Sunday, April 15, 2012

My paper battle

I started to throw down the old bill and run away from the table, literally run away from it.
I could feel the anxiety build to probably an eight, and I told myself that I had to stay until it went down.
That was last Monday as I worked on my pile of mail and paperwork on our dining room table.
I have written about my problem with the stack of paperwork and the way my therapist is leading me to confront it as a part of my cognitive behavioral therapy.
So I stayed and forged ahead. I didn’t clear the table, but I made some headway. I also learned a lot about my reasons for keeping some of the paperwork.
Examples
 Bills: I had to have minor surgery last August, and bills come with surgery. You don’t just pay one person. You pay the hospital, the doctor who performed the surgery, the anesthesiologist and the lab.
The bills are all paid. They’ve been paid. But I haven’t filed the bills and my notes of when I mailed the payments because I like to check afterwards and make sure the payments were received.
I haven’t called. And those papers have been lying on the table. I’ve used the excuse that they’re serving as a reminder that I need to call.
On Monday I thought about that: I wanted to check to see if the payments had been received. I wanted to check. Was that OCD checking?
I think maybe it is in my case. I have not received any notices of nonpayment or phone calls asking for money. My checks have gone through at the bank. That most likely means the payments were received.
So I decided I would not check. I would file all the paperwork in a file folder relating to the August 2011 surgery.
 Requests: I’ve been periodically receiving notices from a national animal welfare organization that I’ve sent donations to in the past, asking me to renew my membership.
This is a wonderful organization, and I don’t fault them for asking me to renew. They depend on donations.
However, I have made a decision, for the time being, to support organizations in my local area. I’ve held onto those renewal notices, though, thinking, I’ll read this and think about it later.
Monday night I considered this: if I’ve decided not to renew the membership right now, there’s no need to keep the notices. When I decide to pick back up, I can find them easily online and send in the money.
So the notices went into the trash.
 It's called avoidance
To aid in the cleanup, I bought some extra file folders and a pack of banker boxes for storage.
I know that waiting to buy what I think are necessary accessories before tackling more of the paperwork is clearly avoidance on my part.
I will do more this week. I need to report back to my therapist. Most importantly, I need to face this.
I don’t officially have my next CBT session until May because my therapist is so booked up, but I’m on the cancellation list, and my therapist told me to call every week to ask about canceled appointments.
Have you ever realized, in the middle of an exposure, some of the OCD thinking that has led you to that place? What did you discover?
Even if you don’t have OCD, have you had to face down tasks that seemed insurmountable? How did you do it?

33 comments:

  1. Congratulations on getting rid of some of your paperwork! That's awesome. I love how you can state the reasons for not having done it already. I can't really do that. I have no idea why I fear contamination. My husband believes that it's because I lost my grandmother to cancer when I was young and also because I was placed in a hospital right after that due to my inappropriate behavior and drug usage. So he thinks that I may have relate uncleanliness to my grandmothers cancer and to have being felt "discarded as trash" myself. I don't know. I can't word it like he does. Now I don't blame my mom for putting in that facility, because she didn't know how else to help me. But it definitely traumatized the crap outta me and made me feel unwanted. Anyway, that's my two cents. LOL I'm really proud of your progress. Before you know it you'll have that table and everything cleaned off and filed away! :)

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    1. I hope so! I appreciate your kind words. It's not that I have figured out the reasons for why I have the OCD symptoms I do, but I am figuring out some of the thinking patterns I get stuck in.

      I'm sorry that experience of being in the hospital was such a bad one. Feelings of insecurity and inferiority, I think, are often accompaniments of OCD. I know they are with mine.

      I hope your day goes well and you enjoy your new job!

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  2. Wow, your blog is great. I have no idea why I didn't get here sooner!

    Insurmountable tasks, hmm. I have many. As for the conquered ones, I also have a few. Long story short, it basically comes down to being terrified and doing it anyway. Sounds like you did awesome with the paper pile!

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    1. Thanks for following my blog!

      That's a great show of courage--to be terrified and do it anyway. That takes a lot of guts! Remind yourself of that--you are showing great courage in fighting your OCD.

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  3. Luke 10:20 rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
    God called me to Himself. I have been quickend to new life. Oh how rich is His glory as he has put His mercy on me. He first loved me I can not but love God. Yet my heart still craves the unholy things. Ah how much more I need to pray . God chose to save when my heart was heard and broke me, and now He will continue to melt me. what can I say for he has pardoned my sins. I seek for mercy at the throne of grace, begging for forgiveness.

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  4. Exposure therapy is hard and usually somewhere during those intense moments, I can realize some of the OCD thinking and thought process. That is usually when I notice the anxiety coming down. I also make piles and then I get overwhelmed by them. Balancing my check book and paying bills is so stressful, for I have to check and a check and check and check to make sure I didn't make a mistake.

    I am currently doing 30min of exposure therapy a day. My therapist wants to work me up to the "gold standard" of 45min but I'm not ready yet. As of now, I need to take a break half way through to get away from whatever it is I'm exposing myself to whether it be thoughts or what have you.

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    1. Exposure therapy is hard, harder than I thought it would be, even though other bloggers told me to expect it. I guess we just have to find out ourselves. I found that when I figured out that my thinking was stuck on certain things (like, call and check on payments received), and could go ahead and NOT do it, I felt a lessening of anxiety. Hope for more of that!

      Paying bills is stressful for me too. I have written checks, sealed the envelope, and then worried that I didn't sign the check. So I've opened up envelopes, checked, and then sealed them back up with tape. I've done that more times than I've wanted to. Now I pay most things over the phone. It's more efficient and saves on paper and postage. And my husband takes care of writing the checks for most of the household type bills. That's not because of my OCD--he just has the mind of a CPA.

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  5. File bills?

    Really?

    Ha! I wish. I am great at hoping that they would just go away period.

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    1. Oh, I wish they would go away too! Alas, they keep coming . . .

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  6. It has taken me almost fifty years to realize that most of what I think of as insurmountable only gets worse the more I think about it. I work on "just jumping in and doing it" and find that helpful........of course I don't have OCD so "just doing it" is probably easier for me than for those with the disorder.

    But you're doing it! Congrats!

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    1. Thank you, Janet! Last week, when I faced that medical issue, I found that I reached the point where I knew I couldn't think about it anymore--I had to put my head down and just do it. That works for me sometimes.

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  7. My avoidance and insurmountable task is laundry and housekeeping. I just don't do it much..... I get tired just considering doing it. So I avoid.

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    1. I hear you. I get tired thinking about all I need to do. That easily leads to avoidance.

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  8. Tina, this post really hit home for me, and frankly I did not expect it. Yes, I have OCD - totally get that. But I *think* I might have a slight problem with a tendency to hoard. Not the type of hoarding where you have garbage and stuff piled all over the house, but the type where I hang on to paperwork because I fear I will need it in the future. To be honest, I do hang on to some other items too, but paperwork is my real struggle. It actually hit me for the first time about a week ago. I was looking through a large pile of paper for tax info and like a lightening bolt to my brain, I realized that I probably didn't need to keep 90% of the paper I have. It was a little disturbing to me to realize I have this tendency, but in a way it was freeing, because it means I don't have to keep all this stuff anymore! However, now I really do have to go through all the paperwork so I don't throw out anything significant, because everything is lumped in together. Sigh. I've been avoiding that. OCD is like an onion. You peel off one layer and then you find another underneath!

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    1. Ok, so I was struck by your post and how it affected me, that I forgot to tell you how proud I am of you of all your hard work! Really, really awesome work!!!! I know that this is something that has been weighing on your heart for a long time and I hope you feel great about this success. It is a big, big step.

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    2. Sunny, I've been wondering if I have a hoarding tendency too. I did some research on the OCD Foundation website and what I found showed that most people who suffer from hoarding have no other OCD symptoms. And they don't usually have the intrusive thoughts that are a hallmark of OCD, among other differences. There are people advocating for a classification of hoarding as a disorder distinct from OCD for the upcoming update of the diagnostic manual.

      There does seem to be an OCD-related hoarding that is based more on the obsessions of losing something important, on checking, etc. I think I may have some of that. It scared me, too, but I'm going to talk about it with my therapist. I see him this evening.

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    3. Thanks, Sunny. Still got some ways to go, but each step moves me forward . . ..

      I did the shower faucet thing yesterday and will do more when I get home. I think it is helping!

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    4. Tina, that is so awesome about the shower faucet! Keep it up, pretty soon you'll have OCD licked!

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  9. Congrat's on your progress Tina. I admire your willingness to tackle this.
    I have some contamination issues that right now I see as insurmountable, not a good attitude on my part, but I think I'll be stuck with them forever.
    I do wonder why I have the particular type of OCD that I do. Like I don't fear germs that I will get sick, I just fear germs will make me dirty. Why? I have no clue. I definitely feel I have an over-abundance for feeling "responsibility".. and I want to do everything perfect or not at all. Ugh! the only thing I have correlated so far is my fear of conflict and my related anxiety to being exposed to hateful arguments in my childhood home.
    One thing I read recently, ( I wish I could remember where it was) was that children who do not get "empathy" from parents are more susceptible to OCD. First time I ever saw that. I don't like blaming things on other people because I was not a perfect parent myself and I know really good parents have children with OCD so it is not across the board. But as for me, empathy would have been given to me in short supply. I was told to "buck up" "pull yourself up by the bootstraps", or the old "if you wanna cry, I'll give you something to cry about." yada yada yada In my home, I didn't dare to even give my opinion if it was different, so I had to repress a lot of feelings as a child and teenager.

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    1. Krystal, Thank you! The insurmountable will someday be doable, I believe.

      I don't fear germs because I fear I'll get sick, either. It was always that I would make someone else sick. And the bottom line (my therapist helped me see this) is that I don't want to be grossed out. That plays into my bathroom issues.

      I don't know if there's ever a clear correlation between the OCD type and the cause, but I think my counting in particular probably came about when I was a child trying to comfort myself (didn't realize I was doing it for comfort at the time) when family members of mine were sick. We had a lot of illnesses in my family, especially my next older brother who was born with some handicaps. I got by better if I stayed quiet and didn't get in the way.

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  10. My husband uses that avoidance technique - he just bought all sorts of hanging files and spent a bunch of time organizing them before he could pay taxes. And he's an accountant!

    Sounds like you're making good progress overall!

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    1. Thanks, Lisa! It doesn't help that I have a small addiction to office supplies. I love all the tools to organize. It's using them that gets me . . .

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  11. One of the things I love about CBT is that we don't delve into the "why" of things...and yet, when we practice the tools, the why sort of floats up on its own.

    Years ago I was cleaning out a closet and was struck with the realization that I had trouble getting rid of things that had been given to me, even if they were worn out, broken, or otherwise unusable. I stopped what I was doing and made a little ceremony, thanking the people who had given me those things, and thanking each item for the use it had brought me. It made it easier to throw things away after that. I treasure those moments of understanding that come from taking even a small action.

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    1. Nadine, I love that ceremony you did! It takes the mindlessness of throwing away stuff and replaces it with gratitude. I love it! I am going to try that.

      I love the fact that CBT is so practical, too--it doesn't take a lot of delving into the deep or waiting for complete insight to act. The whys that float up are kind of extras, I guess.

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  12. Tina,
    I think we all have avoidance at one time or another or with certain things. When I was on my own fighting my eating disorder and in debt up to my ear I avoided evey single bill there ever was 'cause they all said the same thing; Payment due so even now when I see a bill, the first thing I want to do is avoid it and pretend it doesn't exist but it does and so I just forge ahead. I also think 'what is the worst that could happen?' and if I can state it and deal with it, then I can do the rest.
    Take good care...thinking of you!

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    1. Tracy,

      We're doing some of that "what's the worst that could happen" thinking in CBT and carrying it out as far as possible to see exactly what is so scary and to deal with the dread.

      I am reminding myself that I have to deal with the ways things are, not like I wish they were. Forging ahead!

      Thanks for your kind words.

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  13. I've only got a mild case of OCD and meds are helping a lot. I am a very visual person so I try to picture the end result. If it's sorting through a pile of clothes or bills or books, I try to see the area free of all the stuff. In fact I think this is the only way it works for me.

    Thank you for being so candid. You are an inspiration to many!

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    1. Grace, Thank you for your encouraging words. I am a visual person, too, so I will try that technique.

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  14. So glad I found your blog. I'm 23 and I suffer from severe GAD. I also have some symptoms of OCD so I know how that feels too. I only recently starting talking about my disorder in public--it's amazing how refreshing it is! My blog has helped me find several others who are in the same boat and you are no exception!

    Thank you for being brave and sharing your story with others. People like you make it easier on those who suffer because it proves that having the disorder is nothing to be ashamed of.

    Wishing you all the best!

    -Alisha :)

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    1. Alisha, Thanks so much for visiting! I have GAD, too, and it's no fun. I can understand not talking about it in public. I kept the OCD to myself for many, many years.

      Blogging has been a blessing to me, to connect with others who have the same problems and to also reach out to those interested in learning more because a family member or friend suffers.

      I'll be popping over to your blog!

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  15. I am constantly facing this problem at work, and it is really stressful. What i do is plan my day, make a list of things I have to do, and go through my list trying not to worry about tomorrow's list

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    1. That sounds very practical and effective, Nikky, especially how you focus on what you need to do today and not worry about tomorrow. Thank you for sharing that!

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