Out of the boot

I’m back from my short break, and I’m glad to be back. Last week was a very busy week at work, and I worked a lot of extra hours. I’m glad the worst of that is behind me, and I’ll get on a regular schedule again.

The first thing I wanted to share with you this week was some good news that I received Friday when I visited my orthopedic doctor. He took me out of the Monster Boot!

So no more this:

Now I’m in this, an ankle stabilizer:

It laces up and tightens up with Velcro straps, and I can wear a shoe with it. So for the first time in over three months, I can wear matching shoes!

I have to wear this for a month. Then, if I’m not experiencing any pain, I can go without it except when I’m walking on uneven ground.

I go back to the doctor in August. He’s expecting the bone to be 95 percent healed by then.

Yes, it’s still not completely healed. The doctor said it would take a long time, and it is. But it doesn’t have to be completely healed to get out of the boot.

I’m still getting used to the feel of the stabilizer. I tend to throw my foot out like I’m still wearing the boot, so I’ve got to get out of some habits I formed during the months I walked with the boot.

I’ve had a little pain in my ankle today, so I’m trying not to overdo it.

Still, it has been really nice to stand on my own two feet again and to walk more. I am so grateful.

And that gratitude led to thinking about what I’ve learned from the experience so far. Whether it’s the teacher that still resides in me, or the OCD in me that makes me over think, or just the way I’m put together, I like to consider the lessons in situations.

Here is what I came up with:

*My situation is temporary. I have been inconvenienced. I have been limited. But I know that the inconveniences and limitations will eventually end. There are so many people who are permanently hurt or disabled, and I am in awe of their strength in dealing with daily challenges.

*My guiding theme this year is “letting go.” I have had to let go of my feeling of control over what my healing progress will be. Each time I go to the doctor, I have expectations of what will happen: he will take me off crutches, he will take me out of the boot, he will tell me I am completely healed. I have had some disappointments.

I have had to learn that my expectations are not controlling anything. I can follow doctor’s orders, and I can follow healthy habits, but I can’t control the bone in my foot.

*People in general are helpful and kind. I can’t count the number of helpful gestures—opening a door, carrying a bag, giving up a seat, taking an extra step for me—people have done for me. That’s people I know and people I don’t know. I believe most people want to help and are willing to help even strangers.

*It’s OK to ask for help. I don’t like to ask others to do things for me. I feel like I’m bothering them. But we all need help sometimes. And if someone helps me today, I can set the intention to help someone else tomorrow.

*Our bodies are wonderful, intricate, and fascinating. How things work together, how healing occurs, how we can adapt to changes—it’s all pretty amazing to me.

I leave you with those lessons. I hope you’re doing well. I have missed you! I’ll be back on Wednesday.

Please share something about how last week went for you.

Anger: Working through it

In the moment, I feel like I’m having an anxiety attack that has come on quickly. My arms and legs feel numb, my heart rate increases, I feel like I can’t breathe deeply. I have trouble speaking, and I usually get tears in my eyes.

Later, when I’m reliving the moment, I feel agitated and hyper, and my mind fills with the words I wish I’d thought of saying.

I keep reliving the moment, day after day, and sometimes, month after month, year after year.

That’s what anger does to me.

I don’t handle anger very well. I tend to feel guilty about feeling angry.

I also don’t like conflict and avoid it when the better choice might be to face it. When I avoid it, I sometimes end up angry over situations that I could have attended to sooner, if not for my fear of conflict.

I’m holding on to a lot of anger, some from years ago.

My goal this year is to let go of what I don’t need in my life, and that includes harmful emotions. Anger that I hold onto, that turns into grudges and resentment, is something that I want to let go of.

From a health standpoint, I know anger that I keep stuffed down inside can aggravate my OCD and other anxiety.

It affects my depression, too. I tend to feel helpless in my anger, and the helpless feelings are directly related to chronic depression.

But I want to let go of anger for a bigger reason. From a moral standpoint, I don’t want anger and resentment to ever get in the way of having compassion for others.

So how do you let go of anger?

I talked with my therapist about this recently, and he told me it’s not really a matter of letting it go.

It’s a matter of working through it.

It’s a matter of being assertive and friendly and expressing myself honestly and completely so that I don’t feel helpless.

Because when I tell myself I’m helpless in the face of conflict, my brain shuts down and I stay mired in the chronic depression.

I’m practicing this friendly assertiveness in therapy, reviewing situations that have come up in my interpersonal relationships, thinking about and talking about what actually happened and what would have been the best outcome.

I’m not going to wake up one morning and not feel any anger anymore. But I will gradually get better at working out anger and conflict so that I don’t feel helpless. And with that, I will get better at not carrying around anger.

How do you work through anger so that it doesn’t interfere with your peace of mind?

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?

Feeling overwhelmed

Ann of The Beat OCD Blog recently wrote a great post about worry called “My Brain Has Been Busy!” It resonated with me because I’ve been dealing with my own worries, the anxious thoughts piling up. In short, I’ve been feeling overwhelmed.

These are some of the things going on in my life right now:

*At work, deadlines are looming for a special section in the newspaper and for a monthly publication that we produce.

*It’s time to start my volunteer gig of putting together the quarterly newsletter for a church group. I need to have it done by Monday.

*The heater on my car doesn’t seem to be working right.

*I have to attend a chamber dinner Saturday for the newspaper, and I don’t have anything I think is suitable to wear.

*I’m working on ideas for a small business on the side (more about that in a later post).

No catastrophic illness here, no problem that can’t be fixed. I have control over some aspects of these situations, no control over other parts. I recognize that. I know that worry does no good.

Still, I’ve been worrying.

I don’t doubt that the worsening of depression plays a part in the increase in worry. It seems like life is handing me too much right now, but if I wasn’t also dealing with depression, I’d probably be able to handle it better.

I have generalized anxiety disorder, too.

But worry is also a habit of mine. I have the habit of not being able to let go of tension until all deadlines are met, all need-to-do tasks are done.

Having OCD helped me to develop this habit. Before I got any treatment for the disorder, obsessions and compulsions ruled my life. I couldn’t completely relax as long as something needed to be checked, cleaned or made safe. And something needed to be done a good portion of my time.

I kept the habit of worry even after my OCD improved.

I know there’s hope, though. There are ways to deal with feeling overwhelmed.

I’ve learned that when I pay attention to something besides my worried thoughts, I’m able to tackle the situations that are leading to the worry.

I have found that taking action helps.

For example, I made sure I made the necessary phone calls and conducted or set up the necessary interviews in plenty of time to finish my work before the deadlines arrive.

Another example: when I met with church group members about the newsletter, I asked specific questions to find out exactly what I needed to do.

I have also found that taking breaks to relax in the midst of worrisome tasks helps. Taking the time to watch a TV show with my husband or to hold one of my cats takes my mind off what I need to do.

It’s OK to relax before everything is done. What a wonderful thought.

Feeling overwhelmed is just going to have to be one of those feelings I let go of.

How do you cope when life’s demands seem overwhelming?

Letting go of emotions that feed my OCD and depression

As I wrote about in my last post, I have made “letting go” the theme to guide my goals in 2013.

I have some heavy, serious emotions to deal with and to try to let go of: anger, sadness, resentment, despair, even hate.

I don’t like to admit having these feelings and emotions, but they are there, sometimes lying underneath the day-to-day feelings, sometimes rising to the surface.

I have found myself lying down at night, unable to go to sleep because of the thoughts running through my head, ruminations and obsessions that make those negative emotions rise to the surface and feed my anxiety, OCD and depression.

I want to be free. I want to be light and free of the tears that come when I contemplate all the junk inside me.

In a recent guest post linked to from her blog, Shirley Hershey Showalter wrote about two verses from the Bible to help guide her through 2013. In a comment, I told her how she had inspired me to find words to help me in my theme of letting go. And she offered this link to a beautiful poem by Mary Oliver.

Inspired by Shirley, I will take Oliver’s poem with me through the year.

In addition, I will take my favorite prayer, which, to me, is all about letting go of what we don’t need to hold us back, and taking on and passing on what is important: peace, pardon, faith, hope, light, joy and, most important, love. That is the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

Where there is injury, pardon.

Where there is doubt, faith.

Where there is despair, hope.

Where there is darkness, light.

Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive.

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

I’m not looking forward to the work that will be involved in letting go of these emotions and of bad habits that I’ve taken on through the years. But letting go will surely help me with my mental health issues, and with that, my whole life.

  What are you trying to let go of?