Season’s Greetings

I’m sorry I was missing at the end of last week and didn’t post as I normally do on Thursday.

I have been having a bit of a hard time.

Physically, I haven’t been up to par.

For the newspaper I’ve been covering a lot of court recently, some very hard cases that make me think (for a while only) that there is no goodness in the world.

And I’ve been struggling with my decisions regarding my mother.

Late last week, as I drove back to Altavista from court in Rustburg, I wondered how Christmas and the other holidays this time of year can even occur when there is so much strife and unhappiness and despair in the world.

I still put a Christmas CD on in the car, though. And I heard these words from “Who Comes This Night,” a song written by Sally Stevens and Dave Grusin and sung by James Taylor on his album “James Taylor at Christmas”:

Who sends this song upon the air,

To ease the soul that’s aching?

To still the cry of deep despair

And heal the heart that’s breaking.

-

The light and the hope of the season aren’t just for those happily getting together with family, singing carols, opening presents, and eating big meals together.

The light and the hope are for those who feel lost, those who feel sad, those who are at the point where they feel nothing.

The light and the hope remind us of the good in the world. They are comfort to those who need it.

And we all need comfort sometimes.

May all of you who celebrate a holiday this time of year enjoy the season. And may all of you have joy and peace always.

I’ll be back next Monday, Dec. 29.

Protective factors and making it through life

My view from the front steps of my office building on a recent evening.

Do you ever wonder how you got from your childhood to where you are now in one piece?

I get emails from people who have found my blog and want to know more about how I deal with OCD and/or depression and anxiety.

I am not a medical expert or a therapist. I am a person who has mental illnesses. I try to share my experiences with different treatments and different ways that I have dealt with OCD, depression, and anxiety.

It still surprises me, though, that I seem like someone who has reached a place where I can be of help to anyone else. Like someone who has a good life in spite of having mental illnesses and setbacks along the way.

Believe me, I have not overcome all the obstacles that mental illnesses cause. I’m still trying to figure out who I am.

But I have managed to build a good life.

What helped me do that?

Despite some difficult times during my childhood and teen years, I had the benefit of protective factors.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines protective factors this way:

“Protective factors are individual or environmental characteristics, conditions, or behaviors that reduce the effects of stressful life events. These factors also increase an individual’s ability to avoid risks or hazards, and promote social and emotional competence to thrive in all aspects of life, now and in the future.” 

The CDC lists the protective factors of school connectedness, parent engagement in schools, and positive parenting practices. There are more, of course.

Recently, I’ve written about two parts of my life that I define as protective factors for me. I had people in my life—whether related to me by blood or not—who helped to nurture me and encourage me as a young person.

And I had books that taught me and inspired me.

Knowledge about protective factors comforts me.

As a young person, I had help in several forms that led me to eventually get treatment, begin thinking in different and healthier ways, and start living the life that I wanted to live.

All of that help didn’t have to come from the ones we think must provide it, our parents.

We all have protective factors that help counteract the bad times in life. We can celebrate and nurture those factors.

I wasn’t alone as a child. I’m not alone now.

And neither are you.

So how did I make it from childhood to where I am now in one piece? With a lot of help along the way.

What are some of the protective factors in your life?

A movie, hope, a soaring bird and joy

Larry and I saw the movie “Gravity” this weekend. This post is not a review of the movie, and I won’t include any spoilers for those of you who haven’t seen the movie but want to see it.

I will say that it profoundly affected both of us.

We talked about it later. I asked Larry what he thought the meaning of the movie was. He thought about it and said, “Don’t lose hope.”

I agreed.

And, I added, my favorite line was when Sandra Bullock’s character said something to the effect that she may live or she may die, but either way, it was going to be one hell of a ride.

Her statement was a strong one, especially since she had, up to that point in the movie, been hiding from life, not quite wanting to die, not quite wanting to live.

This movie reminded me that whatever life handed me, I wanted to live with hope and joy. To live fully and die gracefully.

So that’s the movie part of this post. The soaring bird? I saw him on Sunday. I went out into the yard to get some photos. I haven’t meandered around like that in nature since we lost Sam almost two weeks ago.

The temperature was perfect, the sky was blue, the sun was bright. We still have a lot of green left on the trees, but I saw some changes in the leaves.

When I take photos, I try to remind myself to look up, look down, turn around and look behind me—see the different perspectives.

I looked up and saw a large bird sailing through the sky.

I lost sight of it, but then when I was filling up the bird bath, a shadow crossed over me. I looked up and saw the bird again. Then another.

I thought I was seeing a pair of hawks, though I realized later they were vultures.

I snapped photo after photo. I walked around with my neck bent backwards, focused on the sky, trying to follow the lovely path of these birds.

The birds, the sky, the sun, the trees—they are all so much bigger than me. Nature is so much bigger than me. God is so much bigger than me.

It all pooled together: the movie, the hope, the bird, the joy.

I wanted to cry from that joy.

What is something that has given you joy lately? And if you’ve seen “Gravity,” what did you think of it?

Despair and an angel named Sharon

I cried at the bad news. I cried when there was no news. And finally, I cried at the good news.

I’ve cried a lot in the last two weeks.

Sometimes I couldn’t stop crying. The tears just poured out. And one day, the particularly bad day, I knew the tears were part of a larger problem.

I learned once again that physically, I have to be on antidepressants and on the right dose of antidepressants. My depression is a medical problem, an illness.

I wasn’t sure if I should share this story. I don’t want to appear weak. It’s not easy for me to admit how dark life can seem sometimes.

But this is a blog about my journey through life with mental illness. That journey sometimes turns dark. Without warning.

Part of what I’m here to say is that if you feel that darkness, you are not alone. You are not alone. And it can get better.

Over two weeks ago, on July 20, I dropped off the prescription for my antidepressant at the pharmacy. I had run out of refills, but my doctor had given me another prescription at my last visit.

The pharmacist tried to fill it but told me that my insurance company wouldn’t authorize payment for the prescription because of the dosage.

This was nothing new. Periodically my insurance company does this. I take a higher dose than the usual, so every so often, my doctor’s office has to talk with the insurance company and get approval. The only problem is I never know when this is going to happen.

The pharmacist said she would fax the doctor’s office the request for authorization. They wouldn’t get it until their office opened on Monday.

I was OK. The pharmacist gave me a few of the pills to last a few days so I wouldn’t go without while waiting.

By Wednesday, I hadn’t heard anything, so I called the doctor’s office. I was told they were waiting on the authorization.

I won’t bore you with all the details of what followed. In summary, the doctor’s office kept telling me the authorization hadn’t come through. The pharmacist gave me all the pills she could without filling the prescription. The price for the prescription without insurance was exorbitant.

I started taking half my dose to save pills.

I did all I could to hold on, to keep fulfilling my responsibilities, to interact with others as normally as possible.

I found out fairly quickly that half the dose of the medication was not doing the job. My anxiety was sky high. I’d become aware that I was clenching my hands in tight fists. I had a hard time focusing. I had trouble sleeping.

I was simultaneously so depressed that all I could think of was how hopeless my life was. I was sure my life was never going to get back on the right track. I didn’t want to live.

Last Friday morning, I had a panic attack.

I sat on the bed and sobbed. My chest and both arms hurt. The pain made me breathless. I remember thinking that perhaps I was having a heart attack. And I didn’t care.

By Monday afternoon, I decided to do something besides wait for others to fix my problem.

I decided to call the insurance company myself.

I talked with a woman named Sharon.

“We can fix this,” she said after hearing my story and looking at my record.

She called the pharmacy while I was on the phone, then came back on the line and told me again that she would fix it so I could get my prescription. She would call me back, hopefully that day.

“If you can take care of this, you will be my angel,” I said.

“Well, I’m going to be because I’m going to call you back today,” she said.

And she did. She fixed it. I picked up the prescription Monday night.

I learned a lot about self-advocacy during this episode. There’s a lot I want to say about that. But I’ll save that for another post.

For today, I’m just thankful for medication that keeps the scary depression and anxiety at bay. And I’m thankful for angels named Sharon.

Have you received help from any angels lately?

OCD and a sense of guilt

My father, Christmas Eve 1996.

He couldn’t speak anymore, but he could mouth words enough to be understood.

“Worried,” he said.

I stood by his bedside, looking down into his face. He stared back up at me.

“What are you worried about?” I asked.

“No food in . . . “ and he held up the fingers and thumb on one hand and one finger on the other hand to signify six. “. . . weeks.”

My father had gone into the hospital in May 1997, through the emergency room. He had uncontrollable vomiting. Nothing would stay down.

Tests showed that a flap in his stomach that was supposed to close after eating was remaining open. The food wasn’t processing through his intestines. It was coming back up.

The doctors thought it was likely caused by continued damage by strokes.

Some medication had worked for a short time in helping him keep food down. But eventually, it didn’t work. To get him some nourishment, the doctors had surgically inserted a feeding tube that bypassed his stomach.

He was in a nursing home because the level of care he needed just couldn’t be given to him at home.

But now in late June, he was back in the hospital because he was dehydrated. And he was looking to me for answers.

He never took his eyes off my face.

“Yes, it has been a long time. But we’re hoping that this feeding tube is temporary,” I said. “We’re hoping that you’ll be able to eat again, and you’ll be able to go home.”

I can hear my voice now, 16 years later. Cheery. Bright. Hopeful.

And I did have hope. I wasn’t trying to pass along false hope.

Daddy nodded his head and didn’t say anything else about it.

Back at the nursing home, his health continued to deteriorate.

He died on July 9, 1997.

I struggled with that conversation in the hospital for years.

Plain old-fashioned guilt would have carried me along just fine. But my OCD made it worse.

I obsessed over my words to him. What could I have said differently? How could I have said it differently? What could I have done differently? Had I not done enough?

After almost a lifetime of OCD compulsions to try to protect my family, had I ultimately failed and let my father die?

OCD wants you to feel guilty. It wants you to question yourself about things over which you have no control, over things about which there is no certainty.

It had an easy target in me.

But I outwitted OCD. I was already on medication to help it, but I did more. I learned much more about OCD than I ever thought there was to know, and I learned ways to work with it, to work around it. I followed self-help guidelines. I got therapy that targeted OCD.

I know now that I did the best I could. I shared with Daddy the hope I had. He was a smart man. He knew what was happening to his body. He wasn’t looking for me to give him a definitive answer. He wanted to talk with me and share his concerns.

And he wouldn’t want me to feel guilty.

Double rainbow

On a recent evening, as we were getting ready to leave the house, Larry mentioned that it had been misting rain. That wasn’t surprising—we’ve had a lot of rain this spring and early summer.

After we got in the car, he called for me to look and pointed at the sky.

There were rainbows in the sky, two of them.

I don’t remember ever seeing a double rainbow.

I got back out of the car to get some pictures.

The pictures aren’t great because I took them with my iPhone, not my camera. But if you look hard, you can see the second rainbow arcing over the first.

A little later, as we were driving down the street, we noticed a couple of woman stopped on the sidewalk, looking at the sky. Apparently we weren’t the only ones admiring the rainbows.

When I was a child in Sunday school, I was taught that a rainbow was a sign of God’s promise to never again destroy the earth with flood waters.

As an adult, I do link rainbows with hope.

But without any symbolism attached, rainbows are still beautiful and meaningful to me. It’s amazing to me what happens when light and water get together.

And it’s comforting to me to see nature at work, no matter what’s going on in my life.

Hope. Stability. Life. Some pretty good things to think about on a summer’s evening, wouldn’t you say?

What do you think about when you see a rainbow?

It’s worth saying again and again: You can get relief from OCD

If you have obsessive-compulsive disorder or think that you do, there’s something that I want you to know: you can get better. There are treatments available. You can get relief.

I’ve said that before. I hope it’s a belief that permeates my blog.

But it’s worth saying again. And again. As many times as it takes to make sure you know, deep down: you can get better.

Earlier this week, I wrote a post describing a day with OCD and other anxiety. The day I wrote about was stressful and full of anxiety, but it wasn’t the worst day I’ve ever had.

I started to think about those of you who have worse days than that quite often. And I felt compelled to write this post.

Before I got any treatment, before I even told anyone about my symptoms, OCD had come to rule my life.

I was in my 20s when I first got treatment for OCD.

Before then, I spent hours at a time scrubbing my bathroom over and over.

I checked my stove until the early morning hours to make sure it was turned off.

I couldn’t read a book because of reading OCD, which made life as a student very difficult.

Every time I walked anywhere outside, I slowed myself down by checking every stick and stone that looked like it might harm someone else.

I prayed compulsively for God’s forgiveness and worried about my eternal salvation.

My hands were dark red and incredibly dry from excessive hand washing.

My life was hell. I had no hope that I would get better. I didn’t want to live.

But a friend encouraged me to see a therapist by revealing to me that she was in therapy.

I started seeing a therapist who I learned to trust. She referred me to a psychiatrist, who diagnosed me with OCD and depression and started me on medication.

Through the years after that, I also learned new ways of dealing with OCD and my thoughts and actions by reading and researching OCD, from cognitive behavior therapy, from exposure and response prevention, by reaching out to others with OCD, from writing about OCD, from meditation and from learning more about myself.

I am better today, so much better than I was when I was first diagnosed more than 20 years ago. And I have hope that I will continue to get better and learn to live a life at peace with OCD.

Here are some resources to help you learn more about OCD and the treatments available:

*The International OCD Foundation

*National Institute of Mental Health

*Beyond OCD

*National Alliance on Mental Health

*Anxiety and Depression Association of America

Here are two books that especially helped me:

Brain Lock: Free Yourself from Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior. By Jeffrey M. Schwartz, MD, with Beverly Beyette.

Freedom from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A Personalized Recovery Program for Living with Uncertainty. By Jonathan Grayson, Ph.D.

Remember that you are not alone.

I encourage you to reach out and get help if you haven’t. I encourage you to keep on fighting to get better.

I encourage you to get some relief.

What are some things we can all do to encourage others who have mental illnesses?

Spirit of hope

As I write this Thursday night, it’s raining and cold outside. I just got home from work, and a hot shower has helped my chilled bones.

And I’m thinking about what this day has brought me.

This morning, my husband and I did our second stint of ringing the bells for the Salvation Army. But I didn’t think much about my OCD this time.

Instead, I enjoyed seeing people’s generosity. I enjoyed their friendliness in saying hello or Merry Christmas. I enjoyed seeing children coming up to slip their money into the slots of the bucket top.

This afternoon, as part of my job as a newspaper reporter, I interviewed an investigator with the sheriff’s office who is retiring after 30 years.

I listened to his stories of his time of service and was impressed by his commitment to the victims he encountered and their families, his commitment to giving them some kind of closure.

This evening, also as part of my job, I covered a vigil held to remember the victims of the Newtown, Connecticut shootings.

In the pouring rain, people huddled together under umbrellas, holding candles and praying and singing.

I saw a lot of hope today.

I saw hope for those in poverty, those who have been victims of crimes, those who are in need of comfort and peace.

I felt hope in my heart at a time when I needed it.

I saw and felt the spirit of hope move throughout this day.

May the spirit of hope move throughout our lives this season and always.

Have you seen any signs of hope lately?

Fighting hopelessness

Thank you for all your wonderful comments that you left on my last post. Words cannot adequately express how touched I was by all the good thoughts that you sent my way.

I am slowly coming out of the hopelessness I have been feeling, and I feel blessed for that.

My down period, I believe, came from a series of circumstances and my responses to them.

And I think it came in part from a change in medication. I think the change is ultimately good, but my body had to adjust to no longer receiving a medication it had been getting for at least two years.

One of the things I’ve done to try to help myself is to learn a little more about hopelessness.

I turned to The Cognitive Behavioral Workbook for Depression: A Step by Step Program, 2^nd Edition, by William J. Knaus, Ed.D.

He writes that in some instances, hopelessness is the reality. An example he gives is the fact that we all age. “But you don’t have to feel miserable about this reality. Even when one situation is hopeless, you can find other opportunities” (p. 144).

Hopelessness thinking is different from the real hopeless situations: “Hopelessness thinking includes overly generalized beliefs such as these: ‘My future looks dismal’; “Nothing will ever work out’; ‘Whatever I do will be futile’; ‘I will never get better’; ‘This is the way I am. I always feel miserable’” (p. 144).

As Knaus says, “unfortunate events happen, but the fatalistic resignation of hopelessness thinking is optional” (p. 145).

An example he gives is that someone may have lost his or her job, but that doesn’t mean he or she will never work again.

I appreciated being reminded that there are some hopeless situations in life. But how we react to them is so important. Giving in to hopelessness thinking is a choice. It’s a choice that’s difficult to pull out of, but it can be done.

One of the techniques Knaus gives for fighting hopelessness is what he calls the “prove it” technique. You write down your hopeless thoughts, give examples of such thoughts, and then write down alternatives.

I tried this exercise. Here’s one of my outcomes:

Hopeless thought: I’m never going to feel better; I’ll never be happy.

Example of this thought: I’ve felt bad for many years.

Alternative: I’ve felt good, too, and I can’t predict for sure that I’ll always feel bad.

And here’s another outcome:

Hopeless thought: I’ll never be able to do what I want.

Example of this thought: I’m 49 and still not doing what I want.

Alternative: That’s not true. I am doing many things that I want to do and that can grow.

This exercise helped me. Writing down my thoughts gave me something to look at and work with. And writing out my reasons for believing the hopeless thought made me see the problems with it. With the alternatives, I could argue with myself, show myself that the hopeless thought wasn’t true.

It’s more work to sit and write down my thoughts than to wallow in the hopeless thoughts, but it was worth it in my case. I began to feel like I had more control over how I felt and how I responded to things.

I plan to keep trying this exercise when I get caught up in the hopelessness thinking.

So, dear readers, I feel like I am on my way back. Thank you again for your support and caring.

Have you ever worked on negative thinking patterns in a systematic way? If so, what did you do? Does it help you to write out your thoughts?

Will God zap me if I'm too happy?

I have been feeling a lot less depressed lately. I have more energy. I don’t want to sleep as much. I have a more positive attitude. I’m able to accomplish more. I laugh more. I feel more capable of handling personal interactions.

I will never know exactly what is causing me to feel better. Most likely, it is a combination of things. My doctor recently adjusted my medication, and I’ve been in CBASP (Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy) treatment weekly for a while.

I am happy and grateful that the depression has lifted as much as it has. I am hopeful. Life is good.

So what is my concern? That it won’t last.

Why I am afraid

During one of our sessions, my therapist talked about the associations our brains make and the way we can end up with beliefs such as, “If I’m too happy, God will zap me.”

I’ve written about the many health issues my family members had as I was growing up.

When I was a child, I thought that God would make me sick when I became an adult. I wasn’t born with physical handicaps like one of my brothers, and I didn’t have the other health problems he and the rest of my family had.

I thought I would get my share of the sickness when I grew up.

Why did I believe that?

I would guess that it stems first from feeling helpless about my circumstances. I could not keep my brother or other family members from getting sick and going into the hospital. I could not make everything OK.

I also felt a lot of guilt as a child, a result of my relationship with my parents, especially with my mother, which I’ve written about before.

My sense of guilt grew as my obsessive compulsive disorder developed and got worse, and my religious scrupulosity led me to pray compulsively for the safety and health of my family. If someone got sick, then, I reasoned, my prayers hadn’t worked because they hadn’t been done right, or because I had sin between God and me.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I started to believe that I deserved the illnesses that I did get, the OCD and depression.

And if I deserved them, then any improvement would be just a mirage, something that would disappear as soon as I started believing in it too much.

How I’m going to handle it

I don’t want to feel this way. I don’t want to expect to fall back into depression. I don’t want to miss the improvement because I’m paying too much attention to the possibility of it ending.

And I’m aware that down times will still come around.

I’ve decided to be proactive about this.

*I try to be grateful, mindfully appreciative, that I am doing better.

*I am continuing to do the things that seem to be helping me: taking my medication as directed and going to therapy.

*I know I can continue to develop practical skills to handle life’s problems better, to avoid a sense of helplessness.

*I try to cultivate an active sense of hope.

I don’t believe that other people “deserve what they get.” They don’t deserve to be sick, physically or mentally.

I need to keep reminding myself that I don’t deserve to be sick either.

Have you ever been afraid that improvements in your health and life wouldn’t last? How did you handle the fear?

OCD and depression: starting on a new path

Is this one step forward and two steps back?

That’s what I was thinking as I left my therapist’s office yesterday evening.

Today I considered the possibility that it was a leap to a new path.

I will be starting a new course of therapy tomorrow, one that will focus not on obsessive-compulsive disorder, but on another problem that has accompanied me for most of my life: depression.

I have written about my battle with depression before, but in my therapy and my own work with exposures, I’ve been focusing on improving my OCD symptoms. The OCD is getting in the way of my living a full life.

But depression is getting in the way of the OCD therapy.

My therapist is very perceptive. I wrote about how he called me out on my avoidance of the paper pile.

Yesterday, he cut to the heart of things again.

He always begins a session by asking me an open question like, “So, how are things going?”

I talked about what I had done and hadn’t done and how overwhelmed I felt. The words kept coming. And then I started crying.

He reminded me of our discussion in the past where he said other things like anxiety and “stuffed” anger and emotions can feed OCD.

He believes it’s chronic depression that is feeding the OCD, and as long as I don’t deal with that, I won’t get very far with the OCD therapy.

I knew he was right. I knew intuitively, right away, that he was right.

Chronic depression, especially when it’s early-onset, which mine was, is particularly hard to treat. Medication has helped me tremendously, but some people have drug-resistant depression. I am, my therapist said, one of those people.

Though I was never diagnosed as a child, I probably suffered from dysthymia, which Medline Plus defines as “a chronic type of depression in which a person’s moods are regularly low.”

My therapist said in those with chronic depression, the more severe depression episodes improve only so much—to that same low level.

He said the best therapy for chronic depression is called Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy, or CBASP.

He wrote it out for me, and I focused on one word: psychotherapy.

I’ve been through talk therapy before, and it was helpful, but it was also a meandering, nebulous experience with no end in sight.

But my therapist said CBASP is a very active and practical type of therapy. The treatment usually lasts approximately 26 weeks, but it could go faster for me, he said.

CBASP can put people into remission from their depression.

I’ll always be on medication, but the medicine provides a floor for me, he said, that enables me to do other therapy more effectively.

I’ll still work on the OCD, but we won’t spend time in our therapy sessions on it while I’m doing the CBASP.

I feel like I’m starting over. I’m almost 49 years old, and I still have to work on depression. But I could also experience remission for the first time in my life.

Those are the thoughts I’ve been having today and the hope I’m clinging to. Remission. An ebbing away of the depression that causes me to feel hopeless, helpless, fatigued and irritable. Hopeless and helpless.

I imagine the depression as a dark knot down inside me, surrounded by the more visible OCD and anxiety. Getting that knot to come loose and work itself through the OCD and anxiety is my goal.

Here I go: another therapy, another path, a new hope.

OCD is hard

I’ve been thinking about what it’s like to have obsessive-compulsive disorder.

How I experience OCD now is different from how I experienced it when I was child, teenager and young adult.

If I compare my life now to how it was when I was in my 20s, I can say with no doubt that things are better now. I cope better. I am able to turn away from the compulsive urges much more easily. I have tools in my toolbox to fight it.

On this blog, I write mostly about what it’s like for me now to have OCD. I continue to have problems with obsessions and compulsions. I am still discovering ways that OCD works itself into my life. My general anxiety and depression can still throw me to the floor and make me think I’ve never moved forward.

But I have moved forward. With medication, cognitive behavioral therapy and personal lifestyle changes, all ongoing, I am moving forward. I am grateful for that.

I know many others are suffering in the depths of OCD, where they are exhausted and in despair. I wish I could wave a wand and take away all their pain.

Because I know how hard it is. That is something I will never forget, no matter how much my own OCD and depression improve.

I’ve had the chapped and discolored hands and wrists from having them in water and strong cleaners much of the day.

  I have stood in front of my stove for hours, looking at the knobs from every angle, touching the top over and over, checking for heat, while I tried to reassure myself that the stove was off.

  I have cleaned the bathroom using bottles of disinfect at a time, then made up excuses—lied—to try to keep others from using it.

  I have driven in circles, back and forth on the street, looking for bodies that I may have run over.

  I have picked up sticks and rocks and anything that looked dangerous as I tried to walk from one place to another, backtracking and bending over to examine something that looked like a weed but might be a wire that could stick someone in the foot.

  I have written research papers that said nothing because I was so afraid of plagiarizing.

  I have failed to finish so many books because I couldn’t turn a page until I’d read it multiple times, making sure I’d really read it.

  I have prayed and chanted continuously, thinking I was somehow responsible for keeping everyone safe by doing so.

  I have confessed my sins, or what might possibly be sins, to anyone who would listen.

I’ve prayed for God to just let me die because I didn’t think I could take one more minute of the pain.

Somewhere inside me was a little hope. It must have been there, even though I couldn’t feel it, because somehow I didn’t give up.

It has taken years for me to reach a point where obsessions and compulsions don’t occupy every waking moment. I am getting better faster now, I believe, because I am doing cognitive behavioral therapy, something I didn’t think I needed before.

OCD will always be with me. It will always be with you, too, if you have it.

Hope will get us through, though. No matter how tiny that hope is, even if it’s just a small thought that there must be something better than this. Even if all the hope you have is the knowledge that someone else got better.

I got better. I’m getting better. And you can too.

Spreading hope

This week, Becky Green Aaronson of the blog “The Art of an Improbable Life” nominated me for the HUG (Hope Unites Globally) Award.

I was very honored to be nominated for such an award, and also very honored to be nominated by such a wonderful writer who herself spreads hope and grace with her writing.

The HUG Award was created by Connie Wayne of “A Hope for Today.” A complete description of the award can be found here.

The main guiding principal behind my work on this blog is to encourage hope in others. I want others who suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression and anxiety to know that help is available and they are not alone, and, also, that things will get better.

I have been blessed to connect with so many other bloggers who have inspired hope in me.

On her blog, Becky Green Aaronson gives “a head spinning look at the improbable life my husband and I have shared in the world of art, photography, writing, and parenthood.”

Illustrated with beautiful photographs, Becky writes about art, being a parent, raising money for the fight against cancer, writing, running, stories of her husband’s experiences as an international photojournalist and a multitude of other things.

She is full of optimism and hope, and I read her blog because I know I’m going to learn a little more about the world and be inspired to do my part in making it better.

My nominees

One of the guidelines for nominees for the HUG Award is to pass it on to others.

Before I started blogging, and when I first began blogging back in November 2011, I started reading several blogs that gave me hope.

I learned that I had more work to do in my own battle with OCD and depression, but I knew that these bloggers would support me in my efforts and provide not only valuable information to me, but hope.

These were the first blogs I read by people who were writing about OCD, and I was amazed by their honesty and their triumphs over obstacles.

They are my nominees for the HUG Award:

Elizabeth of “On My Own.” Elizabeth’s blog is beautiful to look at and beautiful to read. She writes about her life with such warmth and hope, and she is generous in her comments to others.

Ann of “The Beat OCD Blog.” Ann has worked hard in her own battle with OCD, and her stories show others that they can achieve success too.

Sunny of “71 degrees & Sunny: One Christian’s Odyssey through Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.” Sunny writes with a heart turned towards helping others. We started blogging almost the same day.

Lolly of “Lolly’s Hope.” Lolly lives a life of hope and writes about it in a way that inspires others.

Janet of “ocdtalk.” Janet’s son has OCD, and she is working to educate others about the mental disorder.

Karin of “My Journey Thru (& hopefully out of) OCD.” Karin uses her wonderful sense of humor when she writes about her own experiences with OCD.

  “Pure O Canuck.” POC has a lot of insight into her own journey with OCD and shares that with her readers.

   One Anxious Gal of “Light One Candle.” One Anxious Gal writes with honesty and humor.

   Kat of “Keeping in the Sunlight.” Kat has wonderful insight and writes about the practical ways she deals with OCD.

   Please check out Becky’s blog and the blogs of my nominees so you can experience their hope.

Thinking about hope

“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: You don’t give up.”

-Anne Lamott

Conscientious

On her blog “Into My Own,” Elizabeth recently wrote about her experiences in school as a student with obsessive-compulsive disorder, and she reminded me of my own experiences.

There’s a word that appeared multiple times on my report cards as I went through school: conscientious.

“Tina is very conscientious with her work,” my teachers would write.

And I was. I always wanted to do well in school. I loved school for the most part. I was the type of student who got excited when I picked up my textbooks for the new school year, and read as much as possible in them before classes even started.

I loved to learn, and I did very well in school. I realize now that it became part of my identity. Tina was the smart girl. Tina got good grades. Tina was conscientious.

My OCD symptoms started when I was a child. I was worried about being “saved” at church, washed my hands compulsively, counted compulsively and confessed my sins, real and imagined, to my mother. But my OCD symptoms didn’t affect my schoolwork at first.

That changed when I entered seventh grade.

That year my conscientiousness became extreme. I read and reread passages in assigned books, waiting until I felt like I’d thoroughly read the words before moving on to the next paragraph or page.

Obviously, it took me longer than usual, and longer than necessary for a student of my abilities, to finish reading assignments.

I also became very slow in completing my assignments, reviewing my work repeatedly and beyond necessity to make sure everything was correct.

The curriculum the school used incorporated self-grading. In other words, I had to check my own work against the answer books.

This slowed me down even more as I struggled to make sure that I really did have the right answer. If I made a mistake and counted an answer correct when it wasn’t, then I would be cheating.

And if there was any hint of discrepancy between the answer book and my work, I sought out my teacher for reassurance, over and over.

So I became the problem student. My parents and my teachers thought that I was being contrary, deliberately working slowly or not at all.

I didn’t know how to explain my fears, or even that I might have an explanation to give them. I agreed with them: I must not be trying hard enough, and I must be bad.

I was no less frustrated than my parents were. I knew that they couldn’t understand why I just didn’t read the book, or finish my schoolwork. I couldn’t understand either.

I didn’t know why, if I didn’t reread a paragraph at least once, I felt anxious and guilty. I fidgeted or daydreamed, trying to avoid the torture of never being sure that I had “really” read what I was obliged to read because it was a school assignment.

I also developed obsessions regarding writing. In high school, when I began writing research papers, I became obsessed with the possibility that I would plagiarize.

My writing became painfully stilted as I carefully and sometimes awkwardly worded sentences in response to my fear of not giving proper due to my sources.

These reading and writing symptoms have remained in varying degrees since then, and I still struggle with them.

These symptoms break my heart. They get at the heart of who I am and what I love: reading and writing.

I have been studying “Brain Lock,” by Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz. Reattribution and refocusing make sense to me. I want to use the steps to deal with my OCD symptoms.

But I think deep down I’ve been thinking they would be most helpful with my contamination and checking issues.

This evening, as I read about the importance of refocusing, one of the patient examples was about a person who had issues with reading.

I really considered for the first time that the reattribution and refocusing of the CBT could be used for my reading and writing. I felt more hope than I had been feeling.

I’m determined. It won’t be easy, but I want to get back to a healthy conscientiousness and a full enjoyment of the things I love.