Overcome my OCD

I currently don’t have insurance so I haven’t been taking my prescriptions or going to therapy. I am hoping to get approved this week on my new plan.

I have felt really uneasy and stressed lately, but can’t pin-point it. Yesterday I did what I call my own brand of therapy, the “clean and purge”. I started with cleaning out our entire fridge and throwing out a lot of things like condiments we never use. Then I moved onto my closet.

I have this urge lately to throw out all my clothes and buy a new basic wardrobe (black dress, trenchcoat, white blouse, one pair of perfect jeans) Instead I packed up a lot of the vintage items I never wear but can’t just get rid of in a tupperware for the attic. I am going to keep my high waisted jeans because it is a collection. But I think I am going to try to sell the rest on ebay.

After cleaning the house top to bottom as well, I only feel slightly better. I still just want to get rid of everything. I have a bag of clothes I could sell to Buffalo Exchange, but I think I will just put it in the Dare Donation Drop because the urge to get rid of it feels urgent. I hope to get rid of a bunch more stuff before New Years.

I love the whole celebrating of Christmas but I hate the presents part. I tell everyone not to get me anything but they still do. The last thing I need is more stuff. I am not buying people things for Christmas at all. I’d rather bake people cookies that they can enjoy but won’t fill up their house all year, or give my sisters family an American Express card to go out on a family outing or buy dance lessons for the girls.

Am I crazy???

The Lexapro I’ve been taking for my depression and OCD is starting to help already. I have been able to eliminate or scale back on some of my lesser rituals becaue I am no longer compelled to do them. Of course some things I can never give up, it is the perfectionist in me.

Lately I always have this fear that I didn’t flush after I’ve left the bathroom. Occasionally I go back and check, but usually I don’t because I don’t want anyone to catch me and look like a weirdo. It’s so irrational, because I would never do this. But usually the checking comes with those things that I do so automatically I don’t think about, so then I feel unsure.

Part of my OCD is my exercise obsession. I HAVE to certain workouts a number of times a week to feel in contol. Now that I have to lay of the exercise because of my vertigo, I’m freaking out! I feel panicked…I feel like if I don’t work out for the next 3 weeks as requested by my doctor, I am going to blow up like a balloon. So today, I walked on my lunch break…then preceded to eat to many cookies. This is not good. Binging is more likely to make my fear a reality then a little R & R. I need to figure out how to better deal with this. Aaaaghhh! :(

Getting home from work I always feel stressed like I have a lot of things to do. I have to pay bills, do laundry, organize things. But it is Friday and I’m exhausted. I had dinner, watched a movie. I am going to go to bed so I can get up for an early spin class tomorrow. Then I can shower and be ready early, come home and tackle my tasks. It is so hard for me to leave it alone for now though. It gives me anxiety knowing that there is unfinished business to be done. Writing a list would be good, but no. I need to learn to just let it be. It’s ok to put things off sometimes…I need to teach myself this.

My psychologist wants me to see a psychiatrist that can prescribe me an antidepressent to help alieviate some of my obsessive compulsive urges. I am willing to try it. I was on Lexapro and it worked great, I was less depressed, but still felt normal and motivated, and it toned down my OCD. Unfortunately I had to stop taking it because it made me grind my jaw like a speed freak (the only negative side effect) and I developed TMJ. He said there are some other options that may help and not have that side effect. Although I hate the trial and error phase (I have been on so many types and not liked how they made me feel) I am willing to try anything at this point. I realized that the OCD makes me feel in control, but really the more control I think I have, the more I am really out of control with my sickness.
The bad part is that I wish I could pick and choose. I could easily do without the intruding thoughts (like thinking about getting a paper cut on my eyeball over and over for days) or the annoying checking habit (like turning around after I’ve gotten down my street on the way to work, to make sure I closed the garage door), but I don’t want to get rid of my obsessions involving cleaning and perfection, because of my strong need to feel perfect. I like perfection, and would prefer to stay as close to it as humanly possible. Can anyone else relate?

So I always believed to I had OCD, but yesterday I went to a psychologist (for the first time in 12 years) and was offically diagnost with it. I am hoping that the therapy can help me to better function with it, as you can never really cure it. I think I could achieve so much more, and accomplish more important things, if I didn’t have to spend so much time doing stupid rituals to clear my mind. It can be really deablitating. We will see…

I seem to get them when I’m lying in bed, thinking before I drift off to sleep. My heart feels like it’s stopping, or I can’t breathe. Last night I had this feeling and at the same time I had intruding thoughts about dying in a plane crash, a car crash, but then the worst was that I had thoughts about the earth stopping it’s rotation and falling off the earth, or meteors crashing into the planet and destroying halve of it. It sound silly, but in the moment I felt deathly afraid of these things as if they were an unavoidable fate. I was in a complete panic…I’ve never experienced anything like that before.
I still haven’t made an appointment with a psych…I don’t know why I find it so easy to avoid this.

When I was little I used to wash my hands before I played with my toys to keep them clean. My hands were chapped horribly.
I have always been a perfectionist, but this is more than that. When I moved to my first apartment without roomates, I enjoyed the fact that it had wood floors because it freed me from my compulsive vaccuming. But I still had unhealthy “cleaning rituals”. Living alone made it easier not to acknowledge my problem. I didn’t fully realize it’s overpowering presence in my life, until I moved in with my boyfriend. At my new home, because I no longer live alone, I don’t have complete control of my environment. We have a lovely home, and even a cleaning lady. But I still feel frustrated, because I can’t keep my stuff in perfect order. I also cannot carry-out the rituals that help me “feel right” because I don’t want to carry out this behavoir in front of others.
Because of the stress of major life changes all at once (new job, new home, new car) and my boyfriend being away on tour often, I found my OCD progressing to checking locks, the stove and the oven several times before bed, or leaving the house. Some nights after taking a decongestant, I feared my heart was stopping. Several nights in a row I felt my throat closing up and could not sleep from fear of suffication. I went to the doctor, convinced I had something physically wrong. After determining I was healthy, she did have the insight that something else was causing this. She asked me more questions, and determined I was suffering from panic attacks. She prescribed me various muscle relaxers, and sleeping aids, which did help, and I haven’t had one since. I stopped taking the anti depressants though…I have to be creative for my job, and I couldn’t on those drugs. I told her I’d rather see a psychologist, then take medicine and she agreed. I have yet to make an appoinment though.