I feel like finishing 2015 should earn me some sort of prize. It was hard, damn hard. And I kept on rising to meet all of my responsibilities as hard as I could. Some other shit happened, but all I really take away from 2015 is that we got through it.
The sadness is still there. But there is also some hope. We have gotten the ball rolling on Special Needs Adoption through the foster system. I hope that this is the year we become parents.
And I want to do more yoga and shit, too.
Showing posts with label OCD. Show all posts
Showing posts with label OCD. Show all posts
Sunday, January 3, 2016
Saturday, August 8, 2015
Hey girl, you should totally get that yarn ball tattoo...
So I did. Finally.
 | ||
| taking a picture of my wrist was awkward |
My tattoo artist was a former marine who also knits, he had a girlfriend who crocheted, so he learned to knit. He said it was very relaxing, I don't think you get much more stressed out than being a freakin' marine, so it just speaks to the power of knitting.
"Breathe" isn't very original as a tattoo, but it really resonates with me. One of the biggest take aways from my OCD and panic disorder therapy has been the breathing. It's not really a secret, just breathing to help stop the vasovagal freakout that makes me dizzy, clammy, stomach crampy, and shaky.
Breathing is also part of my yoga practice, which is still very beginner, but the breath is so important.
And then there is the advice they give you on planes in case of disaster: put your own oxygen mask on first. And a large part of me getting on the path to wellness was the equivalent of putting on my mask. Putting myself first. Taking care of me while other things were a disaster. Taking care of me because I am worth it. Because I am not a failure. Because it is important.
The sparrow is for remembrance.
And I had the whole thing done to face me. These are reminders for me.
Saturday, August 1, 2015
Loss
This seems like more of a post for here, my mental health and OCD figure into it all.
Last month the stars, the hormones, the fertility drugs, and my ovaries all aligned and we found out we were finally pregnant. We were going on our eighteenth month of trying with timed intercourse, dipping sticks in pee, checking, counting, and the utter hell and heartbreak of infertility. If you've ever seen a movie or tv thing about a woman trying to get pregnant, it's much closer to the truth than I ever imagined. We lose our goddamn minds with it.
I have been stranded on the toilet sobbing too hard to even stand up and pull my pants up at least once a month during this time. Or waylaid by a woman who walks through the waiting room with a newborn. Utterly shattered by the toddler in the grocery cart near me who is playing peek-a-boo. I have have been so sure that it was our month so many times. It never was.
And then, there it was, two lines on a test. Two lines on a dozen tests. Five digital tests saying it was true. Then a quantitative HCG blood test. And then another. And yet another. And yep, I was knocked up for real. Everything was doubling in 48-ish hours. We set up my dating scan for mid-July. We spent that weekend being giddy and cuddling and randomly saying things like "Oh my god, we made a baby. Well, right now it's a blastocyst. We made a blastocyst!" It was the first Father's Day that I acknowledged since 1984.
It was us and the poppyseed.
The next week we just let it soak in. I can't say I felt sick or tired or anything yet. Things smelled different all of a sudden. Mostly I felt gassy. I wasn't but I just felt bloated. And then I felt some little stretchy things, it didn't feel like anything else. Just like little stretchy kind of sparky twinges. And warmth. I was HOT. my body temperature was up over 99 degrees for three weeks.
And we started to accept that this was really happening and we were nearly 6 weeks along and getting closer to that ultrasound every day. That ultrasound where we would see a heartbeat and could relax.
And then it stopped happening. I started bleeding. The doctor's office told me to hang in there and just take it easy and remember to breathe. The next day it seemed to stop for a while. And then it was back and painful. It was obviously not going to be OK and the repro med center wanted me to come in that afternoon.
The ultrasound showed no gestational sac in my uterus. The remnants of one were near my left ovary, it was reabsorbing, there was no more evidence of the poppyseed, which should have been a sesame seed by then. I know it's the best possible outcome for an ectopic, my body was clearing it out. It was so efficient that my right ovary was already working on the new follicles.
I wasn't pregnant anymore. I wanted to make everyone in the room just stop and let me take it in. I kept thinking they can't tell me this, we want this so much, we have done absolutely everything possible to get here. How can they break my heart before I have even been allowed to put my underpants back on? While my doctor was telling me to go to the main hospital lab I was just hoping I wasn't bleeding all over the floor. Because the cramping was getting worse by the moment.
We left and I had to sit down in the lobby. I couldn't breathe. It all hit me so hard that it just took my breath away. Emergency blood work at the main lab confirmed that my HCG had dropped by a huge amount, and two days later it was down in the definitely not pregnant range. And for the next few days I would randomly fall apart crying while my body was working on tidying up, it was painful and upsetting. I really hadn't thought of miscarriage as a process more than an event. It took several days to be complete.
And then I was OK and carrying on. We got the go-ahead to try again as soon as we wanted. And through whatever fuckery that governs my endocrine system, I was gearing up to pop out an egg on my own so, we once again gave it our best shot. And I did ovulate and even early. So we waited.
And we didn't catch it.
And it was somehow harder to accept this failure. I don't know why, it just made it all so much more real.
So it's a new cycle, and this time medicated. And at seven days into it, it could be the fertility drugs talking, but it hurts. I feel like a raw nerve. I cry. I cry so hard I can't breathe. When I'm not crying my throat hurts from swallowing the tears. My ovaries are feeling warm and heavy from the pills. I am trying to feel positive. I am trying to accept it all.
But I just want to scream that it's not fair. That this hurts too much. That I can't do this again. Except that we aren't ready to give up yet, we can't not do this.
And so we move ahead and I am focusing on my bans*, I am doing a leaner version of fertility charting, I am not checking and double checking or triple checking every symptom. I'm still going out. I am letting people in. I am feeling my emotions and handling them in appropriate ways.
It's the hardest thing I have ever had to do. June 29th was absolutely the shittiest day of my life so far.
I think that February 24th will be the second shittiest. It's the day after my birthday.
It would have been my due date.
* my bans are my banned behaviors, things I am not supposed to do. It's part of cognitive behavioral therapy. Negative self talk and OCD information seeking are my superpowers.
Last month the stars, the hormones, the fertility drugs, and my ovaries all aligned and we found out we were finally pregnant. We were going on our eighteenth month of trying with timed intercourse, dipping sticks in pee, checking, counting, and the utter hell and heartbreak of infertility. If you've ever seen a movie or tv thing about a woman trying to get pregnant, it's much closer to the truth than I ever imagined. We lose our goddamn minds with it.
I have been stranded on the toilet sobbing too hard to even stand up and pull my pants up at least once a month during this time. Or waylaid by a woman who walks through the waiting room with a newborn. Utterly shattered by the toddler in the grocery cart near me who is playing peek-a-boo. I have have been so sure that it was our month so many times. It never was.
And then, there it was, two lines on a test. Two lines on a dozen tests. Five digital tests saying it was true. Then a quantitative HCG blood test. And then another. And yet another. And yep, I was knocked up for real. Everything was doubling in 48-ish hours. We set up my dating scan for mid-July. We spent that weekend being giddy and cuddling and randomly saying things like "Oh my god, we made a baby. Well, right now it's a blastocyst. We made a blastocyst!" It was the first Father's Day that I acknowledged since 1984.
It was us and the poppyseed.
The next week we just let it soak in. I can't say I felt sick or tired or anything yet. Things smelled different all of a sudden. Mostly I felt gassy. I wasn't but I just felt bloated. And then I felt some little stretchy things, it didn't feel like anything else. Just like little stretchy kind of sparky twinges. And warmth. I was HOT. my body temperature was up over 99 degrees for three weeks.
And we started to accept that this was really happening and we were nearly 6 weeks along and getting closer to that ultrasound every day. That ultrasound where we would see a heartbeat and could relax.
And then it stopped happening. I started bleeding. The doctor's office told me to hang in there and just take it easy and remember to breathe. The next day it seemed to stop for a while. And then it was back and painful. It was obviously not going to be OK and the repro med center wanted me to come in that afternoon.
The ultrasound showed no gestational sac in my uterus. The remnants of one were near my left ovary, it was reabsorbing, there was no more evidence of the poppyseed, which should have been a sesame seed by then. I know it's the best possible outcome for an ectopic, my body was clearing it out. It was so efficient that my right ovary was already working on the new follicles.
I wasn't pregnant anymore. I wanted to make everyone in the room just stop and let me take it in. I kept thinking they can't tell me this, we want this so much, we have done absolutely everything possible to get here. How can they break my heart before I have even been allowed to put my underpants back on? While my doctor was telling me to go to the main hospital lab I was just hoping I wasn't bleeding all over the floor. Because the cramping was getting worse by the moment.
We left and I had to sit down in the lobby. I couldn't breathe. It all hit me so hard that it just took my breath away. Emergency blood work at the main lab confirmed that my HCG had dropped by a huge amount, and two days later it was down in the definitely not pregnant range. And for the next few days I would randomly fall apart crying while my body was working on tidying up, it was painful and upsetting. I really hadn't thought of miscarriage as a process more than an event. It took several days to be complete.
And then I was OK and carrying on. We got the go-ahead to try again as soon as we wanted. And through whatever fuckery that governs my endocrine system, I was gearing up to pop out an egg on my own so, we once again gave it our best shot. And I did ovulate and even early. So we waited.
And we didn't catch it.
And it was somehow harder to accept this failure. I don't know why, it just made it all so much more real.
So it's a new cycle, and this time medicated. And at seven days into it, it could be the fertility drugs talking, but it hurts. I feel like a raw nerve. I cry. I cry so hard I can't breathe. When I'm not crying my throat hurts from swallowing the tears. My ovaries are feeling warm and heavy from the pills. I am trying to feel positive. I am trying to accept it all.
But I just want to scream that it's not fair. That this hurts too much. That I can't do this again. Except that we aren't ready to give up yet, we can't not do this.
And so we move ahead and I am focusing on my bans*, I am doing a leaner version of fertility charting, I am not checking and double checking or triple checking every symptom. I'm still going out. I am letting people in. I am feeling my emotions and handling them in appropriate ways.
It's the hardest thing I have ever had to do. June 29th was absolutely the shittiest day of my life so far.
I think that February 24th will be the second shittiest. It's the day after my birthday.
It would have been my due date.
* my bans are my banned behaviors, things I am not supposed to do. It's part of cognitive behavioral therapy. Negative self talk and OCD information seeking are my superpowers.
Saturday, May 23, 2015
No worries at all?
I have been working on my yoga practice to help manage anxiety and all sorts of things. And as part of that I have been working on meditation as well. I have used some guided meditations and recently bought a package from Circle and Bloom that specifically focuses on PCOS and fertility and cycles.
I was listening to today's segment and after some typical relaxation routines, she says to focus on when I was "ten years old and had no worries at all. "
And that kind of stopped me cold and all day long it's been running through my head. Because my life was being turned upside down and shaken when I was ten years old. My mom packed us up and moved us out, they were going to get a divorce, my dad just...unraveled, there were horrible, terrible fights where I was basically sobbing hysterically and begging them to stop yelling. They ignored me until my mother would tell my dad to look at me and see if this is what he wanted. To do this to his daughter. Again. Neither one was willing to stop fighting until I could be the weapon to use against the other: "Look what you're doing to Annie!"
And then he was dead and I blamed myself for it, we moved back to our house and I felt like I had to take care of everyone. Someone had to take care of us.
I can't actually think of any age where I had no worries at all. My mother once tod me a story about how I was such a good baby. On Saturday mornings she did the big housecleaning for the week, and to keep me busy, he'd give me the old TV guide in my crib. And I would rip every single page into strips while she worked. My OCD therapist was quite intrigued at that.
One of my earliest memories is hiding with my mother and infant sister in the way back of this storage closet because we were hiding from my father. He was drunk and spoiling for a fight and we had to hide until he passed out. I would have been two.
When I was five, he said goodbye to us so he could go get help. He did inpatient alcohol detox at Hazelden. I think he was gone for a few weeks. I don't know if he completed rehab or not, but he was sober when he came home and AA was his religion for a long time.
He wasn't drinking, but he was still always up for a fight. Late at night they would argue and one night a large vase was thrown by one of them. Another night it was the phone, a heavy late 70's rotary dial phone. One night they came to check on me while I was asleep and got into a shoving match when they both tried to peek in the door at the same time. I pretended to be asleep.
When my mom would go out for her sorority meeting, he would seethe and get worked up that she wasn't there and would imagine all the ways that she was betraying him until he took it out on us. More than once he would come into my room and wake me up to make me clean it. If it was already kind of clean? He would just walk along the shelf with his arm out and knock everything to the floor.
I was in first grade being kept up on school nights just so he could poke at her, to try and make her stay home.
There was a lull for a couple years, we put on a good face. Then in third grade, things began to veer off the rails just a little bit. I can't remember if there was a triggering event, or if my brain was just already wired for worst case scenarios, but something happened in third grade, I was suddenly too scared to go to school. I could not handle it. I didn't like my teacher at all, but I think it was something at home. I would fight going every morning, looking back I recognize that I was having full on panic attacks. And then resulted to gagging myself until I vomited every morning to get to stay home. And I would take super hot baths and stay in the tub as long as I possibly could, I was probably the cleanest third grader in the world, I don't know if I felt safe in the water or if it was part of my contamination phobia/OCD. It went on for a few weeks. Until they brought me to school and my father had to carry me to my classroom and practically put me in my desk in front of everyone.
And then I had to talk to a nice lady named Karen every few weeks at school. The social worker.
And I would have been nine.
Sometime that summer I found his handgun. And I put it back because I was scared of being caught. But I was also scared that he might kill us with it. And then the next winter we moved out and he was dead by spring. Thirty-one years ago this weekend, actually.
I was listening to today's segment and after some typical relaxation routines, she says to focus on when I was "ten years old and had no worries at all. "
And that kind of stopped me cold and all day long it's been running through my head. Because my life was being turned upside down and shaken when I was ten years old. My mom packed us up and moved us out, they were going to get a divorce, my dad just...unraveled, there were horrible, terrible fights where I was basically sobbing hysterically and begging them to stop yelling. They ignored me until my mother would tell my dad to look at me and see if this is what he wanted. To do this to his daughter. Again. Neither one was willing to stop fighting until I could be the weapon to use against the other: "Look what you're doing to Annie!"
And then he was dead and I blamed myself for it, we moved back to our house and I felt like I had to take care of everyone. Someone had to take care of us.
I can't actually think of any age where I had no worries at all. My mother once tod me a story about how I was such a good baby. On Saturday mornings she did the big housecleaning for the week, and to keep me busy, he'd give me the old TV guide in my crib. And I would rip every single page into strips while she worked. My OCD therapist was quite intrigued at that.
One of my earliest memories is hiding with my mother and infant sister in the way back of this storage closet because we were hiding from my father. He was drunk and spoiling for a fight and we had to hide until he passed out. I would have been two.
When I was five, he said goodbye to us so he could go get help. He did inpatient alcohol detox at Hazelden. I think he was gone for a few weeks. I don't know if he completed rehab or not, but he was sober when he came home and AA was his religion for a long time.
He wasn't drinking, but he was still always up for a fight. Late at night they would argue and one night a large vase was thrown by one of them. Another night it was the phone, a heavy late 70's rotary dial phone. One night they came to check on me while I was asleep and got into a shoving match when they both tried to peek in the door at the same time. I pretended to be asleep.
When my mom would go out for her sorority meeting, he would seethe and get worked up that she wasn't there and would imagine all the ways that she was betraying him until he took it out on us. More than once he would come into my room and wake me up to make me clean it. If it was already kind of clean? He would just walk along the shelf with his arm out and knock everything to the floor.
I was in first grade being kept up on school nights just so he could poke at her, to try and make her stay home.
There was a lull for a couple years, we put on a good face. Then in third grade, things began to veer off the rails just a little bit. I can't remember if there was a triggering event, or if my brain was just already wired for worst case scenarios, but something happened in third grade, I was suddenly too scared to go to school. I could not handle it. I didn't like my teacher at all, but I think it was something at home. I would fight going every morning, looking back I recognize that I was having full on panic attacks. And then resulted to gagging myself until I vomited every morning to get to stay home. And I would take super hot baths and stay in the tub as long as I possibly could, I was probably the cleanest third grader in the world, I don't know if I felt safe in the water or if it was part of my contamination phobia/OCD. It went on for a few weeks. Until they brought me to school and my father had to carry me to my classroom and practically put me in my desk in front of everyone.
And then I had to talk to a nice lady named Karen every few weeks at school. The social worker.
And I would have been nine.
Sometime that summer I found his handgun. And I put it back because I was scared of being caught. But I was also scared that he might kill us with it. And then the next winter we moved out and he was dead by spring. Thirty-one years ago this weekend, actually.
Thursday, April 2, 2015
I can't adult
Today has been a total shit show.
I had a thyroid check 5 weeks ago, after we increased my meds from January. It wasn't cooperating fast enough, so we bumped up the dose of thyroid hormone. I had a recheck yesterday, and it is worse than before. We have to increase my dose again. The theory is that getting my prolactin down, has allowed my estrogen to rise and therefor my thyroid is further out of whack. And fertility drugs can also screw it up.
Needless to say, the whole hormonal cascade of my cycle is 17 flavors of fucked up, shitty ovulation, short luteal phase, freaky barely happening period and on and on and on.
Also, I am tired all the time. I want a nap about two hours after I wake up. My bones ache. My hips hurt no matter how I sit, stand, or lay. My hands ache. My hair is falling out again. I hardly ever feel warm, even laying in bed on flannel sheets next to my space heater of a husband underneath two comforters. Wearing a sweater over my jammies.
I'm pretty sure I'm never going to get knocked up. I don't know how to pick up all the pieces of my heart. I don't know how to let myself hurt this much. I've worked so hard to learn how to have feelings again and now I don't know how to make it stop.
I had a thyroid check 5 weeks ago, after we increased my meds from January. It wasn't cooperating fast enough, so we bumped up the dose of thyroid hormone. I had a recheck yesterday, and it is worse than before. We have to increase my dose again. The theory is that getting my prolactin down, has allowed my estrogen to rise and therefor my thyroid is further out of whack. And fertility drugs can also screw it up.
Needless to say, the whole hormonal cascade of my cycle is 17 flavors of fucked up, shitty ovulation, short luteal phase, freaky barely happening period and on and on and on.
Also, I am tired all the time. I want a nap about two hours after I wake up. My bones ache. My hips hurt no matter how I sit, stand, or lay. My hands ache. My hair is falling out again. I hardly ever feel warm, even laying in bed on flannel sheets next to my space heater of a husband underneath two comforters. Wearing a sweater over my jammies.
I'm pretty sure I'm never going to get knocked up. I don't know how to pick up all the pieces of my heart. I don't know how to let myself hurt this much. I've worked so hard to learn how to have feelings again and now I don't know how to make it stop.
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Time for more painting.
I am moving my sewing/work room downstairs to what I hoped would be a nursery. We will start painting it this weekend. We aren't giving up. But we are being realistic. I need to do something aside from just housewifing to help with the constant stream of my brain telling me how much I fail. It's too hot up there to sew much in the summer. Mr. Freak Flag has been pushing for this and I have resisted because it felt like I was giving up. But it's not. I can easily repaint if we have a baby.
I may sign up for a few shows to sell, a maker market and a green market. There are some handmade boutiques around town, too. I could consign. I don't know. It's something. I feel better when I am designing and sewing. I need to have something already going so if/when we call it quits in a year I won't have a complete come-apart.
This last cycle was fucking hell with the fertility drugs and I failed again. It wasn't timing, it's me. I'm going to wait a cycle or two to reap the benefits of the kickstarted cascade of hormones and then back with the meds. I get two more cycles this way and then we have to discuss more or considering IUI. It's super expensive and it would be our very last hope.
IVF will never be an option unless we won the fucking lottery and used donor eggs and a surrogate.
I may sign up for a few shows to sell, a maker market and a green market. There are some handmade boutiques around town, too. I could consign. I don't know. It's something. I feel better when I am designing and sewing. I need to have something already going so if/when we call it quits in a year I won't have a complete come-apart.
This last cycle was fucking hell with the fertility drugs and I failed again. It wasn't timing, it's me. I'm going to wait a cycle or two to reap the benefits of the kickstarted cascade of hormones and then back with the meds. I get two more cycles this way and then we have to discuss more or considering IUI. It's super expensive and it would be our very last hope.
IVF will never be an option unless we won the fucking lottery and used donor eggs and a surrogate.
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Throwback Thursday
I took this picture while The Man parked the car after dropping me by the door of my therapist's office. As of yesterday, it has been two years since I started some pretty intense therapy. He had to drive me to that first appointment. He had to shake my therapist's hand because I didn't touch people. Ever. Not even my husband by that time. He had to sit in the room with me for the first few sessions. I loved those shoes because they had little umbrellas on them, like panic disorder was an umbrella keeping me safe from everything in the world that scared me.
He had to drive me for the first few months until I renewed my license. He had to learn to watch me fuck up and not try to fix it. It was hard. We started seeing a therapist together to help us create new patterns, or as she put it, for me to stop inflicting my OCD on The Man. Which is accurate. I needed to stop treating him like a child and he had to stop taking care of me to such an extent that it was enabling me.
Some things came up that weren't things my behavioral therapist could tackle, they were traumatic and trauma has to be handled more carefully. For vomiting I had to watch that horrific food poisoning scene in Bridesmaids hundreds of times. Watch it until I felt no panic at all, over and over. By the end I could watch them all vomit and shit themselves and eat dinner at the same time.
You can't do that for sexual assault, so it meant a third therapist who does PTSD and trauma work. It meant poking at things and having flashbacks. It meant learning how to pull myself back into the moment when I would begin to dissociate. It meant being vulnerable. It meant feeling pain, a lot of pain. So much pain that I had built my whole life around not feeling it. I won't lie, it fucking sucked. And I am so angry sometimes, so very angry.
Last January, I was discharged from my behavioral therapist and left to staying responsible for my OCD and panic on my own. This month with my other therapist we have started to discuss wrapping up, maybe having her be on call instead of scheduling monthly sessions. Or scheduling them and I can call and say I think I am OK for the moment. Or say that I am not OK for the moment.
We will still be touching base with the marriage therapist on a semi-regular basis as we move forward with trying to build a family. We need the support and feedback, this is so much harder than anything else we have tried to do.
So that's where we are two years later. I don't have the shoes anymore, I don't walk around with an invisible umbrella anymore, either. It means getting messy when life happens. Sometimes my feelings get hurt. Sometimes they get hurt a lot. And I can say so. And I may even cry. And it's OK.
Friday, March 6, 2015
this week in adulting
I took another round of fertility drugs from Saturday to Wednesday. I have pretty much been bursting into tears at the drop of a hat since Tuesday, full on sobbing. Uncontrollably. Usually til my nose bleeds. And my ovaries occasionally hurt like little burning motherfuckers.
I filed the taxes that I completed last week.
I went to therapy with my PTSD/trauma therapist on Tuesday and after about 18 months of hard work we will begin to wrap things up this spring and move forward on a more “on call” basis.
But I had to call my behavioral therapist for the first time since January 2014, for a check-up. I didn’t want to have to do that. I want to think I am handling all of this just fine. I can take it. But at knit night on Wednesday my hands started bleeding in several places. Because I wash them too much. Because I’m not handling all of this just fine.
I filed the taxes that I completed last week.
I went to therapy with my PTSD/trauma therapist on Tuesday and after about 18 months of hard work we will begin to wrap things up this spring and move forward on a more “on call” basis.
But I had to call my behavioral therapist for the first time since January 2014, for a check-up. I didn’t want to have to do that. I want to think I am handling all of this just fine. I can take it. But at knit night on Wednesday my hands started bleeding in several places. Because I wash them too much. Because I’m not handling all of this just fine.
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Wash, rinse, repeat.
So it's OPK time here at chez Old Fart. So this evening I held it as
long as I could to try and get a good sample to test the dipsticks. I
managed to pee all over my hand and then drop the cup into the toilet.
The cups are little tiny solo cups like shot glass sized, I think. And
plastic, not paper.
I somehow managed to grab a second cup and catch a sample.
And then I flushed and remembered there was still a plastic cup in the bowl.You can't unflush the damn thing so.....I reached into the swirling water and snatched the cup out. The horror of that was nothing compared to the thousands of dollars in plumbing bills I envisioned when that little bastard got caught in the sewer lateral and the whole house started to back up.
I've mentioned the OCD a couple dozen times. I'm a handwasher. Not extreme, but I enjoy a good scour. I have only allowed myself to wash twice for this incident.
I would very much like to wash more.
I would like to reassure myself that I did a thorough wash with hot water twice and that is clean enough.
But instead I have to think "maybe they are clean, maybe not." Because them's the CBT rules.
I somehow managed to grab a second cup and catch a sample.
And then I flushed and remembered there was still a plastic cup in the bowl.You can't unflush the damn thing so.....I reached into the swirling water and snatched the cup out. The horror of that was nothing compared to the thousands of dollars in plumbing bills I envisioned when that little bastard got caught in the sewer lateral and the whole house started to back up.
I've mentioned the OCD a couple dozen times. I'm a handwasher. Not extreme, but I enjoy a good scour. I have only allowed myself to wash twice for this incident.
I would very much like to wash more.
I would like to reassure myself that I did a thorough wash with hot water twice and that is clean enough.
But instead I have to think "maybe they are clean, maybe not." Because them's the CBT rules.
Friday, April 25, 2014
If it were that easy....
Something that is not helpful whatsoever to say to someone with OCD is "Can't you just stop thinking about this?"
Because what fucking part of obsessive and compulsive doesn't fucking make sense?
Because what fucking part of obsessive and compulsive doesn't fucking make sense?
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
Well, that escalated quickly
One of the hardest exposures I had to deal with during my cognitive behavioral work was my pantry. Nothing was allowed to be tidy. I actually got angry and mentally cursed my therapist more than once about it. I hated it. And when I wrapped things up in January I didn't run right home and put all my crap away properly like I wanted.
Today i was looking for something, and put a few things back. And all of a sudden I was lining up cans with all the labels facing straight ahead, and then I got out my label maker to put some beans in tupperware. And then the tupperware cabinet was from hell, so I had to fix that before doing anything else....
Which ended up with me scouring the kitchen sink on the verge of tears. And then getting a wooden skewer out to get the tiny bits of crud out from around the faucet and sprayer.
I feel like I let myself down. I am just so not in control of some things in my life right now. I have to track them, but I can't control them at all. And it's hard. Harder than I realized, apparently.
Today i was looking for something, and put a few things back. And all of a sudden I was lining up cans with all the labels facing straight ahead, and then I got out my label maker to put some beans in tupperware. And then the tupperware cabinet was from hell, so I had to fix that before doing anything else....
Which ended up with me scouring the kitchen sink on the verge of tears. And then getting a wooden skewer out to get the tiny bits of crud out from around the faucet and sprayer.
I feel like I let myself down. I am just so not in control of some things in my life right now. I have to track them, but I can't control them at all. And it's hard. Harder than I realized, apparently.
Friday, February 7, 2014
Is this thing still even on?
I just walk away from my blog for 6 months at a stretch and then always come back with approximately the same not very witty title. I am nothing if not consistently inconsistent.
So, last I typed and you read I was working on cognitive behavioral therapy to get my OCD and panic attacks under control. In September, Team Annie gained a new player. Another therapist, this time a lady, to help me sort out some trauma and PTSD issues. Which is what I thought would happen all along from my initial phone conversation with D about setting me up for CBT. Because I knew there was a well of pain I had constructed my entire life around avoiding. And right on schedule, once I began to have so much less fear about the minutiae of daily life, some of these bigger and more painful experiences started to slip up to the front of the queue. And they are ugly. And they are shameful. And there were flashbacks. And nightmares. And awfulness. And instead of hiding, I said I needed more help. So for a few months, I was seeing two therapists weekly and The Man and I were seeing a third every few weeks.
At the end of January, I graduated from CBT so now I am just down to the trauma work and the marriage work. Both of which are going pretty well. The marriage work was to begin to make some new patterns now that I don't require as much care taking. Because being me was hard on my marriage. And as much as he wanted to protect me and keep me from being hurt, it wasn't healthy for him to have to take care of everything all the time, not healthy for either one of us. The trauma work is hard. There were times last summer when I was touching a bathroom door handle at Target, or watching the puke scene from Bridesmaids for the 500th time and I thought that was hard work. There were times when we began to move toward my discharge where just the thought of it would make me cry, because I was so scared. I wasn't sure how I was going to be able to live my life without having to tick off banned behaviors. How I would conduct my errands when they weren't assignments? How would I stay accountable when I was the only one I had to be accountable to? Because I haven't done so hot when I am the one left in charge of me and I felt very sure that I wasn't going to be able to keep my shit together.
Those were hard things, but now they seem like a cake walk compared to the work I have to do. And there isn't much homework for this. Except that when something painful comes up, I can't pack it away in a box and put it away at the back of my brain. I have to live with it. I have to let it suck. I have to help my brain find context for the events so that it can be properly refiled so that I stop reacting to anything similar with full on panic. And I have to use grounding techniques sometimes to keep from flashing back or dissociating. At any given moment I can be somewhere and trying to appear calm and inside I am looking at the walls, the floor, listening to the music, whatever things I can see, hear, smell, or touch to help me stay grounded in 2014. And it works more often than it used to.
And as I repair damage, I sometimes feel at loose ends. I got so good at being broken that I forgot how to be anything else. Not that I felt like a victim, in fact I never felt like a victim. Which is part of my problem, because there were times when a victim is exactly what I was, but I was so unused to being allowed to feel my feelings that I stuffed it down and convinced myself it was my fault. Because I deserved what I got, because I should have known he was a bad person before it got to that point.. I refused to admit that this sort of abuse was something that happened to me. I wasn't sitting around feeling that the world had done me wrong, I was just broken. And now I am patching up the damage a little bit at a time.And I have begun to try and get on with the business of having a life. I meet with friends. I stay responsible for social contact. I run errands. I do stuff. And every day it gets a little bit easier.
My life has turned around nearly 100% from where I was last year at this time. I have plans. I have some good things happening. I am participating in my marriage as more or less an equal partner. We look forward to what the future may hold for us. I am beginning to sometimes feel normal. That I don't have to be other. That I am not only a pile of broken and sad and yuck, no matter what was drilled into me from a very young age. I can be sad and I can feel hurt and I won't have to cut off the world or cut or scratch myself to control the pain. I am a person who is learning to have a life, to allow myself to have hope and dreams again. And I am so late to the party for so many things and just trying to make up for lost time.
So, last I typed and you read I was working on cognitive behavioral therapy to get my OCD and panic attacks under control. In September, Team Annie gained a new player. Another therapist, this time a lady, to help me sort out some trauma and PTSD issues. Which is what I thought would happen all along from my initial phone conversation with D about setting me up for CBT. Because I knew there was a well of pain I had constructed my entire life around avoiding. And right on schedule, once I began to have so much less fear about the minutiae of daily life, some of these bigger and more painful experiences started to slip up to the front of the queue. And they are ugly. And they are shameful. And there were flashbacks. And nightmares. And awfulness. And instead of hiding, I said I needed more help. So for a few months, I was seeing two therapists weekly and The Man and I were seeing a third every few weeks.
At the end of January, I graduated from CBT so now I am just down to the trauma work and the marriage work. Both of which are going pretty well. The marriage work was to begin to make some new patterns now that I don't require as much care taking. Because being me was hard on my marriage. And as much as he wanted to protect me and keep me from being hurt, it wasn't healthy for him to have to take care of everything all the time, not healthy for either one of us. The trauma work is hard. There were times last summer when I was touching a bathroom door handle at Target, or watching the puke scene from Bridesmaids for the 500th time and I thought that was hard work. There were times when we began to move toward my discharge where just the thought of it would make me cry, because I was so scared. I wasn't sure how I was going to be able to live my life without having to tick off banned behaviors. How I would conduct my errands when they weren't assignments? How would I stay accountable when I was the only one I had to be accountable to? Because I haven't done so hot when I am the one left in charge of me and I felt very sure that I wasn't going to be able to keep my shit together.
Those were hard things, but now they seem like a cake walk compared to the work I have to do. And there isn't much homework for this. Except that when something painful comes up, I can't pack it away in a box and put it away at the back of my brain. I have to live with it. I have to let it suck. I have to help my brain find context for the events so that it can be properly refiled so that I stop reacting to anything similar with full on panic. And I have to use grounding techniques sometimes to keep from flashing back or dissociating. At any given moment I can be somewhere and trying to appear calm and inside I am looking at the walls, the floor, listening to the music, whatever things I can see, hear, smell, or touch to help me stay grounded in 2014. And it works more often than it used to.
And as I repair damage, I sometimes feel at loose ends. I got so good at being broken that I forgot how to be anything else. Not that I felt like a victim, in fact I never felt like a victim. Which is part of my problem, because there were times when a victim is exactly what I was, but I was so unused to being allowed to feel my feelings that I stuffed it down and convinced myself it was my fault. Because I deserved what I got, because I should have known he was a bad person before it got to that point.. I refused to admit that this sort of abuse was something that happened to me. I wasn't sitting around feeling that the world had done me wrong, I was just broken. And now I am patching up the damage a little bit at a time.And I have begun to try and get on with the business of having a life. I meet with friends. I stay responsible for social contact. I run errands. I do stuff. And every day it gets a little bit easier.
My life has turned around nearly 100% from where I was last year at this time. I have plans. I have some good things happening. I am participating in my marriage as more or less an equal partner. We look forward to what the future may hold for us. I am beginning to sometimes feel normal. That I don't have to be other. That I am not only a pile of broken and sad and yuck, no matter what was drilled into me from a very young age. I can be sad and I can feel hurt and I won't have to cut off the world or cut or scratch myself to control the pain. I am a person who is learning to have a life, to allow myself to have hope and dreams again. And I am so late to the party for so many things and just trying to make up for lost time.
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