Overcome my OCD

This goal has a lot of little goals inside it.

1. If someone speaks with bad grammar (including myself) – LET IT GO!
2. Quit explaining myself.
3. When I clean, let the pen-point-sized mark/stain stay if it won’t come up after 30 minutes of scrubing. Actually if it doesnt want to come up the first time, MOVE ON! ITS OKAY!
4. Quit rereading e-mails 50 times before sending them. Quit rereading them at all. If I spell “there” like “their” one time most people aren’t going to care or even notice!
5. Quit worrying every new person I meet knows every mistake Ive made because THEY DONT KNOW. There is no newsletter on my life being handed out to everyone!!
6. Start stepping on cracks. Stop acting like a 5 year old. “Step on a crack, break your mother’s back…”
7. Quit hating myself whenever I’m wrong about something. Being wrong is going to happen to everyone many times in their lives.
8. Quit counting how many hours I had of sleep. Quit counting how many hours Ive been awake. And most importantly don’t think about this before going to sleep!
9. Quit looking up information to prove myself right. If someone thinks they’re right, let them have it – they’ll like you more if you do.

I’ll think of more but there is plenty to work on already.

anyone familiar? counteracting sentences to neutralise anxiety. its a fucking bitch

cheers
sw

I’m going through one of those periods of heightened disorderly thoughts and behaviour.

I wish it would just stop. And get the hell out my life.

One of the articles below suggested replacing yes or no thoughts – - ex. “yes of course I locked the door, shut up brain, shut up shut up shut up” – - with thoughts relating to choice and chance. i.e., “yes, so maybe there is a chance that not tapping that object with my left hand is unlucky. but you know what? i’m going to take the chance that it’s not, and not do it.”

It’s working really well so far! It’s much easier to dismiss things when you don’t have to obsess about rightness or wrongness (which can be incorrect) but can instead choose (which is an act of will).

My therapist has introduced me to Dialectical Behavior Therapy: http://bpd.about.com/od/treatments/a/IntroDBT.htm

It was designed for those with borderline personality disorder, but I’m finding that it helps me deal with anxiety and OCD quite a bit. Particularly helpful is the idea of mindfulness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness

I hate having OCD.
It makes me hella paranoid.
And makes me feel like I’m losing my mind all the time.
I can’t even trust myself…
But hell if I’m giving up.
Drugs or not, it’s going away.

Going a little better. Being aware is always the best place to start, and even reading just a bit of cog.therapy helps fend of intrusive thoughts.

I do appreciate that those articles have some (small, academic) sense of humor—it’s certainly easier to deal with evenness issues when you actually tell yourself “yes. yes I bet being uneven will just KILL me. mmmmmmhhhmm.”

So stopping those in their tracks is going better.

It’s time for this nonsense to stop, and taking stock of it would probably be the best way to deflate the beast.

Rituals:
- Body evenness. Tap the left hand on something, have to tap the right on it.
- Numbers. Things have to be done in 3s. Or multiples of 3s. Or the multiple of 3, plus one, when the occasion calls for it. As though there’s a difference…

Pure O:
- Various disturbing thoughts about horrible things I “could be capable” of doing.
- The above, but of horrible things others could do to me, which is equally jarring.

There’s more, but it’s late.

A couple of good articles to have on hand:
http://www.ocdonline.com/definecbt.php
http://www.ocdonline.com/articlephillipson1.php
http://www.ocdonline.com/articlephillipson2.php
http://www.ocdonline.com/articlephillipson3.php
With each of these I had many “oh my god!” identification moments.

Here we go!

^{well i can normally walk up stairs now .
i mean yeahh sometimes i’ll miss out stairs but thats habbit more than ocd as i’m happy to walk on those steps .}

mission compleate .

^{i’d say i’m bassically done this .
i didn’t think i’d be great as i’ve been using lifts really for the past five days .
so when i got back to nans i made myself run up and down the stairs four times .
and i did it :D}