The 30 Day Challenge

Well, the 30 Day Challenge has ended without fanfare. My goal you may remember was to go compulsion free on the neighbor's garbage cans. Did I succeed? Kinda, I guess. I certainly did better than the early days when I put one of their garbage bags in my can to ensure that it would get collected (and got busted doing it, no less!)

I still expend more brain power thinking about garbage than I want to, but I'm getting there.

My next "no compulsions" goal centers around my fear of getting sick and passing along the illness to others at inconvenient times. My boss is on vacation next week, and I worry about being sick before she goes. But I'm not changing my schedule or plans in any way to try to keep healthy.

How about you? How'd your 30 day challenge end up?

Tuesday Night Update

Well, it's 8 pm, the night before garbage day. Neighbors' cans not out yet. Neither one of the two neighbors. I have no plans to do anything if they don't. I feel good about this right now but know that I won't next week if their garbage is blowing down the street again. I also know getting through this is really really important for me. So I will sit.

Hooray for Pasta Salad

At my workplace, we love potlucks. My entire department of 50 has them about three times a year, and my workplace knitting group has a monthly birthday potluck. I too love potlucks, but for about 5 years now, I've never brought a non-dessert item to a potluck. Baking kills all the germs, of course.

It hasn't always been this way, even with OCD. Back when I lived in Seattle, I'd host huge potlucks probably 3 times a year, inviting everyone I knew. I'd usually make a main dish and a huge fruit salad. But recently, I've become convinced I'd spread death and destruction through food poisoning.

When I was seeing my therapist, she encouraged me to bring cut up carrots to my book club, but the closest I got was bringing whole apples a couple of times. About a month ago, I thought about bringing pasta salad to the knitting potluck. I even bought all of the ingredients, but then I just skipped the potluck altogether. Bad.

Yesterday we had a potluck to celebrate the end of my boss's cancer treatment. I still had most of those pasta salad ingredients, and I went for it. There were a few unnecessary hand washes during the prep, but I definitely consider it a success. It tasted great, too.

I don't know quite where all this impetus for action is coming from, but it really builds on itself. I encourage you to try it if you haven't already! It feels (scary) and great!!

Hardest Exposure Ever-Or Hardest Response Prevention Anyway

Today I went to my knitting group. I didn't really want to, but I decided it was important, and I also decided before I went that I wouldn't shower right after, no matter what I encountered there.

So, of course, I sit next to "loud, large, sick" lady. Everything she did was big, and seemed to include touching me with something. She had a cold and coughed about 50 times (not an exaggeration) and covered her mouth during about 5 of those coughs, most directed right at me. She sneezed without covering her mouth either. She spit when she talked and spit when she coughed, and I saw it land on my leg.

And I know I have OCD and all, but who does that?!

So, yeah, it was super fun. I stayed for an hour and a half, though, and only inched away from her, umm, a couple of times. Which of course brought me too close the person on the other side of me, who probably thinks I'm weird now, but oh, well.

Now it's an hour later, and I haven't showered. I don't feel great about it, but my anxiety is going down, so that's good.

Yuck!

Last year, it seemed everywhere I went, I encountered vomit on the sidewalk. Lately, not so much. Until today, of course. I was on my run, and my first thought involved showers. But luckily, running always makes me more prone to actually follow through with ERP, so about five minutes later, I'd changed my mind and decided I didn't need a shower after all (I didn't step in it, just near it). This despite the fact that we're having a big party for my boss on Friday, and I sure don't want to get anyone sick.

I felt so energized by that decision, that I made it 50% further (farther?) than I'd intended on my run. So I guess it was a disgusting but good evening.

Did I Really Just Do That?

I've been doing awesome at basic contamination exposures at home and work in the last couple of months.

Now I'm moving on to the scariest piece for me: exposing myself to people who have a cold or stomach flu. I've been struggling with this one for several years now. It makes it difficult to have a social life, because people with colds are everywhere!

Today I went to the grocery store. In the middle of checking me out, my clerk got a tissue and blew her nose. I did freak at first, and I threw my receipt away before leaving the store. But then when I got home, my keys weren't in the pocket I thought, so I had to touch four different pockets with my "contaminated" hand before I found them.

Then I figured to heck with it. I touched my hair and my face, my pillow, computer keyboard, refrigerator handle, and sock and underwear drawer with those contaminated hands. I have NEVER been able to do this before, and my hands were shaking during some of it.

I feel great, kinda, but my anxiety, while lower, is still heightened. I can't undo it now, though, so I'll just have to wait it out.

In the Yucky Middle

I'm in a place where I'm succeeding at more and more exposures. So now I'm moving up to harder ones. For more than a year, when interacting with my aunt, I've nearly always "demanded" something that eases my fears, be it changing the time or date or location of our time together, or when things have been really bad, canceling altogether. My aunt has long been an OCD trigger for me (it's not uncommon for a person to seem "contaminated" for no logical reason- my aunt is that person for me). Now I have the added fear that I will harm HER. And then the extra fear layered on top that if I harm her, the ripple effect will mess up my whole family.

SO, that's awesome. Anyway, starting two weeks ago with the trip to the grocery store, I've been working HARD at letting my interactions with my aunt evolve naturally. It has been difficult. This weekend, it feels like all the options are terrifying- if I drive, if she drives, if we carpool, if we go separately- disaster waiting at every turn. But as yet, I haven't done anything but let my aunt decide time, place, transportation. It feels good, it feels terrible. The compulsions may go away, but the thoughts don't, and I think that's the trickiest part about sticking with ERP.

A First!

So, I've mentioned that I've been doing well with exposures lately. I got to the end of my workday today and I realized that I'd only washed my hands once, after using the restroom (and I then touched the door handle on the way out).

That means I didn't wash before eating my lunch, or my apple in the afternoon, or after getting handed documents to proofread, or before handing said documents back to my boss. I didn't wash my hands after coming in from riding the bus in the morning, or after twice filling my water bottle from the drinking fountain that's right outside the restrooms.

And as well as I've been doing with the hand washing, this is probably the first time since OCD that I've accomplished this. Yippee!

This Has To Stop Today, Not Next Week!

Today as I thought, phew, I made it without getting sick till the receptionist headed off to New York for her brother's wedding, it occurred to me that I said that about her own wedding FIVE months ago.

I can't keep holding my breath forever, trying to avoid ever getting anyone sick before an important event or a vacation. And of course just as I was breathing a sigh of relief, I learned that the guy next to me is taking his family to Europe for spring break. Which ordinarily would mean, Oh, I just have to stay healthy through Friday. But it's finally sinking in that IT WILL NEVER END. There will ALWAYS be something on the horizon, a reason I can't get sick until next week, and then the week after and after and after.

So I kept on with my exposures today- went grocery shopping after hopping off the bus, picking up my produce without using hand sanitizer first.

Then I came home and took the trash out (which for some reason makes me super anxious these days), including some things that felt especially yucky to me. I'd like to take a shower now, but I'm not going to. Instead I'm cooking dinner.

ERP Works AGAIN! (who knew?)

This morning on the bus, a woman sat next to me and practically dumped her oversized bag (one of two, plus a newspaper and a coffee cup) on my lap. It was inconsiderate, especially considering that she had an empty seat on the other side of her, but my annoyance was purely OCD, wondering where she might have set that bag prior to my lap.

After I got off the bus, I was feeling seriously uptight, although I forced myself not to actively avoid the part of my coat that the bag had touched. But I definitely imagined washing the coat when I got home. Now it's 8 hours later, and I feel fine. The coat doesn't seem contaminated, and I don't feel contaminated.

I guess that's the plus in getting "contaminated" on the way to work- there's nothing I can do about it for hours anyway. It's the perfect ERP system.

I Do Not Like Cold and Flu Season

When colds and flu are at the very top of your exposure hierarchy, this is sort of a stressful time of year. During exposure therapy has really been difficult, harder than I expected really. But I'm hanging in there. Yesterday was a big party for my aunt. I went through worrying about ruining the party by being sick, worried about going and having someone else get me sick, and I worried about bringing food that would make people sick. But I went, everything seemed okay, I brought my food, life went on. As it always seems to do, of course.

Yesterday I had a bonus exposure that was a huge success. Squirrels often frolic on my back deck, and I worry about germs being left behind. For some reason I went out there in bare feet yesterday, and then walked through my house without thinking about it. As soon as I did think about it, I felt contaminated, and like the floors had also been contaminated. For about three hours I fought the urge to take a shower and/or scrub down the floors. But I repeated my new mantra, that giving in to that urge feeds the OCD and makes it stronger. And I waited and waited, until eventually the urge passed. That felt great.

OCD History- Part 2

As I noted in part 1, I was diagnosed with OCD at age 25 in 1997. I was lucky, really. My health insurance was a giant HMO, they randomly assigned me an MSW therapist. Actually, she was completing an internship. But she knew it was OCD from day 1. And she knew that Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) was the best therapy for it. Unfortunately she wasn't experienced with ERP, so my treatment was only partially successful. The other unfortunate aspect was that her internship ended 4 months into my treatment. At that time she and I agreed that I would be able to continue my treatment on my own. But I had never had to face any of my most feared exposures, so I only improved a little.

The next 7 years, I did okay, if not great. I survived mostly because I lived by myself (so I didn't have "dirty" people to contend with), and for 5 of those years I dated a guy who naturally washed his hands a lot and was pretty accommodating of my "quirks."

My OCD worsened in 2004 when I moved back to the town where my whole family lives. They are not good hand washers, and I always worried about getting sick when around them. I also worried about getting them sick. But the worst problem was that when I moved, I broke up with the accommodating boyfriend. Now I was dating again, with a whole host of worries, mostly imagined: boyfriends who didn't wash their hands enough, STDs, pregnancy, colds and flus to be shared. Not so surprisingly, most of my relationships lasted 4-6 months, at which time the boyfriend got a little freaked out by my ever increasing anxiety.

I sought treatment again in 2006. I went through a series of 4 therapists through my HMO: I was told to meditate, learn breathing techniques, count how often I did my compulsions. Despite the fact that I told them I had OCD, not once was ERP mentioned. Next I tried a psychiatrist. My entire first (and only) session consisted of her listing all of the possible medications I could take; again ERP was not mentioned. I'm not opposed to medication, and I've taken both Paxil and Prozac briefly, to jump start my ERP, but I didn't want it to be the focus of my treatment.

Finally in late 2006, I found a therapist who specialized in ERP. He was okay, but after about 3 months he declared my work "finished." What about the fact that I woke up each day filled with dread? Well, he said, that would get better if I just kept practicing. We were to ignore the fact that without him, I didn't ever practice again.

During 2007, I went back to school and I was too busy to date, so my OCD was pretty mild. After 2008 passed, with me remaining too scared to date again, I decided enough was enough. And hallelujah, a new ERP therapist had moved to town. I was going to try again.

My new therapist is awesome! I will write more soon about her approach. I made great strides for the first two months, had a huge setback when a close relative was diagnosed with cancer, and am beginning to make great strides again. More on that later, too.