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