Outing Myself, Sort Of

I post on several sports related boards. The other day someone posted about washing his hands a lot because so many people are sick right now. And I replied that because I have OCD, hand washing is a bad road for me to start down.

It's the first time I've ever written about my OCD outside of the OCD blog community. Nobody commented on it. I don't know if they didn't notice, didn't care, or didn't want to make a big deal out of it.

I've met most of the people on that board in person, and they mostly live in my town, so there's not the usual anonymity of online. Anyway, whether it's the start of more openness for me, I don't know. But I'm glad I tried it out.

No, OCD, You Don't Get To Win This One

As I've mentioned in this blog before, there's one part of my job that just sends my OCD into fits. It's governed by federal regulations and it's really really complicated. An added layer of complication is that the feds ignore us for years and then swoop in to care for a year or two. We could make errors for years with no way of knowing, and not surprisingly, I tend to overstress and overthink!

We really need to make a change to one of our procedures, but my OCD has taken over, convinced that something terrible will happen and I should try to stick with the status quo. But it's simply not true.

My goals are therefore to 1) do what I know is the correct thing and 2) stop the infernal rumination!

I'm off to do something fun instead. I hope everyone's having a nice weekend.

My Brain Has Been Busy!

I've done well this week on the contamination front, not being a crazy hand washer despite all the media attention about the flu, and the signs that are up all over my building at work about hand washing, and the fact that massive numbers of my coworkers are sick, and the fact that a coworker is having surgery this Friday.

So that's great. BUT I've gotten into this cycle where I've been worried about a number of different things. They cycle through and I'm only generally worried about one at once, for about half a day. They include:
-the guy who's getting laid off in our office coming back and shooting us all;
-some supplies I gave to my sister growing mold and killing someone(they were wet);
-my house burning down due to the old wiring in the attic;
-my house burning down due to my basement remodel;
-something going horribly awry with the eBay item I just shipped (and why the heck hasn't it been delivered yet-it's 5 pm and it was on the truck at 7 this morning!)

As always, the items I'm not currently stewing on seem far fetched and/or laughable, until they cycle back to the front.

As always, it's a perfect chance to work on mindfulness and acceptance. I'm having this thought. Having a thought doesn't magically make it come true. Will keep on.

Progress Happens

I am a list maker. But I'm also pretty disorganized. At work I often have three lists with just about the same stuff on it. The cool part about that is that I get to cross off my accomplishments three times!

But at home it means I usually have about 10 notebooks floating around with different versions of lists. Last week I found a notebook that I had used in 2008-09; then it got buried in a box. It included a list of OCD-related things that I was going to stop avoiding in 2010. It included this line: avoid shoe segregation. Well, I'm pretty sure I accomplished that one, because I can't even remember what it meant. I know there have been times I thought a shoe was "contaminated" due to something I've walked through, but I don't remember avoiding a shoe for this reason for a long long time. I guess I did in 2009, though.

Similarly, I wrote "no Purell." Now, when I'm out and about I still often WISH I had Purell with me, but I never carry it around anymore.

The list reminded me that I'm glad I make (and lose) these lists, because it lets me really see that I do make progress, even when I don't notice it.

Rumination Without Anxiety

I've always been a "thinker." I like to run ideas through my head, thinking about different options. Or really, even when my brain has a solution, stuff runs through my head in a repetitive way. I calculate my taxes in my head weirdly often, for instance. I'm sure it's related to OCD, in the way my brain works.

I've never tried to stop it, because there's no anxiety involved. In fact, usually I enjoy it. Lately, I've been running through ideas for making money on the side and eventually starting my own business so I can leave my dysfunctional workplace.

There's no anxiety involved with it, but it sits thisclose to anxiety about losing my job, so I wonder if I should try to limit the amount of time I spend doing it. Or only allow myself to think it through when I'm actually taking action on it. It feels like this would help me to stop the rumination that does have an OCD component.

What do you think?