Good morning,
So last night after I finished blogging, I really gave in to my obsessions. I was still feeling a combination of jealousy and anxiety of my friend and her husband's sex life and I couldn't get any perspective on these feelings. I was feeling lots of bad feelings towards my husband, and all in all, I wasn't being the impartial spectator I told myself I would be where my mind is concerned. This morning I woke up, feeling down. I still had all the repetitive thoughts that I always do, but I didn't let all of them get to me. Actually, for awhile this morning, I felt some optimism that I could just jump back on the wagon and keep going with my therapy. But on the train to work I was in my head and I couldn't see how all these thoughts and emotions were just thoughts and emotions. I felt like they were reality. I walked into work this morning on the verge of tears. I feel like giving up. Realistically, I haven't been doing this therapy for long, and I'm bound to stumble a lot in the beginning. But how do I let what happened yesterday --- how real my thoughts and feelings felt --- and continue on today? How do I seperate myself from my mind? I think I'm going to order that book I was telling you all about the other day, "The Happiness Trap". I wonder if it would help me.
I have a body scrub scheduled for today, so maybe that will relax me. I don't feel like I'm on the verge of tears anymore. My coworkers and I were talking around my desk and laughing, and I think that helped me feel a little better. I'm pretty sure this turnaround from feeling optimistic about getting over my ocd to feeling despair that I never will is in my head. Nothing in surroundings has been disturbed, and my relationship is still intact. The only thing that changed is my state of mind. And I know this, objectively. But I'm so attached to my thoughts that they never seem just like thoughts. They feel representative of reality.
Clearly, I have a lot of work to do. I will embrace today as a new day and make the best of it. Hope your Monday is going well so far. Talk to you all soon.
Cyber
Monday, August 17, 2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Happy Sunday!
Hey guys,
The weekend has flown by so quickly...too quickly. I really don't want to go back to work tomorrow. But I have a body scrub scheduled at a spa in the mall where I work, and I'm getting together with friends tomorrow after work to catch a couple episodes of "Friday Night Lights" and eat dinner. So I have some good things going on to kick off a new work week.
Today has been an okay day. I have a tendency towards all-or-nothing thinking, so if one part of my day has gone bad, I tend to characterize my whole day as bad. In reality, some parts of Sunday were positive and other parts of negative, as they relate to my OCD. I was pretty good for a lot of the day at observing my thoughts and my anxiety and keeping a pretty good perspective on what is going on with me. Then I experienced a bout of jealousy thinking of my friend and her sex life with her husband, and I convinced myself that that had nothing to do with my fear of losing my husband. I also convinced myself that unless R. and I connect in bed, that I will never get over the jealousy and it will continue to get worse until we divorce. Which, of course, comes right back to my fear of losing my husband, but I just didn't let my thinking get that far. But I know that the "jealousy" I experienced (if that was, in fact, jealousy) still relates to my obsessive relationship doubts. In hindsight, the thoughts I was having of my friend and her husband were repetitive, and if I had been the impartial observer, I would have recognized that right away. Instead, I let myself get swept away by the jealousy, and once I'm swept away, I'm susceptible to all kinds of thoughts and feelings which carry me further and further away from reality and what the basis of my OCD is REALLY about. The bad thing about me is once I have fallen off the wagon, I don't really let myself get back on. I try to start fresh, but my past "failure" haunts me, and I don't let myself feel good about any successes I might be experiencing. I need to work on letting the past be the past and starting over, without punishing myself for what I DIDN'T do.
I'm proud of myself for adopting this new mindset about my thoughts and anxiety. I have come so far in the way I treat my OCD. I wish I had done this sooner. Who knows what my life would be like right now if I had tried earlier to recover. But all I have is now, this instant, and it's my responsibility to make the most of it. So I'm getting back on the wagon and adopting the role of the impartial spectator once again.
I still have to run tonight --- 11.3K. Oy. I really don't feel like it, but it will do my body good. My half marathon is a little more than a month away. Did I mention earlier that my half marathon falls on wedding anniversary, which is September 20? That was the date of our wedding last year. Technically, we were married on Sept. 19, which was when our justice of the peace came to the hall where we decorating for the next day's festivities and married us in a civil ceremony. I think I still count Sept. 20 as our wedding day, though.
Hmmm...what else happened today worth mentioning? I watched a program on A & E called "Obsessed", which is a program about OCD. It's a really interesting program. Every week they feature one or two people who have different cases of OCD and show how they get treated for them using Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy (or ERP) I have never seen a case of ROCD on there, but on one episode, there was a woman who believed that she could be a murderer and her OCD appeared to be a type Pure - Obsessional OCD (or Pure-O, for short), which is the type of OCD I have. So while I cleaned our bedroom, I watched "Obsessed". I also did some cooking today. I'm enjoying cooking more and more, especially Indian cooking. I made a great Aloo Ghobi ( a type of dry potato and cauliflour curry) out of a low-fat East Indian cookbook R. bought and plan to enjoy some with supper tonight (which is homemade pizza my mother in law made. Should be an interesting combo of foods!)
Hope everyone had a good weekend. Talk to you all tomorrow. Take care.
Cyber
The weekend has flown by so quickly...too quickly. I really don't want to go back to work tomorrow. But I have a body scrub scheduled at a spa in the mall where I work, and I'm getting together with friends tomorrow after work to catch a couple episodes of "Friday Night Lights" and eat dinner. So I have some good things going on to kick off a new work week.
Today has been an okay day. I have a tendency towards all-or-nothing thinking, so if one part of my day has gone bad, I tend to characterize my whole day as bad. In reality, some parts of Sunday were positive and other parts of negative, as they relate to my OCD. I was pretty good for a lot of the day at observing my thoughts and my anxiety and keeping a pretty good perspective on what is going on with me. Then I experienced a bout of jealousy thinking of my friend and her sex life with her husband, and I convinced myself that that had nothing to do with my fear of losing my husband. I also convinced myself that unless R. and I connect in bed, that I will never get over the jealousy and it will continue to get worse until we divorce. Which, of course, comes right back to my fear of losing my husband, but I just didn't let my thinking get that far. But I know that the "jealousy" I experienced (if that was, in fact, jealousy) still relates to my obsessive relationship doubts. In hindsight, the thoughts I was having of my friend and her husband were repetitive, and if I had been the impartial observer, I would have recognized that right away. Instead, I let myself get swept away by the jealousy, and once I'm swept away, I'm susceptible to all kinds of thoughts and feelings which carry me further and further away from reality and what the basis of my OCD is REALLY about. The bad thing about me is once I have fallen off the wagon, I don't really let myself get back on. I try to start fresh, but my past "failure" haunts me, and I don't let myself feel good about any successes I might be experiencing. I need to work on letting the past be the past and starting over, without punishing myself for what I DIDN'T do.
I'm proud of myself for adopting this new mindset about my thoughts and anxiety. I have come so far in the way I treat my OCD. I wish I had done this sooner. Who knows what my life would be like right now if I had tried earlier to recover. But all I have is now, this instant, and it's my responsibility to make the most of it. So I'm getting back on the wagon and adopting the role of the impartial spectator once again.
I still have to run tonight --- 11.3K. Oy. I really don't feel like it, but it will do my body good. My half marathon is a little more than a month away. Did I mention earlier that my half marathon falls on wedding anniversary, which is September 20? That was the date of our wedding last year. Technically, we were married on Sept. 19, which was when our justice of the peace came to the hall where we decorating for the next day's festivities and married us in a civil ceremony. I think I still count Sept. 20 as our wedding day, though.
Hmmm...what else happened today worth mentioning? I watched a program on A & E called "Obsessed", which is a program about OCD. It's a really interesting program. Every week they feature one or two people who have different cases of OCD and show how they get treated for them using Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy (or ERP) I have never seen a case of ROCD on there, but on one episode, there was a woman who believed that she could be a murderer and her OCD appeared to be a type Pure - Obsessional OCD (or Pure-O, for short), which is the type of OCD I have. So while I cleaned our bedroom, I watched "Obsessed". I also did some cooking today. I'm enjoying cooking more and more, especially Indian cooking. I made a great Aloo Ghobi ( a type of dry potato and cauliflour curry) out of a low-fat East Indian cookbook R. bought and plan to enjoy some with supper tonight (which is homemade pizza my mother in law made. Should be an interesting combo of foods!)
Hope everyone had a good weekend. Talk to you all tomorrow. Take care.
Cyber
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Not Such a Great Day :(
Hi all,
I woke up this morning and realized I wasn't worrying about anything. And it made me feel so uneasy. I think I'm so used to worrying that when I don't do it, things feel off. Someone on one of the OCD boards I visit, Stuckinadoorway.org, described his OCD as a protective sheild. That's kind of how I feel about it, like it protects me from the worst (which, in my case, is my relationship ending). In reality, the OCD does nothing to protect me. It's only a detriment to my relationship.
It didn't take long for me to start worrying. I have had a couple of themes repeating in my head today. One of them is thoughts of my friend and her husband's relationship (specifically, their sex life) and how great it is. Everytime I have a thought of them having sex, I feel a jolt of anxiety in my stomach. I have had obsessional jealousy about them for quite some time, and it always goes back to the idea that my relationship does not measure up to theirs. In other words, my relationship is not RIGHT if its not like theirs. This feeling of rightness is a huge preoccupation of OCD sufferers. It's why we perform our compulsions. I don't know that I experience any compulsions when I get thoughts of their relationship, but I know the thoughts are intrusive, unwanted, and cause me anxiety, so I consider them to be part of my OCD.
The other theme running through my head today is that we have no sexual chemistry. Sigh. This is a worry that rarely goes away. I do know that my OCD tries to make chemistry and our sex life my primary worry when it's not really my worry at all. But when I'm in the throes of an obsession and the anxiety is there, it feels like my sex life is my primary worry. This worry springs up no matter what I"m doing. We were at Superstore today doing our grocery shopping, and all of a sudden I thought "We have no chemistry" or "I don't want to have sex with him". There was no context to these thoughts. They were intrusive and unwanted. My thoughts oscillated all day between thoughts of my friend and her husband and my own relationship. So annoying.
I am trying so hard to be the observer of my thoughts, rather than the thinker. I try to be objective about them, and not emotionally react to the thoughts and the anxiety. But I worry that maybe I am engaging myself too much with my mind. I worry that I am not really observing my thoughts at all. I worry that everytime I fail at being the observer and get upset by the thoughts and anxiety or allow myself to be defined by them, that I will never get better. I worry that getting better means being perfect at the therapy. I don't always know what it means, to observe the thoughts. How do you not engage with your mind, at least partially? The thoughts are still coming from my brain, they are in my head. How do you stay separate from them completely? It's so hard. But I guess it takes practice. I do try to take a look at each thought and describe them to myself. Not analyse it to see if it is true or untrue, but describe its content exactly as the way it is presented to my mind. And then move on. When the anxiety is in my stomach, which is where I tend to feel it, I acknowledge that it's there, but I try not to let myself get upset that it's there. And I try not to describe myself AS anxious. I can tell myself that I'm feeling anxiety, but I don't indentify myself with it.
I have my doubts some days that I will ever be able to beat this. Today is one of those days. But I just started doing this, and I'm not going to be great at it right off the bat. I have to be patient with myself. I WILL get the hang of it. 4 years of thinking like this is not going to repair itself over night. I'm already seeing some good changes in myself. I'm not reacting to the thoughts in the same way as I used to. I'm not doing alot of the compulsions I used to do. I'm seeing the anxiety for what it is and the way my OCD misuses it on me. I also had the realization last night that thoughts and feelings aren't reality, and just because I believe something to be real or true, that doesn't mean that my belief is right. People believe all kinds of things that aren't true. And the fact that my OCD won't let me believe this new logic of mine to be true is just so it can stay alive in my brain and continue to protect me. Anxiety usually kicks in when I try to adopt this new logic or try to change my way of thinking, and in the past this anxiety would have made me back down from the new logic and think "No, all this IS real. I know it is!" But now I see it for what it is: a feeble attempt on the part of OCD to survive. And now I can look at it and realize that, at the end of the day, the anxiety is not an indication that my warped way of thinking is true. The anxiety is nothing more than a feeling and holds no truth. In fact, I don't think ANY feeling holds truth. They are products of the mind, and the mind is a fictional product.
I know that there is a person that exists underneath all these thoughts and feelings, a person who is not defined by her OCD. But I have made OCD an identity. Losing it feels like losing who I am, whether I realize that or not. It's such a hard thing to let go of, no matter how much I tell myself I hate it. As I already mentioned, I have always thought it protected me. Everytime I change my way of thinking, the OCD throws an image of a bleak future at me, as if to say "See? This is what you have to look forward to do if you get rid of me! You'd better think twice about this!" I wish I could believe that things will get better once it's gone, but I'm so scared I will discover this fear of us not having chemistry will turn out to be real and I will have to divorce him. I hate not knowing the future. I have an intolerance of uncertainty, as all OCD sufferers do. But hopefully I can someday learn how to live with the uncertainty.
I am looking into getting the book "The Happiness Trap" by Russ Harris. If anyone has read it, I would love to know what you think about it. It's about Acceptance and Committment Therapy and is supposed to be helpful for anyone suffering from anxiety. I know one of the tenets of this book is that one must practice mindfulness. I'm hoping it will elaborate more on how to practice mindfulness. Anyway, once I have read it, I will let you know what I thought of it and if I think it will help me.
K, I know this post has been depressing, so here a bit of good news. First, I ran 7.3K today! Woot! I am training for a half marathon in September --- 21.2K (I think) This was my second 7.3K run this week and tomorrow I run 11K. As of tomorrow, I will have run half the distance I will be running on race day. I'm pretty psyched but a little nervous.
Well, I guess I should call it a night --- my hubby and I are getting ready to watch a movie tonight. "And the Band Played On". I have already seen it but I find it really interesting. Thanks for reading this. I have to apologize for my attrocious grammar --- noone would believe I was a linguistics major in university based on my writing. But hopefully you can see past all that and get something out of my posts. Good night, guys!
I woke up this morning and realized I wasn't worrying about anything. And it made me feel so uneasy. I think I'm so used to worrying that when I don't do it, things feel off. Someone on one of the OCD boards I visit, Stuckinadoorway.org, described his OCD as a protective sheild. That's kind of how I feel about it, like it protects me from the worst (which, in my case, is my relationship ending). In reality, the OCD does nothing to protect me. It's only a detriment to my relationship.
It didn't take long for me to start worrying. I have had a couple of themes repeating in my head today. One of them is thoughts of my friend and her husband's relationship (specifically, their sex life) and how great it is. Everytime I have a thought of them having sex, I feel a jolt of anxiety in my stomach. I have had obsessional jealousy about them for quite some time, and it always goes back to the idea that my relationship does not measure up to theirs. In other words, my relationship is not RIGHT if its not like theirs. This feeling of rightness is a huge preoccupation of OCD sufferers. It's why we perform our compulsions. I don't know that I experience any compulsions when I get thoughts of their relationship, but I know the thoughts are intrusive, unwanted, and cause me anxiety, so I consider them to be part of my OCD.
The other theme running through my head today is that we have no sexual chemistry. Sigh. This is a worry that rarely goes away. I do know that my OCD tries to make chemistry and our sex life my primary worry when it's not really my worry at all. But when I'm in the throes of an obsession and the anxiety is there, it feels like my sex life is my primary worry. This worry springs up no matter what I"m doing. We were at Superstore today doing our grocery shopping, and all of a sudden I thought "We have no chemistry" or "I don't want to have sex with him". There was no context to these thoughts. They were intrusive and unwanted. My thoughts oscillated all day between thoughts of my friend and her husband and my own relationship. So annoying.
I am trying so hard to be the observer of my thoughts, rather than the thinker. I try to be objective about them, and not emotionally react to the thoughts and the anxiety. But I worry that maybe I am engaging myself too much with my mind. I worry that I am not really observing my thoughts at all. I worry that everytime I fail at being the observer and get upset by the thoughts and anxiety or allow myself to be defined by them, that I will never get better. I worry that getting better means being perfect at the therapy. I don't always know what it means, to observe the thoughts. How do you not engage with your mind, at least partially? The thoughts are still coming from my brain, they are in my head. How do you stay separate from them completely? It's so hard. But I guess it takes practice. I do try to take a look at each thought and describe them to myself. Not analyse it to see if it is true or untrue, but describe its content exactly as the way it is presented to my mind. And then move on. When the anxiety is in my stomach, which is where I tend to feel it, I acknowledge that it's there, but I try not to let myself get upset that it's there. And I try not to describe myself AS anxious. I can tell myself that I'm feeling anxiety, but I don't indentify myself with it.
I have my doubts some days that I will ever be able to beat this. Today is one of those days. But I just started doing this, and I'm not going to be great at it right off the bat. I have to be patient with myself. I WILL get the hang of it. 4 years of thinking like this is not going to repair itself over night. I'm already seeing some good changes in myself. I'm not reacting to the thoughts in the same way as I used to. I'm not doing alot of the compulsions I used to do. I'm seeing the anxiety for what it is and the way my OCD misuses it on me. I also had the realization last night that thoughts and feelings aren't reality, and just because I believe something to be real or true, that doesn't mean that my belief is right. People believe all kinds of things that aren't true. And the fact that my OCD won't let me believe this new logic of mine to be true is just so it can stay alive in my brain and continue to protect me. Anxiety usually kicks in when I try to adopt this new logic or try to change my way of thinking, and in the past this anxiety would have made me back down from the new logic and think "No, all this IS real. I know it is!" But now I see it for what it is: a feeble attempt on the part of OCD to survive. And now I can look at it and realize that, at the end of the day, the anxiety is not an indication that my warped way of thinking is true. The anxiety is nothing more than a feeling and holds no truth. In fact, I don't think ANY feeling holds truth. They are products of the mind, and the mind is a fictional product.
I know that there is a person that exists underneath all these thoughts and feelings, a person who is not defined by her OCD. But I have made OCD an identity. Losing it feels like losing who I am, whether I realize that or not. It's such a hard thing to let go of, no matter how much I tell myself I hate it. As I already mentioned, I have always thought it protected me. Everytime I change my way of thinking, the OCD throws an image of a bleak future at me, as if to say "See? This is what you have to look forward to do if you get rid of me! You'd better think twice about this!" I wish I could believe that things will get better once it's gone, but I'm so scared I will discover this fear of us not having chemistry will turn out to be real and I will have to divorce him. I hate not knowing the future. I have an intolerance of uncertainty, as all OCD sufferers do. But hopefully I can someday learn how to live with the uncertainty.
I am looking into getting the book "The Happiness Trap" by Russ Harris. If anyone has read it, I would love to know what you think about it. It's about Acceptance and Committment Therapy and is supposed to be helpful for anyone suffering from anxiety. I know one of the tenets of this book is that one must practice mindfulness. I'm hoping it will elaborate more on how to practice mindfulness. Anyway, once I have read it, I will let you know what I thought of it and if I think it will help me.
K, I know this post has been depressing, so here a bit of good news. First, I ran 7.3K today! Woot! I am training for a half marathon in September --- 21.2K (I think) This was my second 7.3K run this week and tomorrow I run 11K. As of tomorrow, I will have run half the distance I will be running on race day. I'm pretty psyched but a little nervous.
Well, I guess I should call it a night --- my hubby and I are getting ready to watch a movie tonight. "And the Band Played On". I have already seen it but I find it really interesting. Thanks for reading this. I have to apologize for my attrocious grammar --- noone would believe I was a linguistics major in university based on my writing. But hopefully you can see past all that and get something out of my posts. Good night, guys!
Friday, August 14, 2009
Rant
You know what bugs me? Everytime I have a thought to email R. about something, I suddenly am overcome with the feeling that I don't want to. And alot of times I get the thought I don't want to go home to him. Often, when he comes into a room, I'm not happy to see him or annoyed when I do see him. It's this constant negativity about being in contact with him or seeing him that I am battling with these days and I hate it, it scares me. But I know that the thoughts and feelings are repetitive enough that they are just meaningless. I mean, I had that same negativity about him coming home from the movie last night, but after talking to him for awhile, I was fine. And I enjoyed cuddling up to him before we fell asleep. So I know the feelings, no matter how frequent they may be, are temporary. Still, I don't like that the thoughts and feelings happen so frequently. I guess that is just part of living with this disorder.
Sorry...just had to rant.
Sorry...just had to rant.
The First Post...It's a Long One...
Good morning!
I got the inspiration to start this blog from watching the movie "Julie and Julia". Have you seen it? It's a cute movie, and one of the main storylines in it is about a woman named Julie Powell who decides to work her way through Julia Child's cookbook and blog about her experiences. As I was watching the movie, it dawned on me that maybe I could start a blog about my experiences with ROCD --- Relationship - Substantiated Obessive Compulsive Disorder. I'm a huge fan of blogs --- I check out a number of fashion blogs on a daily basis. They can be so inspirational. My hope for my blog is that I can be someone other people can relate to in their own struggles with OCD. I hope to be of some support, as I know how scary and alone a person with OCD can feel. As for what I get out of it, personally? I guess I'm thinking of this blog as a journal, somewhere where I can open up fully about what I'm going through and try to make some sense out of the craziness that is always going on inside of my head.
I guess I will start off with my back story. I'm not sure when my OCD began exactly. I always thought it started in October 2005, at the age of 28. My therapist says it's rare for someone to develop OCD in their late 20s. From the time I was a little girl, I used to have terrible thoughts of family dying in plane crashes. I used to have terrible thoughts towards my mother, even thoughts that I wanted her to die. All these thoughts made me feel deeply guilty and made me feel like a horrible, evil person. I have also picked my lip and skin on other parts of my body since I was a child. After reading about OCD and visiting forums about OCD where others talk about their experiences, I realize that the thoughts I had from childhood and my skin-picking may have been symptomatic of OCD. My therapist seems to think so, as well.
In September of 2005, I met my husband (he wants me to identify him as Colt Steele in this blog, but I think I will just identify him as R.) The first six weeks of our relationship was perfect. He was everything I was looking for --- funny, sweet, considerate, interesting, warm, loving. We had a lot in common. The only thing that was off between us was the physical chemistry. I had just come off a relationship where we were pretty incompatible in most ways except physically, and prior to that I was in love with a man who was completely wrong for me but I had loved deeply and with who the chemistry was out of this world. I was definitely worried about the lack of chemistry I felt with R. but I always thought that it would just happen later on.
I remember pretty clearly when the onset of the ROCD happened for me. It was in October of 2005 and I was at his house watching tv. We had just eaten dinner and we were on his couch watching tv, holding hands. All of a sudden, a voice went off inside my head, yelling "It's not right! It's not right!" and this intense, burning sensation flooded my stomach. I actually threw up, the feeling was so strong. I didn't know what the feeling was. I thought maybe I was suffering from food poisoning or something. My husband finally identified the feeling as anxiety. From the moment the anxiety hit me, I became obsessive about about my sexual chemistry with R. When I say "obsessive", I mean that all my thoughts about our chemistry were intrusive, unwanted, and caused me anxiety. I began the need for certainty that we had chemistry, so I began sking him questions like "What do you feel when I kiss you? What do you feel when I touch you?", etc. I would discover later that asking questions like these would be one of my compulsions, designed to neutralize the anxiety I was experiencing about our sex life. I was pretty confused that night, not knowing what the hell was going on inside me. I was fraught with all kinds of anxiety.
That weekend, I was on the internet constantly, googling about chemistry. I wanted to know how you know you have chemistry with someone and how important chemistry is in a relationship. Sometimes I would read something on the Net that would make me feel better --- reassure me --- only to read something else that would cause me anxiety all over again. I couldn't make the anxiety go away, no matter what I did. Inside my head, I would ask myself "do we have chemistry?" to see if I would get an answer that would give me some reasurrance. I never really got and it made my anxiety stronger. When Monday rolled around, I felt like we needed to break up. I felt like it wasn't right between us. I was trying to act as normally around him as I could, but inside I was crying. I didn't really want to let him go, but I thought that if it didn't feel right and we didn't have any chemistry, that I had no other choice. Breaking up was just another compulsion, but I didn't realize it at the time. I stayed the night at his place --- I wanted one last night with him befoer I had to say goodbye forever (remembering all this right now still makes me teary!). The next morning I got home early and went right to the Internet to look for more answers. I started googling certain phrases that were running through my head and I came across a site that would basically change my life forever.
I got the inspiration to start this blog from watching the movie "Julie and Julia". Have you seen it? It's a cute movie, and one of the main storylines in it is about a woman named Julie Powell who decides to work her way through Julia Child's cookbook and blog about her experiences. As I was watching the movie, it dawned on me that maybe I could start a blog about my experiences with ROCD --- Relationship - Substantiated Obessive Compulsive Disorder. I'm a huge fan of blogs --- I check out a number of fashion blogs on a daily basis. They can be so inspirational. My hope for my blog is that I can be someone other people can relate to in their own struggles with OCD. I hope to be of some support, as I know how scary and alone a person with OCD can feel. As for what I get out of it, personally? I guess I'm thinking of this blog as a journal, somewhere where I can open up fully about what I'm going through and try to make some sense out of the craziness that is always going on inside of my head.
I guess I will start off with my back story. I'm not sure when my OCD began exactly. I always thought it started in October 2005, at the age of 28. My therapist says it's rare for someone to develop OCD in their late 20s. From the time I was a little girl, I used to have terrible thoughts of family dying in plane crashes. I used to have terrible thoughts towards my mother, even thoughts that I wanted her to die. All these thoughts made me feel deeply guilty and made me feel like a horrible, evil person. I have also picked my lip and skin on other parts of my body since I was a child. After reading about OCD and visiting forums about OCD where others talk about their experiences, I realize that the thoughts I had from childhood and my skin-picking may have been symptomatic of OCD. My therapist seems to think so, as well.
In September of 2005, I met my husband (he wants me to identify him as Colt Steele in this blog, but I think I will just identify him as R.) The first six weeks of our relationship was perfect. He was everything I was looking for --- funny, sweet, considerate, interesting, warm, loving. We had a lot in common. The only thing that was off between us was the physical chemistry. I had just come off a relationship where we were pretty incompatible in most ways except physically, and prior to that I was in love with a man who was completely wrong for me but I had loved deeply and with who the chemistry was out of this world. I was definitely worried about the lack of chemistry I felt with R. but I always thought that it would just happen later on.
I remember pretty clearly when the onset of the ROCD happened for me. It was in October of 2005 and I was at his house watching tv. We had just eaten dinner and we were on his couch watching tv, holding hands. All of a sudden, a voice went off inside my head, yelling "It's not right! It's not right!" and this intense, burning sensation flooded my stomach. I actually threw up, the feeling was so strong. I didn't know what the feeling was. I thought maybe I was suffering from food poisoning or something. My husband finally identified the feeling as anxiety. From the moment the anxiety hit me, I became obsessive about about my sexual chemistry with R. When I say "obsessive", I mean that all my thoughts about our chemistry were intrusive, unwanted, and caused me anxiety. I began the need for certainty that we had chemistry, so I began sking him questions like "What do you feel when I kiss you? What do you feel when I touch you?", etc. I would discover later that asking questions like these would be one of my compulsions, designed to neutralize the anxiety I was experiencing about our sex life. I was pretty confused that night, not knowing what the hell was going on inside me. I was fraught with all kinds of anxiety.
That weekend, I was on the internet constantly, googling about chemistry. I wanted to know how you know you have chemistry with someone and how important chemistry is in a relationship. Sometimes I would read something on the Net that would make me feel better --- reassure me --- only to read something else that would cause me anxiety all over again. I couldn't make the anxiety go away, no matter what I did. Inside my head, I would ask myself "do we have chemistry?" to see if I would get an answer that would give me some reasurrance. I never really got and it made my anxiety stronger. When Monday rolled around, I felt like we needed to break up. I felt like it wasn't right between us. I was trying to act as normally around him as I could, but inside I was crying. I didn't really want to let him go, but I thought that if it didn't feel right and we didn't have any chemistry, that I had no other choice. Breaking up was just another compulsion, but I didn't realize it at the time. I stayed the night at his place --- I wanted one last night with him befoer I had to say goodbye forever (remembering all this right now still makes me teary!). The next morning I got home early and went right to the Internet to look for more answers. I started googling certain phrases that were running through my head and I came across a site that would basically change my life forever.
On the site, people were discussing their ROCD. Their stories sounded so similar to mine --- slightly different content, but basically the same thing as what I was going through. From this site, I was able to find out about two discussion forums where people with all kinds of OCD talk about what they are going through. I posted my story on one of these forums and people on there seemed to agree that what I was suffering from was in fact OCD. I found out about a great article an OCD specialist, Dr. Phillipson, wrote about ROCD, and it gave me great solace to know that perhaps there was something else at play besides just the possibility that I might not be in a good relationship. I saw a psychiatrist in June of the following year, and he diagnosed me officially with OCD.
Since I developed the ROCD, I went through a lot of obsessions about my relationship with R. I obsessed about chemistry, I obsessed about whether he was funny or interesting enough for me --- I even obsessed about whether he was a racist. One theme I struggled with is whether or not I was in love with him, a theme that I still struggle with from time to time. The anxiety was so overpowering that I ended the relationship twice in the first 4 months of our relationship. But I never could stay away from him. What always drew me back to him was my love for him. Goodness knows why he took me back. I guess I'm just lucky.
Relationship Substantiated OCD, according to Dr. Phillipson, is characterized by "...the inability to clearly discern the emotional rationale for remaining in a relationship, despite the absence of a clear justification." The ROCD sufferer needs to feel certain that the relationship is right in order to continue their relationship. For some sufferers, the right relationship as they perceive it to be is one where they feel love or in love. For others, it's one where they find their partner to be funny or interesting. For others still, like myself, it's one where there is sexual chemistry. A person with ROCD searches long and hard for this feeling of rightness. Without the right feelings for their partners, the sufferer experiences anxiety. Through engaging in compulsive behaviors, they may find that feeling and the "proof" that the relationship is right, chasing the anxiety. But this never lasts long. They will inevitably find themselves once again, in a state of anxiety, searching again for the right feelings.
A few compulsions I have engaged in are:
- To kiss him repeatedly hoping for the kiss to feel right
-Initiating sex with him hoping to feel aroused (and prove we had chemistry)
- Searching on the Internet to find out how important chemistry or being in love is to a relationship
- Asking myself if we have chemistry or if I was in love with him
- Making statements to myself that I have or haven't chemistry with him to see if my feelings would follow
- Shaking my head to get rid of a thought I didn't like.
I'm sure there are more, but these are the most prominent ones. I don't do all of them anymore, but I definitely still have the need to neutralize my anxiety.
Not alot is known about ROCD. Aside from Dr. Phillipson's article, "I Think It Moved" in which he devotes an entire section of it, you won't find too much information about it. It is not a classic OCD, where the compulsions are physical and easily observable. ROCD is a subtype of Pure Obsessional OCD, where both the obsessions and the compulsions are mental. It's one that even some OCD specialists struggle to diagnose as OCD. I think this is because the obsessions ROCD sufferers endure can very well be mistaken for real relationship issues. I have seen therapists in the past who have tried to give me relationship counselling, which just created more confusion inside me about what I'm going through. I now see a therapist who treats my thoughts as they should be treated --- as OCD.
What I'm doing at the present moment to beat my OCD is taking supplements and using mindfulness and acceptance. I'm taking L-Tryptophan, which is a supplement that increases seretonin production in the brain, something that OCD sufferers lack. Before that I took a medication called Cipralex which does the same thing L-Tryptophan does, and it did wonders for me. In fact I never would have gotten married if I hadn't taken the Cipralex. As far as therapy goes, at the foundation of any kind of therapy for OCD, regardles of what kind of OCD it is, is accepting the thoughts and anxiety. People who have OCD resist the thoughts they have and try to neutralize their anxiety because of the discomfort they feel ( as well as the fact that the thoughts are foreign to their true nature, what is referred to as ego-dystonic) In order to get better, I must always allow the thoughts and the anxiety to be there. But more than that, I am being mindful of the thoughts and the anxiety --- observing them, watching them, but never engaging with them. This helps me dissociate myself from my mind and allows me to see them for what they are --- repetitive noise that is not worth getting upset over.
Different people have different ways of overcoming their OCD, and sufferers have strong opinions about the best technique. On this blog, I will post links to information about different types of therapy you can use. In my humble opinion, no two people respond to a technique in the same way. At the end of the day, if you have found a technique you feel is helping, don't let anyone tell you that it's not the proper way to beat your ocd. Every technique has validity.
So for now, supplements, mindfulness and acceptance are the ways to go, for me. Here is what I'm trying to do:
- when I get a thought, observe it. Try not to react emotionally to it. Try not to let it define who I am. Already, in doing this, I have gotten a sense for the way my thoughts work in patterns and how repetitive my thoughts are. I basically have the same 2 or 3 themes running through my head all day, and the thoughts are always some variation of the themes. Observing the thought works alot of the time, but sometimes I struggle with it. I worry I'm not really observing the thought, I worry that I'm doing this to neutralize my anxiety. I struggle with being perfect at it.
- Observe my anxiety. Notice that its there, notice its purpose (which is to get me to run far away from the relationshiop, because my mind sees it as a dangerous situation). Again, try not to let it define me.
I have gained the perspective that my ROCD tries to distract me from what my real fear is --- that I will lose my husband. Through all the doubting over the years, all the breakups, all the near breakups, the one thing that has never changed is my desire to be with my husband. I have always WANTED to be with my husband, though my mind tries to tell me we SHOULDN'T be together. Although my ocd tries to make it seem like my fears about chemistry and all the other things I worry about are my primary fears, in reality, what I'm really scared about is being without him. Unfortunately, that knowledge doesn't always help me. I do let the OCD sweep me away, distract me. It's very powerful. It takes vigilance to manage it. I probably will always have OCD, but I hope to get to a point where I can manage my symptoms and enjoy my life with my husband, who is a really wonderful person and the love of my life.
I think that's probably enough writing for now. I will have lots more to share with you over the next while, like more information about OCd, how my recovery is going, and how I'm coping. I know this blog will come off as negative at times, but I'm trying to be as honest as I can with you about what I go through. Maybe others will see themselves in me and we can support each other. I welcome all comments.
One thing I won't do, though, is offer any kind of reassurance to people that their obsessions are or aren't true. Reassurance is what keeps OCD alive. My goal is to be able to live with the thoughts that I have, regardless of whether or not they are true, and choose to live in a positive, productive way. And really, that should be the goal of any OCD sufferer.
Have a great day, everyone, and thanks for reading.
Cyber
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