OCD and cleaning off the table

This weekend I finished something that I’ve been working on periodically for months. I cleaned off the table in our dining area.

It had been literally piled up with mail and other paperwork—old bills, receipts, bank statements, health insurance statements, etc.

  I wrote about the table back in March. My therapist thought I was avoiding facing the clutter because of the anxiety involved in going through the paperwork. He was right.

Every time I worked on even just a little bit of the clutter, my anxiety would go up to about an 85 or 90 on the SUDs scale.

I was afraid of what I would find—an unpaid bill I had forgotten about, an important notice I had ignored.

And I didn’t want to deal with the decisions of what to do with the paperwork after I cleaned it up.

As I wrote in my March post, my therapist told me it was all about the OCD. It was about my scrupulosity.

So I continued to avoid cleaning up the pile.

I would throw away a piece of junk mail every now and then, but I avoided any deep or methodical cleaning. I just let the paper pile up even more.

The pile had been on the table for a few years. I had gotten into the habit of putting my mail on the table. After I opened it, I left it there.

  If someone was coming to the house, I could sweep it into presentable piles at one end of the table. I managed.

  But the anxiety of having the mess as well as the anxiety of not knowing exactly what was in the pile was always there, sometimes under the surface, sometimes front and center.

So what helped me to finally face the paper?

The approaching Christmas season helped. I wanted to put up a second, smaller tree and use different colors than we used on the main tree in the den. The table was a good place to put the tree.

But I think the lessons I’m learning as I work on my OCD have been the biggest help.

I’ve been learning that facing the fears usually has good results. I’ve been learning that nothing is gained by continual avoidance. I’ve been learning that any anxiety over facing a fear is usually short-lived, and it certainly doesn’t do irreparable harm.

So one evening last week I worked a bit on it. Then I saved the bulk for this past Saturday. I sat down with a trash bag and a couple of banker’s boxes and some file folders and went at it.

I was surprised at how much stuff I could just throw away, and how willing I was to throw the stuff away.

And I was surprised at how quickly the process went after I had a routine going. It took me about an hour to clear the table.

My SUDs score was probably at about a 70 when I started. It quickly dissipated as I finished up the job.

When I had the table completely cleared—that was a good feeling. Then I had a whole space to do with what I wanted. So I decorated the tree and put it on the table.

I don’t have a “before” photo to compare with the “after” photo. I was too embarrassed by how bad the table looked.

But the “after” picture, though a long time coming, is beautiful to me.

  How do you push through resistance to accomplish something that you’ve been putting off?

CBT Session #6: Facing the anxiety

A bit of spring: dogwood blossoms.

How wily are the ways of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

I had another cognitive behavioral therapy session today, and I left my therapist’s office with a new understanding of how subtle avoidance can be.

I have compulsive rituals that I perform to try to lessen the anxiety caused by obsessive thoughts. I also avoid doing certain things because of the anxiety caused by whatever it is that I’m avoiding.

As I wrote about two weeks ago, my therapist and I decided that I would work on clearing my clutter of papers.

I did one 15-minute session of clearing clutter two weeks ago, and I haven’t done any more work on it since then.

Let’s change course

Today, I decided I would tell my therapist that I wanted to change course. Several things fed into my decision.

·        I have been feeling a lot of anxiety lately, even waking up with it.

·        I have had no interest in continuing to clear the clutter.

·        I have felt overwhelmed by the fact that I’m trying to work on several things at once—my issues with clutter, with writing, with checking, with rituals that slow me down.

It would be better if I just focused on one OCD manifestation, I told him. I would work on checking.

Not so fast

He sat back in his chair and smiled a little.

“OK,” he said. “You want to focus on one thing, the checking. So what happens when you come in here next time and want to work on something else?”

I was taken aback. I wasn’t sure what he meant. Or, rather, I was afraid that I knew what he meant.

What he meant was that he believed I wanted to change course because I didn’t want to face the clutter. I didn’t want to face the anxiety of cleaning it up because it was not going to be easy.

It’s all about the OCD, he said. It was about my scrupulosity, my fear of finding something in the clutter of mail and papers that showed I had missed paying a bill, missed doing something that I was supposed to have done.

I immediately knew he was right. Apparently, I’m pretty good at finding ways to put off OCD issues that I don’t want to face.

Face the anxiety

My therapist said the only way I was going to get over this anxiety was to face it. The 15-minute rule wouldn’t work after all, because though I got anxious during the clutter session two weeks ago, I moved away from the anxiety after 15 minutes.

What I had to do, he said, was to keep on working on the clutter, even with high anxiety, until it started to go down on my 1 to 10 scale.

Focus on what I could control now. I could deal with future problems when they happened, he said.

So, here I go. I have to face the anxiety. I don’t want to. But to get well, I have to.

What about you? Do you practice avoidance? How do you face the anxiety?