Finally

A photo of Broad Street in Altavista. I think I took this on a Sunday a couple of years ago. I was standing at the library looking down the street. English Park is in the distance, as is the Staunton River. To get to Town Hall, where I'll be working, you would turn left at that first traffic light in the photo.

I can finally share some news with you.

On Jan. 6, I applied for a job with the town of Altavista. It’s a part-time position as an economic development assistant that includes coordinating the Main Street Program.

Last Wednesday, I finally got a formal offer.

I will coordinate a nonprofit group that carries out the concepts of the VirginiaMain Street Program. I will also assist the town’s economic developer in meeting the needs of existing businesses and helping to bring new businesses in. The economic developer wants me to work specifically with younger, creative entrepreneurs.

I’m excited and nervous. I am looking forward to a new challenge, learning new things, getting training, and being in a position to serve and encourage others.

I will work fewer hours and far more regular hours than my current job with the paper, but I will make significantly more in salary.

So why am I nervous? Change is unsettling to all of us, and it tends to raise my anxiety level. I also have the new-job-worries: Will I be able to learn? Will I do a good job?

I’ve always managed in the past, and when I remember that, I have more confidence in my ability to do another job.

Another worry has been that I’m leaving a job where I (finally) was able to write for a living.

What I found was that while my writing improved and I learned to write faster, I wasn’t always writing what I wanted to—that just wasn’t my job. And writing all day/all week took a certain kind of energy out of me.

I am not leaving my writing behind. I am a writer at heart. I hope to actually start writing more of what speaks to me and I’m passionate about. And the new job will afford me the opportunity to use some of my other skills.

My last day with the paper will be April 8 and my first day on the new job will be April 13. It will be a busy time at the paper, trying to finish things up and leave information behind that will help my co-workers.

I wish I could say my worrying of the last three months is over. But I complicated things by applying for another job while I was waiting to hear about the town job. I’ve had two interviews and am waiting to hear about it. So I may be faced with another decision soon.

To choose between two good job opportunities is not easy for me. In true OCD fashion, I tend to want to find the “perfect” answer, make the “right” choice. Of course, we never know at the time of making a decision whether or not it is the right choice. And there is no perfect answer.

For now, I’m going to enjoy what I do have: an upcoming new job and a new adventure.

Love and saying no

“One of these days, I’m going to pack up my bags and leave. And then you’ll find out what it is to not have me around.”

I heard my mother yell those and similar words many times when I was a child. Usually it was during a tirade when she was complaining about how hard she worked and how little she was appreciated.

The words scared me. I pictured my mother packing suitcases—it was always two suitcases in my imagination—and leaving the house, leaving me behind.

What would I do without my mother?

It didn’t matter what kind of mother she was. I needed my mother, and I didn’t want her to leave.

I have been thinking about her words a lot over the past couple of weeks. Maybe they’ve been on my mind because her suicide attempt seemed like the ultimate threat. Perhaps that’s not a fair assessment, but that’s the connection I’ve made.

I told you in my last post that some wise people have helped me. One of those is my minister.

A few days after my mother was taken to the hospital, I met with him. I wanted to get feedback on my reaction to what she had done. I wanted to talk about the guilt that I felt because of all the anger and hate I felt, not just over the recent incident, but over a lifetime of pain.

During our conversation, I made the comment that I knew my feelings were wrong, that the Jesus of my faith tradition taught that we should love one another.

My minister said he couldn’t say what love was.

But he could say that love was not always saying yes. Sometimes, he said, love was saying no. Love didn’t mean that we had to put up with whatever someone did.

Those words helped me tremendously.

I have begun to see that loving my mother doesn’t mean that I have to place myself in circumstances where I am open to abuse.

I love my mother because that is what I needed to do as a child: bond with and love my mother.

She is my mother. She is not evil. She is not a monster.

But she has never acknowledged the truth about our past, nor does she admit that there’s anything wrong with the continuing put-downs, manipulations, and lies.

I was hoping that she would finally get the help that she needed. But she is choosing not to.

I rarely saw her or talked with her on the phone before her actions almost two weeks ago. I was trying to resolve my sense of guilt even then.

Now, I have a sense of resolution.

I cannot be around my mother, at least not now. I cannot talk to her or see her. I cannot have a relationship with her.

I don’t wish her harm. I hope she has a good life. I hope she is happy and healthy.

But for my own health, I have to stay away from her.

Making a decision, making a change

I made my decision.

I was faced with making a big decision, which I wrote about last week in a post about OCD and making decisions.

I am making a change in my work life.

Starting this week, I am lowering my work hours to 32 hours per week.

It may not seem like a big change, but for me, it’s huge.

As you may remember, I work as a newspaper reporter. My main beats are county government, the sheriff’s office and the courts.

I write about activities in local government, crimes when they occur, and the outcomes of some of those crimes in court.

Some of my days are very long, especially Tuesdays when we lay out the paper, which I also assist with.

If I have meetings in the evenings, it also makes for a long day.

Sometimes I feel like I miss the entire day in a blur because I’m wrapped up in making phone calls and conducting interviews, or I’m hunched over my computer writing a story.

I’m away from home more than I like, and I sometimes feel overwhelmed by what I have to do at work and by what I’d like to do at home.

I think this sense of being overwhelmed stems from several things, such as my temperament; my OCD, depression and anxiety; and my energy level.

It’s also affected by the nature of my job. There’s always another deadline looming ahead, another paper to plan for, another interview to conduct, more story ideas to generate. It’s easy to stay in a state of anxiety.

For a while now, I’ve been fighting the job. I’ve had a hard time getting up in the morning to go in to work. I’ve dreaded Mondays. I’ve basically lived for the weekends, and some weekends I have to work.

After I first got the idea for cutting my hours, I talked with my husband, then the newspaper’s publisher, then the editor. Then I thought some more and talked some more and asked more questions.

I prayed. I meditated.

I knew it would mean less money. Not a lot less per week, but it would add up over a year’s time.

Also, I’ve worked full time for many years. Being a full-time worker was part of my identity.

But things worked out. I made my decision. And I’m at peace with it.

Why is this a huge change for me?

It means more time.

I’ll have chunks of days or even whole days free from the confines of the job.

More time to do the writing that I want to do. To do more things at home. To perhaps start an editing business.

More time with Larry.

I hope with the step back, I’ll be able to enjoy my job more.

And I hope that I’ll feel less overwhelmed, more ready to tackle the mental health issues that affect me.

I’m so grateful that I’m able to do this now. I don’t want to take the opportunity for granted.

Have you ever made a change in your work life that had big effects on your life?

OCD and making decisions

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

As soon as he asked the question, I started doubting the decision that I thought I was satisfied with.

That’s all it took: a question, and I became uncertain about something I had been sure about for days.

I was faced with a decision recently that, depending on the route I took, could result in important changes in my life.

I came up with the idea for the change in the first place and pursued it, at first hesitantly, and then with more desire and confidence.

Then the doubt came.

I’ll write specifically about that decision in a post soon, but today, I’m focusing on the decision-making process and how obsessive-compulsive disorder can affect it.

Having OCD means having a lot of uncertainty about things that others don’t even think about. Those of us with OCD wonder about things like whether or not the stove is turned off, whether or not we hit someone with our car, whether or not we read a page in a book thoroughly, whether or not our hands are clean, whether or not we harmed someone.

The uncertainty about these things—the obsessions that trap us into thinking about these things—can lead to the compulsions that we do to try to alleviate the extreme anxiety we feel.

I have found that the same uncertainty that surrounds the obsessions and compulsions also filters into my decision-making process.

It isn’t always easy for me to make a decision, even about something as innocuous as what restaurant to eat in or whether or not to make a phone call.

I obsess over whether or not I’m making the right choice. I’m afraid of making a wrong choice. I’m afraid of hurting someone or otherwise adversely affecting someone with my decision. I’m afraid of ruining my life with one bad decision.

So I quite often practice avoidance. I leave decisions to others, or delay decisions until they’re made for me.

I also compulsively ask for reassurance from others. I want someone to say, “Tina, you are making the right decision. I have no doubt about it.”

What I’m really looking for is for someone else to take responsibility for the decision. And that’s not fair to others. Others deal with uncertainty—why shouldn’t I?

So after the setback by doubt, I did more research, asked more questions, thought more about the decision. And when I felt a great sense of devastation when it seemed things weren’t going to work out, I sensed that I may have been on the right path to begin with.

I had to let go of my fear of making a decision.

None of us can ever be 100 percent sure all the time that we’re making the right decisions. Uncertainty is a fact of life. Those of us with OCD may have more doubt than those who don’t, but we can still be responsible enough to make decisions. We just may have to try harder.

What goes into your decision-making process? What do you do when faced with a tough decision?

OCD and the “what ifs”

Last week I was driving from work to meet my husband for lunch in a restaurant in town. I drove down a street parallel to Main Street, the street the restaurant is on.

As I drove, I considered the different intersections I could turn at to get to Main Street.

One has rough patches in the right turning lane. When I make that turn and feel the car go over the rough road, I always have a moment of worry that I’ve hit someone. I drive for a moment afterwards with my eyes in the rearview mirror looking for bodies.

Another way to get to Main Street involves driving in a crowded area beside a convenience store, with people pulling in and out in cars and walking on foot. I worry about running into another car or person.

I thought, What if I take the first way and something happens? I’ll wish I had waited and taken the second way.

Then I thought, What if I take the second way, and something happens. I’ll wish I had taken the first way.

The “what ifs” were valid in that I didn’t know what would happen when I pulled up to either intersection. There was always the chance of an accident. How did I know which way to take to avoid one?

I didn’t. Whichever route I chose, I would have to live with that decision. And wonder if I had made the right one.

Making choices pulls out the old uncertainty quandary. We make choices all the time, some without thinking. With other choices, we ponder which is the best one.

We can’t ever really know which is the best choice. Everything might turn out just fine and safe with one choice. But who’s to say that the other choice wouldn’t have been even better?

So we have to live with our choices. We can do our best in the moment to make the right choices, but we’ll never really know if it was the right one or the best one. Not really.

By the way, I did arrive safely at the restaurant without hurting anyone. As far as I know.

For as Dr. Jonathan Grayson says in his book Freedom from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A Personalized Recovery Program for Living with Uncertainty, “while all of us feel certain about many things, the truth is that the absolute certainty we feel is an illusion. An event may be probable or improbable, but neither is an absolute. The inability to feel or be certain is reasonable” (p. 9).

How do we live with that?

Fighting OCD and depression: I make the decisions

Two things my therapist taught me have been on my mind this week.

“Willpower is not a feeling you have. It’s action you take,” he told me during last week’s cognitive behavioral therapy session, which I wrote about here.

And during a February session, he taught me that the only things we can control about our thoughts are which ones we attend to and how we respond to them: our attention and our behavior.

Willpower, attention and behavior. The common factor I began to see is that I make the decision about putting one foot in front of the other and acting. I make the decision of what to pay attention to. I make the decision of how to respond to my thoughts.

I make the decision.

I haven’t been making good decisions in regards to my obsessive-compulsive disorder and other anxiety. I also recognize that I haven’t been making the best decisions regarding my depression.

I avoid doing things that I know will help me. I’m trying to figure out how I can do better.

To be more specific, I’m trying to get out of bed at the same time every morning, at 6. I’m trying to be more diligent about setting a deadline for myself in getting my work writing done and not put it off until I have to do all of it in one day. I’m trying to be more consistent in things like working on my own writing and clearing my clutter.

When my alarm goes off at 6, my arm reaches automatically over my head so I can hit the snooze button. I hit the button every 15 minutes for the next hour or two.

Early this morning, I was awakened by Chase Bird, one of our cats. He was crying his distressed cry, which usually means he’s getting ready to throw up.

I got up and cleaned up the poor boy’s hairball. It was 5:40 when I came back to bed. I knew I could decide to just stay up. But I consciously made the decision to get back in bed. When the alarm went off, I knew I could decide to get up. I consciously made the decision to hit the snooze button.

Why can’t I make the right decision?

I am able to get up when someone else is depending on me to get up. When I have a work-related reason for getting up early, such as an interview or a trial to cover, I get up. When I have a doctor’s appointment or even a haircut appointment, I get up.

Basically, when I am responsible to someone else, I am able to put one foot in front of the other.

So why can’t I do that for myself? Why can’t I make decisions to do things such as cleaning up clutter, writing in spite of my anxieties and exercising, things that will help me?

I’m not sure.

My sleeping in is likely due to the fact that I dread having time on my hands. If I get up early, what will I do with my time until I leave for work? Well, I might have time to do something like write. But that causes anxiety. I might have time to exercise. But it will be difficult because I’m out of shape, and I won’t get in shape overnight.

It’s much easier to hit that snooze button.

I’m still avoiding. I’m still placing too much emphasis on how I feel. I’m still paying attention to the thoughts that tell me I can’t feel anxious.

This cognitive behavioral therapy is hard. Changing my life is hard.

I have to keep on trying. But I am looking for insight from you. How do you push through and do what needs to be done? How do you make the right decisions for yourself?

I am going to do it

I have decided to ask my psychiatrist to refer me to the doctor in the practice who does cognitive behavioral therapy. I want to try the exposure response prevention therapy.

I have written about my doubts over whether or not I needed such therapy, and I’ve gotten some really helpful comments on this blog.

I have also learned from those of you who write wonderful blogs about your own experiences with OCD. It seems that ERP therapy is helping many of you, and I want to experience some of that success.

I have been mulling over it, and it became clear to me this evening that I need the therapy.

I have been having periods of time lately when I have been a checking fiend.

For example, I stare at the lamps in my office at work to make sure they are “really” off until I think I must surely be going crazy.

And I know it’s the OCD! I have been doing things like this for most of my life. And I still feel like I’m going crazy.

Also, I have a nagging sense that OCD has negatively affected my life and is still affecting it in ways I don’t even realize.

I have reached a point in my life where I don’t want to be held back by OCD, anxiety or depression anymore. I want to better manage these conditions so that I accomplish what I am supposed to accomplish while I’m on this earth.

I may sound overly dramatic, but I am as serious as I’ve ever been about getting better and living life as fully as I can.

So, I see my doctor on Jan. 16, and I will get the ball rolling. In the meantime, I’ll get through the episodes as best I can.