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OCD gave me that punched in the stomach, oh NO, mind buzzing, heart racing, my world is ending feeling…
It is practically 4:30 in the morning right now. I woke up and didn’t think much about it besides maybe I need to make a trip to the bathroom and I will fall back asleep. It was not that easy. (Obviously, or I wouldn’t be writing this at 4:30 A freaking M… lol) I came back to bed and as I closed my eyes and began to drift to sleep I had an intrusive thought that immediately set my mind and body on guard. It gave me the punched in the stomach, oh NO, mind buzzing, heart racing, my world is ending feeling.
My go to compulsions were swift to kick in… questioning, trying to figure it out, trying to make it okay. I guess I should clarify that this intrusive thought hit on my obsession that I have some deep, dark, repressed memory that is going to surface and completely tear my life apart. It tells me that there are memories hidden deep in the recesses of my mind and I am going to become suddenly aware of them and then my life as I know it will never be the same. I will be broken, my family will be broken, and it will be something that I could NEVER recover from.
It sounded a bit like this (yes everything is punctuated with !! because that is how it happens… honestly it should be in all caps too) OMG why would you have that thought?!? It must mean something!!! I don’t want it to mean something!! If it didn’t mean something why the heck would I be having all this physical fear!! My body must know it means something!! What does it mean!?! I NEED to figure this out!! I don’t want to figure this out!! I’m Scared!! Memories from my past come in and I want to examine them all with a fine tooth comb, while also trying to push them away because I’m scared that they could contribute to some repressed memory coming to destroy my life.
After this trainwreck of thinking and more I am able to shift gears just a bit. I try to go into observer mode. To detach from the content and observe what is happening in my mind and body. With that comes a sort of epiphany…. below this fear is something else. I have a belief that if after something bad, wrong, or traumatic happens; I get over it, accept it, move on as if it is okay…. it FEELS like I am APPROVING of it. ((Another topic for another day is how much FEELING comes into play with OCD, all the talk is about the “thoughts”, the thoughts in the absence of the feelings would be doable…. ))
Does this epiphany mean I am cured, that theme, those questions, that fear will never hit me hard again? Absolutley Not!! It means that I am noticing OCD’s tricks, it means that I am still fighting this dragon, it means I will continue to look at my beliefs and work at making adjustments where I can. I must admit I have a very strong fix it mentality….I want everything to be fixed and I want to to be fixed NOW. I know part of my journey is accepting that just because I have identified a problem (my belief that being “okay and fully moving on” after something bad, wrong, or traumatic = approving. I should also add here that in my mind many times approving = wanting. Long story short… if I’m okay with something it means I approve, if I approve it means I may as well have wanted it….. yep pretty sure this a bit of a distortion) doesn’t mean I can immediately fix it and make it go away. However, I can hope that this is another tick mark on the side of lessons learned, coming out stronger side of the score card in my competition against OCD.
-Logically Illogical with OCD
The Assignment–results in allowing feelings to surface
So today I am writing because it is my assignment from my therapist this week…..
I am not writing because I have had some cataclysmic thought or idea that I felt would help the world in some way. It is a duty a responsibility that I must fulfill. While I tend to be a person that could be easily described as hyper-responsible. The truth is I loathe all the feelings of responsibility. All of the analysis that goes into decisions, the thought processes to try and figure outcomes for a,b,c,d and if a meets d and then comes in contact with c or what if c comes first and must be followed by d. Each and every small decision, action, of even lack of, will somehow affect the future in either a positive or negative way.
It is not that I spend days or weeks making every decision in my life though at the lowest points in my rollercoaster of my life it was torturous to even try and decide what to eat. I long to free from these feelings of responsibility for everyone and everything. I sometimes wish (yes I know it can be a compulsion) I could be one of those people who wake up in the morning and look and see only what is around them and in what way they can enjoy themselves without thought of how it affects everyone and everything else. To get up, feel joyful, ready to face the day and find all the enjoyment in that they can. Yes, I know being someone that only thinks of their enjoyment and not of anyone else is not really who I want to be. But not all dreams are logical…. dreams are a break from this logically illogical brain of mine. (Although my actual nighttime dreams are the weirdest things ever, lol)
You may wonder why writing this post would have to be an assignment and not something I do just because I enjoy writing. The simple reason is this….It is just another thing that I have somehow allowed my ever present feeling/thought/belief that things have to be “just right” to complete. The more I think about it the more I realize and must come to terms with is that I am sorta stuck in a rut looking/waiting for the “just right” feeling to come along. Do you remember that children’s game of Red Rover? You know the game where kids form two lines, link arms, and call the name of another child from the other line to run towards them and try to break through the line to the other side. Well my “wait til it’s just right”, “if you are going to do it, it must be 100%”, “what’s the point in trying if you cant be sure to succeed”, “life is hard, learn to be content”, “why do you think you deserve to enjoy life when so many others have so many horrible things to deal with”, “hold on, don’t feel”, “it’s not fair to hurt others by letting them see your hurt”, “it’s your own fault, your not doing something right”, along with others seem to be linking arms and taunting me to try and break through yet I am scared to even try.
To try and break though means I must admit I feel awful right now. I am scared to admit to that feeling and allow it because somehow I feel I can hold it at arms length by reminding myself of all I have to be grateful and thankful for of all that I love of all that I have. I hate the idea of being a burden because I can’t get my crap together. I am scared of my mind and how it reminds me how much I have taken from others with my problems and how it scares with me with the scary memories of my worst times in life. How it taunts me with the idea that I couldn’t handle it again and terrifies me with reminders of an old OCD fear that I will completely lose control and take my own life because of the great pain even though it is not what I want to do.
Suicide is an OCD fear that I have had for a long time and it follows along in the dark corners of my mind to remind me that life is hard and sometimes people can’t handle it anymore. The feelings/thoughts/sensations that come along with OCD/Depression/Anxiety/Panic are HARD and I tend to be the type of person that continue going despite hard until practically impossible. I am scared I will make wrong decisions and push myself to the feeling of impossible and lose control and make one single wrong choice and that is the end. No way to go back and undo that choice, no reset, not second chances after that.
The biggest irony in my great grip on staying “in control” is that the supposed function is to stay alive to live life because it really is a wonderful gift, yet I give up precious time of that gift by not living life because of trying to do it “just right”.
Isn’t that the story of my life as Logically Illogical with OCD.
Logically Illogical with OCD 