It's Not Poison, It's Not Poison (On Repeat)

One of my earliest memories of living with OCD is from around the time when I was six or seven. I have a few other memories, but this is one of the most vivid. It is also one of my obsessions that my OCD brain still whispers to me about to this day. 

When I was younger, I remember watching the news and hearing stories about farmers using pesticides on their crops that were harmful to our health as consumers. I remember this being the story plastered on the news. The "scare tactic" at the time, if you will. And of course, my little OCD brain latched onto that story like a blood-thirsty leech. 

At dinner time, I used to dig through my food as if searching for gold. But the problem was, that's not what I was looking for. I was looking for poison. Poison from the pesticides. I didn't understand at the time what pesticides were, but I knew they were bad. I did, however, understand the word poison. 

One of my big obsessions when I was little was worrying about being poisoned. About getting sick. And then dying. About my family being poisoned. About my family dying. I didn't know how to articulate this, but in my head, it was very clear to me. 

I remember finding black flecks of something in my food and thinking, Oh no! They're trying to poison my family! I don't know who they were, but OCD is not rational and does not make sense. To calm my obsessions back then, I was constantly asking my mom, "What that?" or "What's is this?" I didn't really want to explain what I was thinking; somehow I think I knew my thoughts sounded a little crazy. 

My way of "checking" that everything was okay and acting on my obsession was to act compulsively or to continuously ask if those black flecks or other "abnormalities" that I found in my food were okay to eat. When my mom told me they were fine, it was nothing, just a fleck of pepper, I still continuously asked like a broken record to satisfy my OCD mind.

Source: OCD Center of Los Angeles

But the problem with OCD is that your mind is never satisfied. I still feared being poisoned. I still feared dying from the poison. I still feared my family dying from the poison.

This aspect of my OCD also pushed ahead with full force during Halloween. When I was younger, there was a story on the news about people trying to poison kids' Halloween treats or someone finding a needle in their kids' Halloween candy (or something to that affect). My mom, of course, being a concerned parent always checked my candy when I brought it home. I overheard my mom and dad talking about the possibility of  candy being tampered with (I was a very observant child). 

I was so terrified of ingesting some craziness that I was all consumed with inspecting my candy, even my parents had before me. I don't know what I was looking for. Signs of a needle sticking out of the wrapper? An unknown substance leaking out of my Snickers bar? Who knows. But that's OCD to a T. Sometimes I left my candy sitting in the corner of my closet, only to find it a year later, never eaten. 

I was so interested in finding out if that was a true news story, that I did some Google searching. I did find that there was a lot of hype about "Halloween Sadism," or tampering with children's Halloween candy in dangerous ways. But I found an interesting article written by Joel Best at the University of Delaware debunking the myth of this practice. There were instances that seemed to posture that there had been contaminated Halloween candy found across the country; however, after reviewing the specific instances, the evidence showed that the deaths and illnesses that seemed to be related to contaminated candy were not. And these instances were few and far between. 

To this day, I still get a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach when I get pieces of candy that are broken into crazy bits, have strange holes in them, or are oddly misshapen. It doesn't occur to my OCD brain that they may have been jiggled around a little too much en route to the store in the delivery truck. Or there was some inconsistency with the way the candy was made. It's not like everything is perfect. No, what pops into my head, of course, is that I am being poisoned by some sick person (who doesn't know me), but wants to get a kick out of seeing my suffer. 

To this day, my OCD brain still throws those thoughts my way. In the past I used to throw away those oddball pieces of candy and be done with it. But as I've worked on my OCD throughout the years, I've realized that has become a habit of mine to appease my OCD. So the other day when this handful of Reese's Pieces that I was eating looked like this,

I quickly popped those puppies into my mouth, chewed them, and swallowed them. And I enjoyed every last delicious bite. 

So much for poison, OCD. You can shove that one where the sun don't shine. 

To my OCD brain, it may be poison, but my rational brain has come to the conclusion that I like chocolate all too much to care. I don't think I'll have to play that loop on repeat anymore; it's not poison anymore.


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

My Journey #1: Still Working On It

My OCD has different types of compulsions and obsessions. Each person with OCD has different kinds of obsessions and compulsions. Mine may be different from another person I meet. For example, I do not feel the need to have things lined up specific ways, ordering or arranging things based on how I see fit. Sometimes messiness and dirt bother me, but only in my own house, never anywhere else. 

One of the biggest issues that affects me is obsessions in my mind--ideas and thoughts (mostly catastrophic that I know will not or cannot happen) that play on a loop. They come back over and over again. And no matter how hard I try, they don't stop. Now that I have been working on my OCD, I can control them. But they still start as obsessions and blink on quickly into my brain like someone using a flashlight to spell out Morse code. I just have learned to ignore them and block them out before they set my anxiety into a tailspin.

Two specific items that I have always obsessed over are 1) raw meat and 2) my crockpot. 

1) I HATE raw meat; chicken bothers me the worst. No reason--there never is a reason. But I hate the look of it, the smell of it, and I HATE touching it!! One thing I have been doing is making myself be the person who touches and handles raw chicken because I used to avoid it. I used to let Bjorn do it. That way I didn't have to face it; I didn't have to touch it. 

The reason it bothered me so much, and still gets me just a little is the loop about raw chicken that plays in my head. My OCD tells me, "If you touch the chicken, it might contaminate you. The chicken probably has salmonella. If you let it touch your hands too long, the juices are going to penetrate your skin and seep into your body, and you are going to get salmonella. Then you are going to start throwing up. Then you aren't going to get better. You're going to end up in the hospital. People die from salmonella."

Now reading that, I think it sounds like a great premise for a new strand of salmonella that someone cooks up on some late-night tv show that just seeps through people's skin and kills them all. But, seriously, that is what my brain tells me. Even though I know it's crazy, my OCD brain gets me to doubt my rational brain enough that it causes me anxiety. And I don't want to touch the chicken.

So after some exposure therapy exercises, I am getting better at the chicken touching :-/ I blank out my mind (the crazy thoughts still come). And I completely ignore them. I did that today...

The chicken. That is all.

Not sure about touching the chicken, but I'm doing it!!!

I did it! And I look a hot mess btw! That's what touching chicken does to ya! Ha!

I only washed my hands once too after I touched the chicken! I used to be unsure if I needed to wash my hands more (if I was still contaminated--OCD brain). But now I tell myself, "You're fine; wash your hands once." And I do! Yay!

2) I have a love hate relationship with my crockpot. I love it because it makes lovely, quick meals for me and the hubs, but my anxiety and OCD do not like it!! Again with the obsessive thoughts and the crockpot. Lately I only use the crockpot if we're going out for a little while or stay at home most of the day on Sunday. I haven't used the crockpot and turned it on while I was at school the whole day since I was in college and student teaching! As I have gotten older and things have happened in my life, my anxiety has gotten worse and just keeps me from doing this one "simple" thing. 

My crockpot. Oh, crockpot. I promise to use you more. Seeing it plugged in really gets me!

My OCD usually tells me with regards to my crockpot, "If you leave the crockpot plugged in, there is more than likely some sort of problem in the plug or the wiring in the house that will cause an electric fire while you're gone. Then the house will go up in flames. The dogs are home and they won't be able to get out." --And then I lose my mind. 

I have failed miserably with the crockpot, but I haven't wanted to try. I think I'm ready now, so I'm going for it! I am going to use my crockpot for its intended purpose and not be afraid of it!Today I used it to make dinner. I didn't even continuously go back and check on it. I just turned it on and let it go! 

My goal for this month is to use it at least once while I'm away all day to get dinner ready. And with this goal, I will NOT obsess about it being plugged in while I'm at school all day either. This one might be a little tough, but I want to do it :)

Thor and Rufus said, "We're so proud of you, Mom!" and "Oh, can we have a treat, since we helped!"

Well, I think I had a good day. I did good, but I'm still working on it!

Love and happiness <3 Holly