What I've Learned from OCD: Nothing's Perfect, Except My Memories

My OCD has always told me that something is "out of place;" that something is "off;" that something is "not right." It drives me crazy. I can be sitting in my living room, looking at my beautiful floating shelves on the wall with books that my dad loved--his books about history and the presidents--knickknacks that I picked up from Germany, and Japanese and Russian antiquing finds. I'll look at that shelf and, instead of admiring the beautiful things that I love and remembering people and places that mean so much to me, I'll look at a picture frame that holds a beautiful wedding picture and wonder, how come it just doesn't look right. To me it looks crooked. It is turned slightly as is the frame sitting next to it; however, to me it is turned a tad bit too much. My OCD tells me, Get up and move the frame! It looks ridiculous! But I know that is my mind playing tricks on me. 

My mind tries to get me to feel the need to stand up from my warm couch and my puppies' snuggles to get up and turn a picture frame 20 degrees to the left because it just seems "off." Right now while I'm writing this, my eyes every so often are drawn to that picture frame. They are drawn there because in the back of my mind, my OCD is scratching at my eyeballs, making them turn and look at it. It's screaming, trying to force my limbs to get up and move. But I'm not listening. It's not easy, but I'm not listening. 

Once it starts it's gnawing at my brain, my heart starts to race a little, and I have to remind myself to take deep breaths. Sometimes I close my eyes and take the deeps breaths. It's not so bad anymore. I just chose not to look at the shelf until the anxiety it created dissipated. 

When I look at the frame, I still sometimes think to myself, That frame does look a really bad. I mean it makes everything look so messy. My heart may start to race. But I don't touch it because that would be giving in to my OCD. I'm not doing that anymore. I haven't been for awhile. It's not always easy. Even though I have been working at this for a long time, and I have lived with OCD all my life, stupid, crazy things still set off my OCD, like a "crooked" picture frame.

Today I was going through the mail, purging old junk mail, filing important documents, and setting aside things to deal with tomorrow. I realized that I had a birthday card sitting in our mail organizer and so did Bjorn. They were both just sitting there. They were from people we loved. They had written beautiful, sweet notes to us inside, and I was just letting them sit there on top of the TV in the mail organizer. 

Bjorn had set out his birthday card that he got in the mail from his mom at the beginning of the week. He can't stop talking about it because it was so sweet. The card has a beautiful image of a jazz band on the front; it's so Bjorn. He loves it so much, he set it in the middle of our mantle, displaying it with love and happiness. 

My mom always did this when I was little. She set all of our birthday cards out on our mantle at my house for each of my sisters' birthdays. It always made me feel so special. It was one little way to show how much she loved us and how much we were loved, to celebrate us on our special day. 

Seeing Bjorn continue this tradition from my mom unknowingly made me realize that I never do this anymore. I never have. Putting those cards up on the mantle make my OCD brain tell me that something seems "off." It throws everything off! Seriously, it is so bad! It looks messy and ridiculous! You're such a slob!" My OCD always jumps to conclusions and doesn't let up. 

Tonight I took those birthday cards and set them beside Bjorn's. They're beautiful. They were written with love. They make me happy. Tonight, again, I told my OCD brain to shut up. 

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Although my life with OCD has gotten much easier, I live with OCD every day. I wish I did not have OCD, but I do. I have learned to live with it. I cannot stop my brain from having the OCD thoughts it has, but I can control how I react to each thought and whether I compulse over them and react to them or not. This is my life now: silencing the thoughts and not acting on them.

I've realized over the years that my OCD has taken the focus off the little joys in my life like admiring my living room shelves. Everything on that shelf has a memory; I love collecting memories. And instead of looking at the bookend eagle at the top of the shelf and thinking of my grandpa reading me The Lorax, all I could think about was whether or not that damn picture frame looked straight. Tonight I have been staring at that bookshelf and the cards on my mantle and relishing in my memories. If I close my eyes tight enough, I almost feel as if I have ventured back in time.

To read more about my OCD and perfectionism, click here and here.

Love and happiness <3 Holly

Meat and Me

If you have read some of my earlier posts, then you know that I have a weird relationship with meat. Yes, meat. Like the kind you cook for dinner. The kind that you buy raw (my issue) and cook until it reaches the required doneness (my other issue) so it doesn't make you sick (the issue that I obsess over). I think that makes my point.

Previously, I talked about my issues with chicken (here and here) and how I hated, and still do to some extent, touching and working with raw chicken. That one can really set my OCD off! The past few years, I have been a lot better with this one. Every once and a while I get an obsessive thought about coming down with salmonella or getting some crazy incurable chicken virus, but I quickly squash my OCD thoughts and move on.   

Sometimes I also have trouble eating steak. Yes, steak! I used to not be such a big meat eater. I ate mostly vegetarian or fish and ate meat a few days each week. I feel like Bjorn and I still do that now. I even don't eat a lot of red meat to this day, but every once in awhile, I just want a steak! I don't know if my body is just craving iron or something, but sometimes, it just sounds good!

My problem with steak goes back a long way with me. My parents always cooked steak until it was well-done; nothing against the way my parents cooked steak, but I always found it chewy and unappetizing. It wasn't until I was older (and I met Bjorn) that I tried steak cooked medium. Then my eyes were opened to how great steak could taste. Even though I love a great medium-cooked steak, my OCD tends to not let me enjoy my steak and spins out of control wondering what kind of deadly disease I can get from eating a steak cooked less than well-done.

After the first cut into my steak, I can't stop staring at it. And then my obsessive thoughts start. Is it cooked enough? What if it's not? What if I eat it, and it's not cooked enough? It could have mad cow's disease! It could have some crazy flesh eating bacteria that no scientist anywhere has ever discovered yet, and of course, I'm the first victim. I could die a slow, flesh-eating sickness death because no one has a cure for this undiscovered sickness. It just too risky. 

Me unsure about eating my steak. Lord, help me.

Of course, my rational mind knows this can't be true and that I'm going to the crazy reaches of my OCD brain, but I can't stop my OCD. OCD is just soooo convincing. After putting a piece of delcious (seriously), medium-well done steak in my mouth, my OCD screams, You're going to get sick! Spit it out! Don't eat it! You could die!

As you can tell, I am not thrilled here. My mind is racing.

But of course, I don't because in my head, I know I shouldn't. I should push passed my anxiety and eat the damn thing, but OCD sucks! It makes my anxiety shoot out the roof. I really convince myself that I'm going to end up in the hospital with mad cow disease or that whoknowswhatsit-unknownaphobia with no cure. 

Seriously, the meat eating and getting sick from it or dying from ingesting it is a HUGE OCD trigger for me. Illness and sickness have always been.

Fast forward to today: I have gotten much better at stopping the OCD thoughts once they come into my head. Since I don't have to calm myself down from some high anxiety level, I don't have to visualize anything or do physical activity. What usually works for me now is rational mind over OCD mind and sheer will-power. Since I've been working on it for so long, this works more now. 

Once the thought crosses my mind, You're going to die! First, I usually chuckle at my OCD, more for help in the attacking and winning the battle factor (it gives me confidence). Then, what I do next is probably the most important. I suck it up, have my rational brain yell, Shut up!!!! in my mind and then physically shove a piece of steak in my mouth, chew it, enjoy the taste of it, and swallow it. It's like a "so there" OCD! Shove it! 

After that, I continue to eat the steak that I ordered because I wanted to eat it, and I engage in conversation with my dinner company. It could be about my day, their day, boogers on the carpet, I don't care! I just have to keep something in my mind, so it's not filled with OCD thoughts! I have just realized that a full mind and willpower win over OCD a lot of the time for me.

I even ate some of this deliciousness that Bjorn ordered last weekend at Dilly Deli. Mmmmmm! It was fantastic! 

I asked for another bite....okay, maybe two other bites! But I kept talking and eating, and not one OCD thought popped in my head! That's the first time that ever happened! I couldn't believe it!

And that, in some sort of rather large nutshell is my history with meat. Thank you mind for staying strong in the face of OCD!


Love and happiness <3 Holly

A Day in the Mind

Sometimes my OCD thoughts still surprise me. But I guess that is also part of OCD as well--trying to always understand why I have a thought as well. Picking my thoughts apart until I can find an answer, a clear-cut reason for the thought in the first place. But of course, as always, my mind is playing games with me: there is no clear-cut reason; there is no answer. That is the nature of the beast, so to say. 

My mind continuously floods itself with what-ifs, crazy scenarios, and then, I try to figure out why I had those thoughts in the first place. My mind could look for days, rerunning that scenario in my head, replaying it over and over, trying to make some sense out of it. But of course, there never is any sense to make out of anything.

My husband, Bjorn, always says I should write for Law and Order or a CSI-type show or something like that. He doesn't know how I come up with some of the things I do. And that's the problem: neither do I. It's just my OCD brain.

For example, a normal trip to the mall to finish up some Christmas shopping brought a few random and nutty tv drama worthy scenarios into my OCD brain. The trigger might have been being out with so many people; that sometimes gets my anxiety going. Or my mind may have been having just one of those days, you know? Sometimes it just happens. 

Scenario #1

On our trip to finish buying some gifts, we also were exchanging some old tennis shoe inserts at Lady Foot Locker (hello one year guarantee!!) that Rachie forgot in the car. She said she'd run down really quickly and grab them in the parking garage and meet me back upstairs.

My mind said, No way is my sissy going down to the parking garage by herself! She could get kidnapped or beat up or robbed or something! What if some crazy weirdo is hiding behind her car just waiting for her to come down there to jump her? 

So I went with my sissy. She had me stand by the door. And she did turn around to not smile for a picture to document my Law and Order SVU type movie line in my head. I had to tell my brain that my sissy is a big girl, and she can take care of herself. Even thought I felt uneasy about it, I should have let her run down by herself. I let me OCD give in that time.

Scenario #2

This lovely scenario came to my brain after we passed this lovely in the parking lot.

Okay, so here's what my OCD brain thought: Someone planted this balloon here on purpose. They knew how busy the mall would be because of Christmas shopping. Inside the balloon is some kind of explosive device and it's also filled with Anthrax or some other biological agent. Once it goes off, it will poison everyone in this garage.

For a split second, I asked myself if this could possibly be true. Then I thought, Holly, it's a damn balloon. A kid let it go, and now it's left here. Shut your OCD up.

And that was the end of that.

This kind of thought is the one that Bjorn thinks is worthy of tv time. Trust me, I'd rather not have these kinds of ideas. But honestly, now that I know that it's my OCD mind messing with me and I can stop my loop, I am much better. Sometimes thoughts like these come into my head, and then I just think, Really? Good try, and move on.

My OCD response would be to park somewhere else and get out of there, but we stayed. I even walked up to take a picture of the balloon for my blog :)

Scenario #3

Rachael and I recently stopped by the Scholastic Book Fair to see if they had a few picture books that I wanted to pick up. As we walked down the aisles, these signs were, of course, fuel for my OCD brain:

As soon as I saw this sign and Rachael saw this sign, we both kind of chuckled because we knew that this type of thing throws my OCD for a loop. For a split second, my OCD thought, Oh my God! We need to get out of here! I silenced that voice, and Rachael and I kept saying, "What the heck would they need to quarantine at a book fair?" It gave us a little chuckle.

My old self would not have done that. I would have obsessed about this one forever. I would have probably put my books down from that isle thinking this whole area was contaminated and needed to go. I would have obsessed that I was breathing in something that was burning my lungs. I may have checked my skin for areas of irritation from touching the books in this isle. But, I didn't.

I can't always stop the thoughts that come into my mind with my OCD, but it's how I react to those thoughts and what I do with them that matters. Now that I understand my OCD and have tools that help me, I deal with these thought much better than I used to. It is funny how your mind can play crazy tricks on you. Nowadays, I just laugh it off, and move on. I've accepted that this is me, and I can overcome these irrational thoughts. I've come a long way. It's not always easy, but I'm doing it.

Love and happiness <3 Holly