Vacation

We just took our big summer trip to visit our families. We spent a week in Kansas with my family and a week in South Dakota with my husband's. It was great. We had such a good time. When we got back, one of my friends asked me how the OCD was while we were gone and I said, "we kicked its ass!"

The challenge for the trip was that I needed to be able to touch pretty much anything at my parents' house, my grandma's house, my in-laws house, etc. I also ended up touching public doors in the small town my parents live in. It seemed like a good place to start. In a town of 1,500, I'm not nearly as scared as I am in Nashville (though I'm still plenty scared.) I managed this really well. I touched doors in one of the slightly bigger towns in South Dakota too...they have about 15,000 people so that was a real jump up. We had a couple of things we really had to talk through, but overall, I did great. And coming off of our last challenge (going places and coming home, not changing my clothes and sitting on the couch and stuff) we even went to a movie! I haven't been to a movie without showering afterwards for 2 years. And I did it this time!

It's really hard to explain how big these victories are. The fact that I now put toothpaste directly onto my toothbrush feels like an exciting achievement every time I do it. One afternoon in South Dakota that involved hugs and board games and a dining table, I said to Dave, "Do you know how many times I would have hand sanitized for this afternoon at Christmas?" I counted that there were at least 8 times that I would have reached for that little bottle and I didn't this time.

Probably the weirdest thing about all of this is that I feel like each time I do something the normal way, it should be a big deal. People should be questioning me or there should be a big fanfare or at least I should go into a full on panic attack. But instead, once I've made the commitment to go after a trigger, and especially after doing it for a bit, the normalcy just slips quietly in. I don't think this means I could have reached this point at any time these past two years. Something in the last two months has certainly changed. I know a piece of it is medicine, but I think there have also been changes in my spirit and in my brain. I don't really need to pinpoint it. I'm just glad that things aligned and we've been able to go after these challenges. And succeed.

Hope

A few weeks ago my doctor added a new medication. It's helping for right now, though I'm hesitant to trust it because every new medicine seems to give me some hope and then just tapers off. But my husband and I have taken advantage of this upswing.

A week and a half ago I made the comment that I wanted to do more with the fight against the OCD. Well, my husband jumped on that. He hadn't heard me say anything like that for so long, he couldn't let the opportunity slide by. So the next day, he suggests a real plan.

For the past 2 years I have barely touched my mouth and never without hand sanitizing or washing my hands. I'm so afraid of fever blisters and that I won't know when one is coming. So, it's been one of my bigger struggles and keeps me afraid of myself, which is a quite miserable place to be. I had recently been able to touch my mouth, just a couple of times and very briefly, but we decided this would be the one we would go after. My husband and I wrote up a list for the challenge. Each day I could not wash or hand sanitize after touching my mouth, eating with my hands, brushing my teeth, etc. Things I don't even think about anymore - I just take care of it right after. Also, each day, I would be required to touch my mouth 5 times a day quickly and once for a more extended period of time. My husband said that if I did this for 2 weeks, he'd be so proud of me and would get me a present that equaled this immense challenge.

The first couple days were very hard, but though there was some anxiety, I never had a full on anxiety or panic attack. There was something about knowing I'd done it a couple times before and also having committed to it. It's also been very helpful that this is the only goal we're working on right now. I don't have to worry about my feet or the doorknob for these 2 weeks. We're just going after one compulsion very hard.

And let me tell you, this has been an awesome victory! I'm doing great at it. I'm 11 days in and I'm fully capable of touching my mouth and doing all kinds of normal things regarding it without cleaning my hands. It feels amazing! To have something so normal taken from you and then to get it back...well, it feels like I just learned to walk again or something.

The goal is to just keep going. Every 2 weeks we're going to try to attack another compulsion and consistently go after it for the 2 week stretch until it becomes no big deal to me. I hope we can do it. I hope I can do it. But the one thing that this has given me, something even bigger than being able to touch my mouth, is hope. For the first time in a loooooooong time I have some hope again. I feel stronger, braver and just more optimistic. Each challenge still scares me completely, but I feel like maybe we can just chip away at this little by little, like a great piece of granite, and maybe finally something beautiful will emerge. It's a long road ahead but it looks like there's a bit of light, at least for now.

Thanks for all your support and prayers and encouragement. Keep praying and maybe I'll make it though this....one victory at a time.

Presents

It's been so long since I've written anything you probably thought I'd given up this blog thing. I've been pretty depressed lately, and if you know anything about depression, you know it sucks the motivation right out of ya. So...that's my excuse and I'm stickin' to it.

My husband and I have decided to try a new tactic against the OCD: flat out bribery. You see, a few weeks back, my husband walks in the room and says, "I see some cups without paper towels under them. How about you don't use any paper towels under cups anymore?" (Why the paper towels you ask? Well, I'm terrified of fever blisters, even though I've gotten them my whole life, and I put the paper towel under the cups to catch any germs that would drip down the sides. But you don't have a fever blister right now, you say. Yeah, that doesn't matter.)

So, I look up at my husband and say, "No, I don't think I can do that." "How about for a present?" he asks. OK. And that battle was conquered. They will not all be that easy. I was close to letting go of that one anyway for some reason. I hadn't been as consistent about using paper towels. But we decided to go after other stuff in a similar manner. Right now, I'm working on not cleaning off my purse when I take it places. The first couple of times, I still cleaned off the handles, which was cheating, but the last time, I didn't even do that. When I do this several times and it becomes normalized to not clean it anymore, then I get a present.

Sometimes I feel like a 5 year old being bribed with candy and toys...

After the Flood

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. As most of you know, the weekend before last, the first week of May, Nashville flooded. My husband and I were fine. I often complain about our tiny, old apartment, but I've been especially thankful for it now as it kept us safe and dry. We know friends who were not as lucky as us though and looking around our city has been hard.

One of the hardest things about the OCD and a crisis like this is I find myself very unable to offer my helping hands. I'm freaked out by other people's homes on a daily basis. Add standing water, possibilities of mold, etc, and I simple cannot do it. So, I haven't been part of Nashville's outpouring of support to those of its citizens that have been most affected.

We've also, as a city, needed to conserve water. Now, as someone who has OCD and washes her hands many times a day, this could have been interesting. Thankfully, I've grown to rely more on hand sanitizer over the past several months and so it didn't seem like such a big thing. (Of course, I'm not ok that Target ran out of almost all the hand sanitizer and I had to get little bottles of the kind I don't like. But go Nashvillians for conserving!)

I've been feeling very anxious lately and I'm not sure why. I'm trying to sort through my own stuff. But we are thankful that we were safe in the flood and we're praying for all those who have lost homes, possessions, family and who are just trying to put their lives back together right now.

A Wonderful Trip

Sorry I haven't written in awhile. Last weekend, my husband and I traveled to see some friends for our anniversary. We had a great time. Seeing the city of DC, catching up, eating good food, drinking good drinks. It was just a wonderful time.

The treat of the weekend was that my OCD behaved itself. It wasn't gone by any means, but I did stuff that I haven't done in a long time. I shared food, not just something I could split, but we all shared some amazing chocolate mousse. I don't share food because one of my biggest OCD fears is fever blisters. Our friends have a dog and I handled that amazingly well. I even let him lick my clothes and didn't worry about it. Most importantly, I knew that our friends were out in the world and touched things in their home without using my OCD rules, and yet, I felt completely comfortable there. I still hand sanitized like crazy, I still showered after our day at the Smithsonian. But I felt so much better about so many little things that usually get me into an OCD frenzy.

The weekend was a blessing. But it also made me sad. It was a taste of freedom and when I came home, I felt like I was headed back to prison. But I think that maybe I've held onto just a bit of the momentum that came from the weekend. It was so nice to be just a bit more free, to taste just a slice of something ever so slightly more normal.

To our friends - Thank you for the great weekend! We love and miss you!

TV

So, I was watching New Moon (don’t judge, just love me for it). Actually, I was watching some deleted scenes and in one the main character has been lost and her dad puts her in bed after she’s found. It’s very sweet. That’s not what I saw.

When he lays her in bed, he puts her in the wrong way, with her feet on the pillow, head at the end of the bed. I was watching this with a friend and I know for a fact that this meant nothing to her except for any storytelling value it may have had. For me, it started the OCD screaming. She had her shoes on and they were not only on the bed, but on her pillow! She had not just her clothes on in bed, which is hard enough for me, but she had her jacket on. When I pointed this out to my friend, she said, yeah but she was just on the dirt and that’s not as big of a deal for you. Well, she’s right. But the OCD countered with the fact that that jacket goes everywhere, to school, to the mall, out into the world of germs and now it was in her bed!

This is what it’s like for me to watch tv or movies or read books. I don’t just see the story, I see the OCD. When someone puts their feet up on a couch, I notice. When someone picks something up off the floor and just moves on, I see it. I’ve been watching Bones lately (love it!) and I notice when they touch something gross and they pull one of their lamps over. And I wonder, do they touch that later?

I guess I’m trying to show that OCD isn’t just something that I do. It’s how I see the whole world.

Some Depression I Guess

I've been feeling very blah lately. In one of my therapies last week, we talked about how I've kind of lost my fight. Trust me, it's not that I don't want to beat the OCD, it's that I'm tired and a part of me has simply given in and let it have whatever it wants. Not a good place to be. So, I need to find my fight again.

The next day, in the other therapist's office, I had a great session and gained some feelings of self-worth. Which I then connected as something I can use to help fight. But it's not enough. I'm waiting for that something to kick me into gear. I guess maybe I should go out and find it, but I'm just not sure what it is.

This isn't the best of posts, but I guess it's a reflection of my mood. I'm just so full of feeling nothing that I don't have much to write about this week. Sorry.