My apologies for the LONG lapse in blog updates. Thank you, though, to all of you faithful who have continued to comment and check! I have been so encouraged by the comments and emails I receive - it just shows me that we are not alone in our struggles, even though sometimes our symptoms seem so private and unique.
My job as an insurance agent has been going very well. I still have the same struggles - worrying about if I touched something after another female touched it, thoughts about if I brushed up against a female, etc., but luckily I've been able to avoid ridiculous amounts of handwashing thanks in part to a) being tethered to a phone all day, and b) not wanting to be obviously OCD in public. Of course, sometimes I'm able to just "not care" or turn off the OCD thoughts as well.
My insurance should kick in pretty soon, and then I hope to eventually get back into therapy. I always enjoyed therapy - you can get thoughts off your chest, feel encouraged, and develop coping skills to fight the OCD.
I should mention something about my last post - I had put a list of people that had annoying tendecies that annoyed me as an OCD-er, such as "Clicky McClickerson". I did not in any way mean to offend or cause insecurity to anyone whose OCD actually causes them to BE Clicky, etc. I just thought it was a funny little way of pegging the people who usually trigger my OCD, not offend anyone whose OCD might cause them to be Clicky, etc. My apologies if that was in any way insensitive.
On a different note, is there anything I can blog about that would be of any help to anyone? For example, is there any symptom you might want to ask me about, or any part of my experience I can share? Is there anything you'd like to see on this blog that is not currently here?
About Me
- theocdblogger
- I'm a blogger with OCD. I hope this blog helps me. I hope this blog helps you.
Want to email me?
7 comments:
I know this is a bit off the wall, but I'm studying OCD at the moment and quite interested in working in mental health, and just wondered if you had any thoughts/opinions on medications, or any stories about how they affected you. I know it's quite a private question & one you can certainly choose to ignore; I would just love to learn if you do have some thoughts on it.
Hi, my name is Ziyan and I am a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NY. I was wondering if you would be willing to help me with one of my final projects, which I am writing about the topic of obsessions. I would like to interview you for a profile story about your OCD. Please let me know if that would be possible!
My email is: ziyan_ding@fitnyc.edu
Thank you!
Hi -- I have had OCD for forever and I worry my 10 year old now has it, just not as bad. I count. It is so annoying because I count in my head constantly. I feel if I don't do it, something bad will happen to someone close to me. I have to do it in a certain fashion and it can't land on certain numbers. For instance, I can count by 2's but I have to count something that doesn't end in 6. Or I can count by 3's and not land on 18...because that would be 6 three times and that's bad luck. God, I feel insane writing this. I also organize, line things up label out, facing a certain way and fold things, such as laundry a certain way, no creases. If I think I didn't do it right, I have to go back and redo it.
I have "outs" with my ocd. I make my own rules up and change them sometimes. Like, I made the rule that if I don't look back at the towel I folded, then if I did it wrong, it won't matter. But if I look at it and see it's wrong, then I have to redo it.
It started as a very, very young child and I remember it began with counting the number of times I blinked my eyes.
I have trouble sometimes reading other people's OCD struggles because it gives me "ideas." But I enjoyed reading your blog and don't feel so alone now.
I have rituals, such as knocking on wood three times or saying a certain phrase.
I'm in therapy and have tried numnerous medications but so far, nothing has really helped.
Hay, I've got OCD and one thing I do is make something. Something deemable as 'perfect' as far as my compulsions go and I allways keep it with me. It really helps! I use a really small piece of a 5€ note with a red dot in marker pen on one side.
Hi
My boyfriend is suffering with really really bad OCD.
Iv just been on the phone to him right now and im a little upset now because he is stressed and depressed cuz of a night out we went with friends. he was up until 6 in the morning last night washing the bed he had slept in and the clothes, himself etc.
He has been suffering since he was about 7 and was eventually diagnosed with Severe OCD.
One day a miracle happened, he got better! I met him within this time. Now unfortunately its back with a vengeance and its angry!
Its based around people who upset him and anyone connected to those people, they all make him want to wash. He remembered on that night out that one of the people who upset him goes to these places sometimes therefore all the clubs are contaminated. so now we cant go to clubs any more and our favourite restaurants, pubs, streets are all included in the list of no-go places.
There are thousands of other things that make him wash and sometimes he keeps me at arms length when he thinks i am contaminated which really upsets me but at the end of the day i just have to cope with it.
He is doing a different type of treatment to cognitive behavioural therapy that i hope is gonna work much better than CBT. It is all based around "the route cause"
My boyfriend argued that CBT is stupid because it is dealing with the rituals rather than the reason WHY he is washing in the first place. His dad was the one who found this therapist who helped him find out exactly what started this whole thing in the first place.
Now he is in the process of dealing with the early days. it turned out that because he was bullied when he was younger it upset him and explains why it is certain people who now make him want to wash. when he accepts the past he should be on the road to recovery. and thats the part i am looking forward to. it was only the last therapy session he was at that they figured out the route cause so now i am praying that it will soon be over.
I feel better now, i needed to get that off my chest
Thanks
ps. i recommend this type of therapy to anybody suffering with this problem. its a hell of alot more pleasant than CBT to say the least.
The cure for OCD, the most vital part!
I had OCD my whole life, then four years ago I started to do a lot of research on it. I started looking up other people who had 'really' cured it and here are some of the things we did, and they really work! Let's talk about them now...
I remember, when I was afraid to put my finger prints on anything because I was afraid that if a crime was committed around where I left my finger print, that I may be wrongfully accused.
I remember someone had let me borrow some dvd's. I grabbed them without thinking and then I thought of my finger prints.
I got a lot of anxiety and then said to myself, "What a minute! I'm afraid that if I leave my finger prints on these dvd's that if a crime ever happens at my friends house, they're going to dust for prints on the dvd's and I'm going to go to jail for something I didn't do! Ha!
When I said it to myself, out loud is better, you hear how ridiculous it is and you can't help but laugh. Also telling someone else really helps your brain to look at it in a different way. So one secret to curing OCD is to cause your brain to see it in a different way by making it look ridiculous to you, which will make your brain naturally question your actions.
At this point you are then able to retrain your brain a different way, because you have opened your brain up to the possibility that what you are doing may be the wrong thing.
So when I looked back down at the dvd's I not only refused to do my ritual of using the end of my sleeves to handle the dvd's, I defied my ritual and put an excessive amount of prints on them.
This huge wave of anxiety came over me like, ya, this is fun, but I have to wipe those off later. Then I said, no, and I touched the inside of the case and the cd and everywhere so that I couldn't possibly remember where are the finger prints were, now I was past the point of no return. I could not control it and I had to "let it go."
So I just said to myself, "What's done is done!" and "I don't care, I know this is not productive and I'm tired of doing things I don't want to do and I refuse to give into rituals anymore, lol I don't care, do your worst fear!"
I then realized that I just feared fear itself and I got this feeling like, man this is going to bother me, but I find that whenever I said that to myself, It never bothered me as long as I thought it would and I would eventually forget and that's the key.
After I defied my ritual with the dvd's and did what was most uncomfortable to me, which was exposing myself to my fear and going through it, once I went through it, I came out on the other side a free man! I felt like I was free, that I could do anything!
It's the most exhilarating experience and now, if OCD ever tries to come up during high anxiety situations, I get excited because I get to use this at will and I have used it to overcome numerous fears with lasting success.
This is not some therapy you need to pay someone for, this is a technique that you can have in your toolbox that you can use anytime you may feel OCD come up.
At first it will be hard, but after a while it gets so easy, and then you may spend several months forgetting you even had OCD, it's crazy. I know this works, it's not theory, it worked for me, it's worked for my colleagues. This is the real deal.
Stop looking for the answer, this is it. If you skip this over, you have just skipped over the most vital part of the cure...
Derek J. Soto
you can find me at
http://www.ocd-gone-in-seven-days.com
I couldn't agree more derek, but things like this are true more than ever for me. I have rigid compulsions and make my own rules whenever I go on the PC or play a videogame but I find changing the rules easy now I understand myself better... Like if I refused to jump in a certain game according to these rules I'll do something like say crouch in the middle of the jump, then it isn't a proper jump.
OCD is really all about understanding oneself and as Oscar Wilde once said 'In this lifetime the only peorson I truly want to thoroughly know is myself'
Post a Comment