This is gonna be VERY long, so I apologize in advance. I'll try and condense it to the relevant, but my life is OCD, so a lot is ... relevant.... I felt a kinship with this subreddit, being of the OCD-plagued as I am and wanted to share my story. I'm also apologizing in advance if I ever seem flippant or making light of my issues. I cope through humor a lot, because I'm usually really ashamed and private about my struggles with mental illness. I know I shouldn't be ashamed, but you guys know what it's like, I would think.
To start: my life is OCD.
Not continually or linearly, but always somewhere inside me, as a secret part of myself. I can remember doing OCD rituals as far back as three years old. I was formally diagnosed at 13, around the time I left school. I dropped out before finishing 8th grade, because my rituals were cutting into my school days and I was getting up at 5 a.m. for rituals and --still!-- there wasn't enough time. I was dealing with the beginning of an ED and obsessive, hours-long, exercise was part of the ritual, as was showering for about an hour every day.
By the time I was 15, I developed what would become my more permanent fixations, I guess. I know when they came about but, save for my aversion to bugs, not why. Maybe there isn't a why.
I've been told by therapists that, even for OCD, my rituals/aversion are pretty atypical, which ... I don't know if that's true or not. Maybe it's because of a poverty of language to accurately describe something that's kind of abstract and intrinsic to me. Or maybe because I've never found a cause and it all seems arbitrary beyond the "I just don't like X, so X is a problem" explanation.
My biggest problem is a form of contamination phobia. I'm not afraid of germs or being infected with anything and the only time I'm remotely stringent about that is when doing things that are, in fact, germ-ridden, like handling money or touching grocery carts. But, mainly, it's just I have an aversion to certain things -- things that may feel weird, or cause me to feel disgusted -- and when I come in contact with them I do elaborate rituals to ease the feeling of disgust/anxiety.
My aversions are triggered by sensory input, more than half the time. (The other half is obsessing about aforementioned sensory input and being triggered by thoughts of the thing, instead of thing itself.)
Almost all of my five senses have a trigger. The biggest and most enduring is touch. I cannot touch anything without washing my hands, except for a small set of personal objects. Full stop. This has pretty much been my standard aversion and even in my better OCD times, never really went away.
Next, there are visual triggers. I cannot see real bugs, or see a drawing of a bug or read the word bug/insect without feeling the need to engage in a washing ritual. That goes for specific names of bugs. I use euphemisms IRL when possible. (If you're wondering how I can type this out here and not freak out, I've scheduled a shower after this post.)
There are certain every day household objects I cannot look at without feeling the same. Aerosol cans are one (if it has "-spray" in the name, I cannot see it, whether it's physical, a picture, nor can I discuss it/read the word.) Small metal objects are another, mostly grooming objects. With the latter, I can see them when I use them, but I have to shower after. This includes tweezers, nail clippers and sometimes razors. Next is dust. I cannot look at dust without -- you guessed it -- engaging in the washing ritual. This also is the only thing that will cause me to have an immediate, no-questions asked, breakdown. Like, if a bug touches me, I'll freak out. If dust touches me, I will dissociate in panic.
Another visual trigger which is sort of weird is things blowing in the wind, but like only wind from a fan. Like, really just paper or a plastic bag blowing in the wind from a fan. God, that is really specific, but the OCD wants what it wants. Why does this bother me? I don't know! It's on the same level as tweezers with "freaks me out but not as much as a bug."
Next is audible triggers. I cannot hear anyone passing gas or talking about passing gas -- burping or farting -- without doing my washing ritual. The sound of an aerosol can is another and so is the sound of a bug, like a buzzing.
Long-term exposure to anti-psychotics fucked up my sense of smell, so (thankfully?) I don't have much of a smell issue but I react to smells I find gross (like some chemicals or hand sanitizer) as though it's actually touching me. I don't have any taste triggers either because ... honestly, it'll be a cold day in hell when I let any foreign object near or in my mouth.
There are other things that fall under "don't want it near me" but not so neatly categorized, like animal hair or eraser shavings from a pencil or old/standing water.
Certain parts of my body are more sensitive to being touched by things. My chest/neck/face are my temple. Nothing can violate or touch this area. In terms of aversion severity, my mouth, lips and cheeks are triple.
My OCD is about it "feeling" right, basically. The above stuff makes me "feel" wrong and I have to do rituals until it "feels just right" again. My primary form of rituals consist of doing things until they feel okay, but I have numbers/counting obsessions too. Everything is in odd numbers up until number 7 and then even numbers are okay again. I format all my online posts with paragraphs/lines in groups of odd numbers.
Some of my washing rituals are done to the count of numbers, not linear 1-2-3 counting, but more of a rhythmic numerical pattern (e.g. "1,2,3,2,2") and some of them have elaborate mental visual systems where the numbers are grouped. The numbers in this sense are less "numbers" and more like visual stand-ins for places in my ritual. I have number form/spatial sequence synesthesia, so this is just an involuntary thing that I don't have control over.
There are other, small things that primarily are an issue when I'm trying to relax or sleep. Sometimes I compulsively spit on my fingers and touch my hips, where my waistband is or my ankles or touch the space right above where my pinky/middle toe is on each side. I compulsively straighten my clothing and feel the need to straighten other things. Not so much to make them symmetrical or even all the time, but usually feel right in proximity to other things.
You know those pictures of people taking stuff apart and organizing it neatly? That shit is like crack to me. When I see something I think needs to be straightened, I can "feel" it like a physical itch. I straighten shelves in grocery stores pretty often. I'm an artist and drawing can be a nightmare when I'm bad off because what "feels" right to my OCD doesn't always look good. I'm ridiculously sensitive to tangents, to the point where if my OCD is bad that day, I can't draw.
My compulsions, though, and rituals are what's killing me. After probably age 17/18, my OCD became manageable to the extent that I could live normally. I still did stuff, but stuff didn't rule my life. When I was 20 I got my GED and started comm college and then started going to an art university. (I'm pretty proud of myself for that, even though I haven't finished my bachelor's yet. I did it on a 7th grade education and a screwed-up brain!)
For years, my mental stuff was okay. I focused on school/freelance work, I got diagnosed with other co-morbid disorders, and started medicating/going to therapy for them. Beyond some really bad physical issues I'd been dealing with since I was about 21, I was normal! The kind of normal I'd fought for, been in several mental hospitals for, almost died many times for.
Then in 2015 everything fell apart again. I don't know if it was a conga line of traumatic things happening to me that spring or my physical illness worsening or both. But I slowly began to slip back into my old OCD. Flash-forward the last day of 2018 and I'm at the worst I've been in my life -- the state I was in when I left 8th grade included.
I know life isn't fair but this seems like the most heartbreaking, unfair thing to happen. My adolescence and childhood were robbed by OCD/depression, my 20s by physical illness and now, through my late 20s into being 30, it's taken by both. I can remember a night in July or August of 2013, going for a night walk and catching a firefly in my hands in the dark street and seeing it glow between my fingers before releasing it. I want that sort of mentality again. Right now, if I see a fucking picture of firefly, I'm OCD-triggered.
My glasses broke in July and I never replaced them despite my 20/400 vision because it's easier to not see anything. Even then, I squint a lot and spent a lot of time with my eyes closed. I walk through the house with my eyes closed until I reach one "safe" location. I have only two "safe" rooms in my house, since I share it with a few other folks. (I had to move back in with my family in 2010 and bless their hearts, they are not creatures of OCD like myself.)
I spend a lot of time with my earbuds in or my hands just clasped over my ears when certain members of my family are nearby because they're more likely to burp or something. Sometimes I just sit places with my eyes closed and my hands over my ears. I like being in the dark because the sensory deprivation aspect is calming.
Like I said, my rituals are elaborate hand/face-washing ones. Back before I kind of plunged into this madness, I could condense them into, like, gestures that represented the biggest ritual. Now every time something unique triggers me, a new component gets added like a big crazy katamari. I'm really vulnerable after a shower, so if something touches me after that it becomes another obsession point.
The physical issues I mentioned earlier play a big part, in both my anxiety and my rituals. We're still in the process of formal diagnosis, but my twin sister and myself both have some sort of possible neurological disorder, with weakness, nerve pain and orthostatic hypotension. I'm officially diagnosed with the latter, but there's more to the medical story, obviously. Anyway, what it means is that neither she nor I can stand up for long without getting weak and lightheaded. I have come close to and have passed out on many occasions. I get muscle weakness and nerve pain very easily and sometimes when blood pools in my extremities too much, I can be at risk of tripping/falling. And I have. So it's best I don't ever let it get to that state.
What this means for my OCD is ... in the last six months, my physical issues got worse. It goes through flare-ups but I become obsessed, on the days where I can't stand up long, about not being able to do my washing rituals. Then it becomes a loop: I can't stand up long to do them, but that makes me more anxious and the anxiety means I have to keep doing them and that makes me weak/light-headed.
I also started kind of a form of ... I'm not sure how to put it. Not very long ago, I realized I couldn't find a "wrap-up" point that let me know when my ritual was done. I never "felt" done anymore and numbers didn't work. So I started to deliberately exacerbate my physical issues to ... I guess, put an end to the ritual? Because, if I pass out or am in severe pain, it's over! Whether I want it or not!
And I know that's awful. But I get light-headed in showers anyway a lot and the easier way to make sure I cut my shower time is to induce a very short blackout. God, this sounds awful typing it out but mind you it's super easy to do. If I hold my breath and tense myself and make my heart rate go up, I'm good as down for the count. So, knowing that, I do it. And it's awful. I also will do things too harshly to my skin to make myself stop. My skin is really sensitive and my boobs and chest regularly bleed and I have bruised arms from this. It's not really causing (to my knowledge) long-term issues to my already chronic issues, but causing very acute reactions that might not have come about or not as harshly.
Also, I have an obsession with doing things right the first time. Despite being mostly managed, my ADHD means I get distracted during rituals easy and cannot do them flawlessly. As a result, any distraction -- someone talking, a sudden noise -- will make me start over. The weakness/lightheaded stuff makes me doing this even worse, because the weaker my arms gets, the less "correct" my ritual is and then I end up in so much pain I'm shaking and struggling to breathe. So, even if I don't exacerbate my symptoms deliberately to stop myself, I often do it just by daily existence.
And there's a bunch more but it's just secondary to the rest of it. I feel the need to compulsively spit, which is gross and sometimes (not all the time, but just when I'm Very Bad) I have to read things three times if I don't think I read it properly the first time -- no skimming! My reactions to aversions can sometimes be really physical -- my face will flush and get hot and I'll feel my skin crawling. Anxiety is a real bitch.
I just am kind of at my wit's end with this. Part of me knows that I'll be better when my physical state is better, but also I know I'm out of control. I've beat this beast before ... but I was able-bodied then. I get very strong reactions to anxiety (see the passing out above) so aversion therapy isn't something I can go headfirst into right now. I have only so many spoons.
I'm also, in the midst of all this, trying on and off to go back to school, do art, work on freelance work and just not despair. I feel like I have to spend my energy doing productive, future-minded goals and I try. But I get so exhausted. I don't sleep some nights because the before-bed rituals are daunting. And when I do get comfortable, I spend so much of my time huddled under my blankets or with my eyes half-closed because the world and my life is very dirty and very difficult and very physically and mentally painful.
It's my life right now, but dear God, this isn't a life.
Submitted December 31, 2018 at 08:50PM by faunwood http://bit.ly/2QZf7NJ
No comments:
Post a Comment