Top 5 things that have helped my OCD

I have put together a list of things that have helped me most with my obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Other things have been of help to me, including meditation. But the following list includes what has been most important.

Not all of these things are for everyone. For example, I realize that medication is not the right choice for everyone. But these are the things that worked for me.

Once I made the list, I couldn’t rank them. I couldn’t say for sure that one was more important than another in helping me control and live with the obsessions and compulsions. So here’s my list, in no particular order.

Medication

Medication changed my OCD from being debilitating. With medication, I was able to consider that there might be ways to live with this disorder.

I have had to try different medications through the years, mostly because of my co-morbid diagnosis of depression. It’s not an easy thing, to change medications, to wait for them to work, or not work.

But it has been worth it to be able to gain some distance from an all-consuming OCD to an OCD that I can work with.

I’ve written more about my medication journey here.

Therapy

I’ve had talk therapy through the years, but the therapy that has helped me the most has been the practical cognitive behavioral therapy that I’ve had this year.

While it’s not been the formal exposure and response prevention therapy, it included exposures and the whole philosophy of learning to tolerate the anxiety and moving beyond it. The exposures my therapist led me in were helpful and instructive.

While the CBT got waylaid because of other therapy needed for my depression, I look forward to getting back to it. In the meantime, I’ve been doing some of my own exposures.

Brain Lock

I first read Brain Lock: Free Yourself from Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior-A Four-Step Self-Treatment Method to Change Your Brain Chemistry, by Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz with Beverly Beyette, in the 1990s, and I worked on its principles on my own with some success.

The book taught me to walk away from compulsions even though I was feeling intense anxiety, and I learned that the anxiety eventually died down.

I wrote in detail about how I use “Brain Lock” in this post.

Adopting a cat

Adopting Waddles in 2000 changed my life in many ways. One of the ways was to give me almost constant exposures for my contamination OCD and my hyper-responsibility OCD, though I would not have known to call them exposures.

I learned to live with an animal and clean up messes without freaking out. I learned the joy of responsibility, which began to outweigh my fears of responsibility.

Learning that I wasn’t alone

From finding out a person I really respected and liked had OCD to starting a blog and connecting online with others who have OCD, finding out I wasn’t alone in my suffering has been a big component of my OCD improvement.

What has helped you the most in your battles with OCD and other anxiety?

OCD and touching

Note: My blogging friend Rebecca Lane Beittel recently did a week’s worth of posts on her blog “Rebecca of Tomorrow” using the five senses. She invited readers to consider the examples of sounds, tastes, textures, etc. that she provided and choose their favorites.

With a nod and thanks to Rebecca, I’m using the theme of the five senses to connect my five posts this week. With each day’s topic, I’ll focus on one of the senses. Today’s is touch.

When I was in high school, I loved basketball. I loved watching college basketball on TV and dreamed of the day when I would be attending the University of Virginia and would be able to see games in person at University Hall.

In high school, I played basketball for two seasons, my ninth and tenth grades. I was not a good player. I spent a lot of time warming the bench.

That said, I did practice, even without a ball. Our house had a long hallway that went almost the entire length of the house and ended in the kitchen. I’d pretend to be dribbling down the hall (real balls not allowed) and then I’d do a lay-up at the doorway into the kitchen.

What I was really doing was finding a new way to cover up a habit I had. I had to touch the top of the doorframe before I could enter the kitchen.

My “lay-up” was a chance to tap the top of the doorframe.

I don’t remember when I started the tapping, and I didn’t have a particular harm obsession connected with it. In other words, I didn’t think anything specific would happen if I didn’t tap the doorframe. But I didn’t feel “right” and felt anxious if I didn’t do it.

It eventually spread to all the doors within the house—I had to tap the top of the doorframe once before entering a room.

The doorframe touching stopping mostly after I started taking medication for the OCD, but I think ERP would definitely work with that, too.

The odd thing is that if I do happen to touch the top of the doorframe now—for example, I may be standing and talking with my husband and grab the frame with my hands over my head—I can see how easy it would be to get back to the compulsion. So I try not to touch it.

My checking compulsions also involve some touching. At times, I become obsessed with whether or not the light switch is “really” turned off. I fear that I’ll leave it halfway between on and off and it will cause an electrical short and a fire will erupt.

I have to use one finger, usually the forefinger of my right hand, to turn off a light switch. It has to feel a certain way—not too light of a touch and not too heavy—or I have to turn the switch back on and off. There is no set number of times I have to do this. I have to do it until the light switch feels off in the “right” way.

I have to pull out the “Brain Lock” and exposure and response prevention tools to fight this light switch compulsion. I have to make myself turn the switch off once and then walk away and concentrate on something else. It’s hard, but not impossible.

Do you have any touching OCD symptoms? If so, what are they and how do you manage them?

Help your OCD by acting differently

“You have to be willing to act differently than how you feel.”

When my therapist said that to me during a recent session, I knew he had spoken wisdom to me and that I was going to get a lot of help from those words.

With obsessive compulsive disorder, I often feel uncertain, guilty, afraid and hopeless. I’m not always steeped in those feelings, but I often have them.

When I’m feeling like that, I don’t always act in ways that move me towards improvement in OCD.

For example, if I’m feeling uncertain, it’s easy to give in to a compulsive urge to check to make sure the lights are out in the basement.

If I’m feeling afraid, I may check the coffee maker again and again to ensure that it’s unplugged.

If I’m feeling hopeless, I’m close to giving up on resisting compulsive urges.

To act differently than how I feel is to refuse to check the lights again. It’s to walk away from the coffee maker. It’s to fight a compulsive urge one more time.

Those actions I take are going to be what changes me and improves my OCD.

Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz speaks of this when he discusses refocusing in “Brain Lock.”

I recently wrote about the four steps that Schwartz outlines and explains in his book.

After relabeling and reattributing the OCD obsessions and compulsions, the next step is to refocus: “You walk away from the sink without washing your hands and do something worthwhile that makes you happy. You do not attempt to make the OCD go away through some kind of magical understanding of what it is and what it means (p. 72).

Schwartz also writes the following: “The key to Refocusing is to realize that you must go on to another behavior even though the OCD thought or feeling is still there. You’re not going to let those thoughts or feelings determine what you do (p. 73).

Those words were life changing the first time I read them, and they still are. For me, they mean that I don’t have to be a victim to how I feel.

My therapist’s words reminded me of how important actions are.

Acting differently from how I feel is not always easy. Schwartz incorporates the idea of a 15-minute rule in the refocusing step: “The idea is to delay your response to an obsessive thought or to your urge to perform a compulsive behavior by letting some time elapse—preferably at least 15 minutes—before you even consider acting on the urge or thought (p. 212).

At first it might be necessary to set smaller time limits, Schwartz said, but you shouldn’t give in to the compulsion unless some time has gone by.

The time should be spent in doing “any pleasant, constructive behavior,” and after the 15 minutes have ended, “reassess the urge. Ask yourself if there’s been any change in intensity and make note of any change. Even the smallest decrease may give you the courage to wait longer. You will be learning that the longer you wait, the more the urge will change” (p. 212-213).

Actions are what count, Schwartz said.

Some might call this “fake it until you make it.” Do you ever do that? What kind of results have you had?

How I use "Brain Lock" to fight my OCD

   I’ve turned off the shower, but I want to push on the water turn-off again to make sure it’s off.

I’ve turned off the light in the laundry area, but I want to turn around and check and make sure it’s off.

I’ve turned off the ceiling fan, but I want to check one more time to make sure the blades aren’t moving anymore.

Are those blades moving?

I want to pray again for forgiveness, for the safety of Larry and the cats and my relatives and the whole world. And again. And again.

I want to drive back and make sure the pothole in the parking lot that I see everyday really isn’t a person that I just hit with my car.

The role of “Brain Lock”

These all are daily, or almost daily, compulsions that I feel the urge to do. Slowly, but surely, I’m following through with the urge to do the compulsions less and less.

The steps that Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz outlines in his book “Brain Lock: Free Yourself from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder” is helping me to do that.

When I started cognitive behavioral therapy, I wrote about how my therapist uses a form of the four steps Schwartz advocates in fighting OCD: Relabel, reattribute, refocus and revalue.

Basically, to relabel is to recognize obsessions and compulsions and call them what they are, OCD.

To reattribute is to name the cause of the obsessions and compulsions: a medical condition.

To refocus is to do something else instead of giving in to the compulsion. It’s learning to shift the attention elsewhere and tolerate the anxiety until it goes down on its own, without doing the compulsion.

To revalue is to place a lower value on the obsessions and compulsions because you know what is causing them.

My therapist taught me to combine relabeling and reattributing and then move on to refocusing.

How I do it

Here’s an example of how I do that.



Is the water turned off?

   After my shower, I turn off the faucet. I want to keep pushing on the turn-off handle. I’m afraid if I keep doing that, though, that I’ll break it. And it’s unnecessary and takes up time. Most importantly, it’s giving in to a compulsive urge.

So after I turn it off, I make myself get out of the shower. I feel some anxiety because I am afraid it’s not turned off properly. I want to reach back and push it one more time. Instead, I focus on drying off and then start blow-drying my hair or getting dressed.

Another example: I turn off the light in the laundry area in the basement. I see the darkness. I turn around and start walking up the basement steps. I really want to turn back and look again. I feel anxious, and I think I won’t be able to relax or forget the light unless I do.

But I keep moving and don’t allow myself to look back. I get to the top of the steps, turn off another light and close the basement door behind me. Then I go off to do something else.

What I’ve learned

What I’ve discovered is that the anxiety doesn’t last very long and I actually forget about the obsession pretty quickly.

If I do give in and perform the compulsion, I still try to tell myself that it was the OCD that wanted me to do it, not me. That’s something that Schwartz recommends.

If I give in to the compulsive urge, I have also discovered that I get more anxious and it’s harder to turn away from it. It’s just not good for me to give in.

I’ve learned the following:

*I can tolerate more anxiety than I thought I could.

*Uncertainty is not fatal.

*I don’t have to have an in-depth thought session on every obsession and compulsive urge. I don’t have to resolve anything about it. I just have to move on.

*The anxiety will eventually go away if I don’t perform the compulsion.

*Focusing on something else is the key to my forgetting about the obsessions and compulsions.

*It’s not the end of the world if I give in and do a compulsion. It just means that I will learn better for the next test.

Have you tried the “Brain Lock” steps? If so, how did it go? How have you learned to tolerate and deal with anxiety that is a part of everyone’s life?

Starting to believe in new possibilities

This has been a weekend where things I’ve experienced and things I’ve read have given me new hope and a new sense of positive possibilities.

As I wrote about in my last post, my therapist gave me my first cognitive behavioral therapy assignment on Friday. It was to sit down at my computer at 8 a.m. yesterday and write for a cumulative 30 minutes. I was not allowed to edit or check my writing.

I did it. I sat down at 8 and started writing. A lot of it was freewriting, where I just typed without thinking. Out of that grew some ideas for my memoir, things that I will explore more in the future.

I took two minutes to operate my coffee machine and make myself a cup of tea, so I actually stopped writing at 8:32.

It was strange sitting down to write with no real preparation or rituals. I literally got out of bed a little before 8, went to the bathroom, started the coffee machine, started up the computer, and started writing.

It was hard not to stop and make corrections or read over what I had written. Usually I stop frequently and read over what I’ve written so far, making changes as I go along.

This exercise was supposed to push through the avoidance that I bring to my writing.

I rated my anxiety at a 6 or 7 during the exercise. Some of it was related to the non-editing; some of it seemed more generalized.

I rated my anxiety at a 7 when I was done. After that, for the next two hours, it was not more than a 3 or 4.

It wasn’t so hard, so I’m thinking that maybe it wasn’t hard enough. But I sure did feel good after it was over. Part of that came from the fact that I got myself out of bed to do it. And I realized that I could keep on doing it when I wanted and deal with the anxiety as it came.

I plan to set a schedule for doing my own writing. I know sometimes those of us with OCD get wrapped up in schedules so much that we tend to ritualize it too much. But I believe I need the self-discipline. And I am starting to believe what my therapist told me on Friday: motivation comes after action, not before it.

I read a lot yesterday and today. I almost finished “Brain Lock” today, and the chapters on revaluing, on the four steps and freedom and on OCD and family really hit home with me.

I gained a new understanding about the freedom to move forward that treatment can bring me as I get better. I began to think about how I can begin to accomplish so much more and be a person who reaches out and helps others more rather than one who sometimes hides from connections and responsibilities.

I’ll explore these thoughts in future posts.

And one more thing happened this weekend that gave me hope.

Let me preface this by saying that I’m not trying to toot my own horn. I want to share how I was given a whole new perspective on my work.

A while back, I wrote a post about my job and how I feared it wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing. I have been feeling bored and at loose ends on the job, and I hate feeling like that. I need to feel that I’m making a positive difference.

On Friday, I received an email from one of the officials that I often turn to as a source for my stories covering county government. It was a surprise, because this official is not a “touchy-feely” kind of person.

He told me he thought I did an excellent job on an article I wrote about the county’s budget concerns for this week’s paper. He wrote that I had “the ability to report very complex issues in an understandable manner.” And he noted “the community service that you provide.”

I almost wept when I read it. Maybe I am doing what I’m supposed to be doing by continuing to work for the newspaper. Maybe I am providing a service. Maybe my work has meaning. Maybe all of my writing can have meaning and help others.

The possibilities, I think, are endless.

Start of a worthwhile journey

I had my first session with the psychologist today who will be leading me in cognitive behavioral therapy.

I won’t be doing exposure response and prevention therapy after all. Rather, the doctor will be providing what he referred to as the “third wave” of CBT. It’s the therapy Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz outlines in his book “Brain Lock.”

Let me say first of all that I felt comfortable with the doctor and believe we can work well together. He is a clinical psychologist who is very familiar with OCD. He has written about religiosity in OCD in particular.

He asked me a lot of questions, and we talked about what areas of OCD were affecting my life the most.

Just talking out loud about what I obsess about, what I worry about, and how I live my life was revealing to me.

I talked about the “what ifs” that I fear with writing, with cleaning, with checking. I talked about the avoidance and procrastination that I practice in order to avoid the anxiety that writing and cleaning stimulates in me. I also told him about my religious doubting.

He explained how we would work on a focused area that was causing me, on a scale of one to 10, about a six or seven anxiety level. (Based on one being no anxiety and 10 being the worst ever.)

Bringing that the level of anxiety down for that area would in turn help the other areas too.

He said it sounded like I had some social anxiety in addition to the OCD and generalized anxiety. That and the OCD have isolated me in a lot of ways.

At our next visit, in two weeks, we’ll prioritize what I aspects of OCD I want to work on the most. I already know it will be the writing and the cleaning.

The treatment usually runs from eight to 16 sessions. I like having an end in sight.

Meanwhile, my doctor suggested I read the first couple of chapters of Schwartz’s book. He said that when Schwartz came out with his book, it was rather radical because it wasn’t thought that the brain could be changed. That’s why he made his case in such a “long winded” manner, my doctor said. Now, his ideas don’t seem so radical.

I’m still getting my head around today’s session. I will write more specifically about things as time goes on.

I feel like I’m starting a worthwhile journey.