to thaw and eat one for dinner.
   

It's sort of like playing Russian Roulette with dinner. And while these may seem like crappy rules, they're actually bad ass on every level.

1. I should be eating food I already have before I go out and buy more food. Obvious.
2. I eat the food before it really does go bad. The other day, I made some bacon for a quiche and the bacon was so old, I really did have to throw it out. It tasted funny. Not as in going-to-give-me-food-poisoning, but just not good. You see, I date most things I make and put in the freezer. My brother, who always gives me tons of venison, also dates the meat. I may think the old meat is going to be awful and tasteless, but sometimes it turns out to be delicious.
3. It's a creative challenge to figure out how to use what I've thawed. The challenge is to use it without another trip to the grocery store.
4. I cut down on the September/October grocery bill and considering that car tags, flood insurance, house insurance, and property taxes are all due in September/October, that's not a bad thing.
5. You never know what you are going to get. You may think it is chili, but it turns out to be spaghetti sauce, or taco meat, or beef stew. You may think it's chicken noodle soup, but it turns out to be stock for seafood gumbo.
   
6. If you have to eat the food you already own, you are less likely to go out to eat.

So today, I had homemade chicken and rice soup for lunch. (Hell if I remember when I made that!) Since I've decided to clean out the fridge once a week, I'm making a carrot cake with the leftover carrots I had in the bin. I didn't have walnuts for the cake, so I'm using pecans that I did have. Sure hope it's good! I bought about 20 poblano peppers, so I'm saving some for the pizza tomorrow and the rest are going into a poblano pepper and polenta casserole. I'm making it up as a go along! I have too much flour in the freezer, so I'm making pizza dough and dog biscuits. I bought a TON of yellow squash so I'm going to make zucchini bread. OK, technically, I guess it's yellow squash bread, but if you don't tell, I won't tell. I've got so much squash that I'm sure I'm going to have extra loaves of the bread. I guess I'll have to pull something else out of the freezer.

Fish for dinner!

Speaking of D-constructing D

Therapy is not for sissies. Well, I guess you could go to a therapist and complete ignore your problem or the "hard truths" that come with self-examination, but it would be a waste of money and I would hazard that it would border on malpractice on the part of your psychologist.

In any event, I go to therapy and talk for a bit and then listen to a man tell me about myself. He tells me things about myself I already know and am happy about, things I already know and I'm not happy about, things I ought to know but don't, and things I hadn't a clue of. And yes, sometimes it's hard when someone tells you what your friends won't. I realize that we all have bad behaviors, but when isn't it hard to listen to someone tell you yours? But, I listen carefully when Bill talks because I know he isn't interested in embarassing me or shaming me into behaving differently--he simply wants to give me the tools I need to get what I want out of life.

Today he did a lot of talking.

Psychologist Bill is pretty good. He doesn't let me control the session. We don't waste time. I'm comfortable opening up about my life (at least this situation, anyway). I am confident he will not take advantage of my weaknesses. I feel pretty good about the rapport. He seems to have crafted a program designed to capitalize on my strengths. I like to do things. He gives me things to do. I feel like an active participant in my therapy.

Last week, my assignment was to describe the problem I was having with my advisor, to articulate why it was a problem for me, and to establish end goals by which I would consider the problem resolved. What was missing from this assignment was the hard part...the actual "how to" of resolving it. The act of remembering these interactions and crafting a narrative about them had two effects. Foremost, it made me angry to think about the interactions again (I realize that I detest being the object of injustice--I just get incensed), but it also made me anxious to think about the problem and STILL have no idea how to get from Point A (the unprovoked attacks on my character) to Point B (making the attacks stop). The thinking about it, dwelling on it, and having it still be unresolved caused me to become anxious. When I feel anxious, I engage in repetitive behaviors to calm myself. In this case, I rewrote and recrafted the written assignment in an 8-hour marathon in which I didn't move from the couch. It lasted until 5 am when I finally emailed the assignment to Bill to render further revisions pointless. The fact that my repetitive behaviors have absolutely no direct bearing to the problem doesn't seem to matter. As Bill told me when I sought some relief for a particularly acute attack of the OCs in the past (that's obsessive-compulsives for you newbies), "if you could make yourself stop by telling yourself the behavior was pointless, you would have stopped already." It's not that I don't recognize the OC behavior, it's that I can't seem to stop engaging in it. And when it is really bad, I have to make deals with myself that I won't let it interfere with major life activities. I'll tell myself that I can spend 4 hours writing a 2-paragraph email, but I have to quit at 2 and go to class. And if I didn't make these deals, sleep, work, friends, and dogs would all have to wait until my anxiety was fully pacified. I guess it's better than kicking the dog. I'm really not doing much more harm than wasting my time.

Bill seems intent on making my get in touch with my feelings. Sometimes I think I've never been properly introduced to my feelings. Bill claims I start every sentence with "I think...." =] In any event, today we had a discussion about identifying feelings. Bill says that anxiety iand anger are responses to fear. So that me, being both angry and anxious, must be experiencing fear. I maintain that anger and anxiety are a response to frustration. There is quite a bit of distance between fear and frustration I think. Either that or Bill and I have quite different ideas about fear. I am not afraid to tackle this problem. I am not prevented from acting by fear of my advisor or the consequences. I am angry because I am frustrated that I have to tackle this problem at all. Because in reality, I'm not the problem. And I think I am anxious because this is a tricky problem and it demands skills that aren't very well practiced in me: patience, calmness, and political awareness.

In other words, I'm not crippled by a fear of the interaction. I am anxious because there is another person in this who can respond to my approach by crying, becoming angry, becoming belligerent, and possibly making my life more of a living hell. I am anxious because I find myself having to tell a person lacking in self-esteem that they are behaving like a major league butthead. It wasn't obvious to me, but seems obvious to others that my advisor is somewhat intimidated by me. I mean seriously, I didn't see it. But if that is true, how much worse is it going to be to have the person who intimidates you force you to deal with your bad behavior?

Sheesh.

But I will address it. And I think after today and talking with Bill, I might just be able to handle it well. I have to remain calm. I have to remain calm no matter how off topic she goes, no matter how she tries to poo-poo it, no matter how much she yells or tries to deflect this back on me. The thing that I'm actually afraid of here is that she won't change and I'll have to tolerate this behavior until I finish. Or that our relationship will be strained because of it. Or that it will escalate because I dared to call her on it. Because any of those scenarios would truly make my remaining time here unpleasant.

Therapy is not always theraputic

So I have begun seeing a counselor again. Same fellow as last time, completely different issue. Nice guy, my therapist Bill. The thing I like about him is that he is straightforward, doesn't let me dump all of this on someone else's doorstep, and gives me discrete things to think about or do that move me toward solving the problem. I quit going last time when our conversations just began to devolve into me just rambling. Just talking isn't my idea of taking an active role in moving forward. In any event, I'm back in trying to deal with issues of trust and betrayal in a professional relationship.

My first assignment was to write out a description of a couple of interactions with my advisor that I found objectionable, and to detail what happened and why I felt it was a problem. I then outlined specific results I'd like to see, how I wanted to feel about me after the dealing with it part was all over, and to identify any potential conflicts to achieving those objectives.

What I see missing from this puzzle is the "how to deal with it part". In large part, the anxiety over the situation arises from knowing that if I don't do something about it, it is likely to continue and to escalate. Obviously, in a situation that I already feel as gone way the fuck over the line, escalation is not an option. The thing that pisses me off is that despite having done nothing that I can recall to deserve becoming my advisor's punching bag, I have to put my neck on the chopping block by daring to call her on it. My experience with her and with most people is that when you approach them with a serious problem with their behavior, they seldom take the news well.

Ain't it grand to be me?

In any event, writing out my objections and having to articulate why, specifically, these interactions are problemmatic, and what I feel should be done to make it right only served to inflame my passions about these events all over again. This inflammation does not just subside because the assignment is over, but has caused me to have to re-write and re-read the homework sheets again and again. Finally, at 4:53 am this morning, I emailed them to my therapist hoping that this would make further revisons pointless. I was able to get about 5 hours of sleep. I am trying to find my good karma again.