The things we do because of OCD: Lying

My apartment building in Bowling Green.

Have you ever lied because of your obsessive-compulsive disorder?

Jean at her Writer, Heal Thyself blog recently wrote a post about lying in response to her compulsive overeating disorder.

And I started thinking about the effects mental illnesses can have, especially relating to the fear of others finding out about our problems and judging us harshly because of them.

I have lied out of fear stemming from my OCD, but there’s one particular incident I remember well. It happened in 1989 or around that time, when I was a graduate student living in Bowling Green, Ohio.

I lived in a small one-bedroom apartment and kept it sparklingly clean, especially the bathroom.

I cleaned the bathroom every Friday. I would start at about 7 a.m. and finish about four hours later. What took me so long?

I wiped down all the surfaces—the floor, the sink, the toilet and the tub—with a water and disinfectant solution. And I didn’t wipe once. I wiped over and over, making sure I covered every inch with the solution.

After I finished that, I doused the whole room with disinfectant spray in order to ensure every bit of the surfaces were reached and cleaned.

The bathroom ended up being quite wet, and I wouldn’t use the toilet until it had completely dried.

But the day I lied to one of my best friends was not a Friday, and I had not just finished cleaning the bathroom.

B came over so we could go do some shopping together.

I had known B since I moved to Bowling Green in 1985, but we became really good friends during my last two years in town.

I was at her house almost every day, and she fed me and listened to me and studied with me. B offered her hospitality to anyone who needed it.

On this day that we were to go shopping, B arrived and asked if she could use my bathroom before we left.

Now I was very obsessive about protecting the cleanliness of my bathroom. I put a lot of time and effort into getting it clean to my OCD specifications. When I used the bathroom, I was careful to now mess anything. When I was finished, I would clean the toilet seat with disinfectant spray and toilet paper, to make sure any germs were killed.

I didn’t like other people using my bathroom, and if they did, I cleaned the toilet after they left.

I was inwardly panicking in response to B’s request. I wouldn’t be able to clean the toilet until I got back from shopping. I knew that I would think about it the entire time we were out.

“Oh, B, I just cleaned the bathroom, so it’s too wet to use,” I said.

“Couldn’t I take a piece of toilet paper and wipe it dry and use it?” she asked.

I panicked some more. I didn’t want her to go into my bathroom to use it. I also didn’t want her to go into the bathroom and see that it wasn’t wet, that I had lied.

So I told her no again. She looked hurt and confused.

Then we left my apartment and went to a big box store, where she used the bathroom. I was sorry she had to use a public bathroom, but at the time, I wasn’t sorry that she hadn’t used mine.

I refused to let a friend use my bathroom. I lied to her about it.

B would never have told people they couldn’t use her bathroom unless it was broken. I had been inhospitable to B, and that’s the last thing she would have been.

What about you? Have you ever lied because you were afraid?

Have OCD? You have something to be proud of

Trees: symbols of strength to me.

I’ve been reading Freedom From Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A Personalized Recovery Program for Living with Uncertainty, by Jonathan Grayson, Ph.D., and though I’ve experienced OCD for most of my life, and I’ve read a lot about it over the years, this book is reminding me that I still have much to learn.

I like how Grayson specifically addresses people with OCD. Anytime he addresses “you,” he’s talking to OCD sufferers.

And his writing starts off with a bang by raising our awareness that those of us with OCD have a lot to be proud of.

Proud?

  I’ve written before about my first psychiatrist called me “high functioning” and how disconcerting that was to me. I didn’t feel like I was functioning very well on any level because obsessions and compulsions filled all of my time.

What I had been able to do, though, was to stay in school, complete a master’s degree and make good headway into a doctoral program. I was able to teach writing and literature classes. I had my own apartment and paid my bills.

What I may be have been displaying is something Grayson referred to in his book: “You [people with OCD] function in the world, and you don’t appear to be in obvious distress. Unlike the extreme cases publicized in the press and on talk shows, your OCD doesn’t seem to be much of a difficulty to live with” (p. 4).

In 1990, I managed to live an outwardly “normal” life while struggling with OCD.

To OCD sufferers, Grayson said, “This ability of yours to successfully function under stress has a special name: competence” (p. 5).

Grayson said all people who are successful have this ability to perform well under stress, but they have to rely on the ability less than people with OCD.

Think about it

If you have OCD, have you ever been able to go to school, go to work, work at home, volunteer, take care of children, or do anything at all even while feeling extreme anxiety from your obsessions and compulsions? Then you were displaying competence.

Of course, there are times when none of us can be competent in this sense of the word. Hard times come and it’s all we can do to get through the day and have time to do anything other than rituals.

But look back over your life and consider how much you have accomplished, despite having OCD.

Competence: helpful and not helpful

Grayson said competence could be a positive thing and a negative thing.

“On the one hand, it allows you to function in the world. . . . It is important for you to recognize this strength in yourself” (p. 5).

Reading that made me feel proud of not only myself but of all of you dealing with OCD. I agree with this statement of Grayson’s: “Bravery is not a feeling; bravery is how you behave when you are scared. You are among the bravest people I know. The strength and competence you are accustomed to using in order to get through your daily life can help you succeed in treatment” (p. 5).

Competence has a negative side, too, according to Grayson: “It has led many of you to delay seeking treatment. After all, if you are trying to hide your problem, seeking treatment might be a flag to others that something is wrong” (p. 5).

And just because we are able to function doesn’t mean we’re not suffering: “Though you may succeed in appearing ‘normal’ to the outside world, you know something that non-sufferers don’t: You know how anxious you feel” (p. 6).

People with OCD are not better or stronger than the general population. But we display strength that is worthy of mention.

So take a minute to delight in your strength, and make plans to use it for the good.

  If you have OCD, have you ever considered yourself brave and strong? If you know someone with OCD, have you ever witnessed those qualities in him or her? For all of you, how do you define strength?

OCD and choosing prayer and faith

I’ve written in this space before about my prayer life: how obsessive-compulsive disorder has led me to try to build an imaginary shield of protection around my loved ones and how I have struggled for years to get constant prayers and chants for forgiveness and help out of my head.

If I’m not very mindful and careful, my prayers morph into repetitions of words said until I feel “right.”

Whether they are prayers for others or prayers for myself, prayers said aloud, prayers said silently, prayers written down—they can all end up being a mess of words.

I pray, but I’m not communicating with God. I’m communicating with myself.

For all the pain I’ve had over religion and prayer, I still want to nurture the spiritual in my life. I want to be part of an organized religion. So I am making some choices.

Meditation is working better than prayer for me, and I will continue to practice.

And I’m making other choices.

Jonathan Grayson, Ph.D.

In his book Freedom from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A Personalized Recovery Program for Living with Uncertainty, Jonathan Grayson, Ph.D. wrote something that made me consider the whole way I approach prayer and faith: “Many of you have focused so much on following rules that you have forgotten to think about the nature of your faith.” (p. 222).

Grayson said people with religious obsessions believe in two Gods, “a loving and forgiving God who cares about their souls and well-being” and “a stern and exacting God who will damn them for the slightest misstep” (p. 222).

We have the choice of which God to believe in, Grayson said. Religion is full of guesswork, and people decide what to believe as a matter of blind faith: “Most people like to think of faith as a feeling that gives strength, but it can also simply be a decision you choose to follow” (p. 224).

My minister

That reminded me of something a former minister told me when several years ago I discussed with him my lack of faith and my trouble with praying. He told me not to focus on how I felt but on what I believed and to do things that could help me be closer to God, like having regular devotions.

There it is again

So I’m back to the same thing I’ve faced before with OCD and depression: I place too much importance on feelings and not enough on action.

My choices

I still have many reservations about prayer. But in addition to meditating, I am choosing to pray, not as I have in the past, not in the OCD way, but in a way that I am able to. I am choosing to pray to the God whom I choose to believe in: a loving and forgiving God.

I will never know in this life whether or not I am doing it “right.” I cannot be certain that I’m praying in the way I’m supposed to, if there is such a way. But I will take action to try prayer to better my life.

For the time being, that will probably be saying prayers that have already been written, like the St. Francis of Assisi prayer.

How do you nurture your spirituality? What choices have you made about spiritual practices? Are there any prayers that you particularly like?

Don't let anyone know: The stigma of OCD and other mental illnesses

By Georgia O'Keefe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Blue-green.jpg

Last week, I wrote about May being Mental Health Month and touched on the stigma that still surrounds mental health illnesses.

Readers commenting on that post also discussed the continuing stigma that can keep some people from seeking help for their illnesses.

I decided that I wanted to further explore that idea of stigma and especially how it related to obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Stigma about mental illness

What is stigma? According to The American Heritage Dictionary, stigma is “(a) mark or token of infamy, disgrace, or reproach.” So, in a way, to some people, there’s a disgrace associated with having a mental illness.

I certainly felt disgraced the first time I went to the office of my first psychiatrist. I was 26 years old and had been in therapy with a psychologist for a year or so. She wanted me to see a medical doctor for help with my depression and with the OCD that I had recently revealed to her.

I lived in a small college town then, and I remember being relieved that the psychiatrist’s office was in another town about 10 miles away. I hoped that would lessen the chance of someone I knew seeing me go into the office.

Because if others saw me go into a psychiatrist’s office, they might think I was crazy. They would certainly wonder what was wrong with me, what was it that I couldn’t handle like “normal” people could.

I remember even being embarrassed with the front counter staff in the office. They knew what their boss did. Did they think ill of me? Did they look down on me?

These were my thoughts that first time.

The Mayo Clinic has some helpful information on its website about the stigma surrounding mental health.

An article called “Mental health: Overcoming the stigma of mental illness,” by Mayo Clinic staff, states that other people’s “judgments almost always stem from a lack of understanding rather than information based on facts.”

Negative effects of stigma, according to the article, include a lack of understanding on the part of families, friends and colleagues; discrimination; a hard time finding housing; physical violence and harassment; trouble with health insurance not adequately covering care; and the belief that people with mental illnesses cannot be successful at certain things or get better.

Stigma about OCD

And then there’s the stigma of having OCD. It’s still easier for me to tell people I have depression than to tell them I have OCD. The symptoms of OCD can look strange.

It wasn’t easy for me to tell my first psychiatrist how I cleaned my bathroom compulsively, that I checked the stove for literally hours, that I couldn’t walk 10 feet without looking behind me to look for dangerous objects.

I was afraid of what she would think of me. I was afraid she would think I was a weird, crazy person who had brought all this on myself.

It’s still not easy to reveal my symptoms.

According to the International OCD Foundation’s “What You Need to Know About Obsessive Compulsive Disorder,” found on its website, some people with OCD hide their symptoms because of their fears of embarrassment or stigma. That’s one reason that it takes an average of 14 to 17 years from the time of symptom-onset for sufferers of OCD to receive proper treatment.

Fighting stigma

The advice that the Mayo Clinic provides for how to combat the stigma of mental illness apply well to the stigma about OCD, too.

That advice includes getting help for your illness, learning about your illness, getting support from people you trust, joining a support group, not equating yourself with your mental illness, getting help from school for your children who have mental illnesses, and speaking out about the stigma.

Two of those caught my attention in particular. One is the notion of equating yourself with your mental illness. The article reminds us that we are not our illness and suggests taking measures such as saying, “I have clinical depression,” instead of calling yourself depressed.

Ways to speak out against the stigma of mental illness include public speaking opportunities, writing letters to the editor and writing on the Internet.

Have you ever personally encountered the stigma of mental illnesses? Did the stigma cause you to delay seeking treatment?