A lesson I have to keep learning

Abbey on her stool under the window.

We got some upsetting news about Abbey this past week.

She was set to have her spay done on Tuesday. I dropped her off at the vet’s office on the way to work.

The vet called me that afternoon and told me that they were unable to take her blood for the pre-anesthesia blood work until they had sedated her. They had her prepped for surgery when they got her blood results back. They weren’t going spay her that day.

Both her white cell count and her red cell count were lower than normal.

Some background: The day after we adopted her, we took Abbey to the vet for a check-up. She tested negative for feline leukemia and FIV. We were given a kit to get a stool sample to check for worms.

We didn’t get the sample to the vet’s until the week before her surgery, and she tested positive for worms. So we picked up medicine and give it to her for the prescribed three days, to be repeated in three weeks and six weeks.

We had not seen any signs of worms, and we keep Abbey inside all the time. But we don’t know where she was before she went to the shelter, and she stayed in the shelter for four months.

I feel so bad for not getting the sample into the vet’s sooner.

When the vet called me about her blood work, she said she didn’t think it was time to worry (easier said than done!). Abbey appeared to be healthy. The vaccinations she received the day after adoption could have caused the numbers to go down, but usually that resolved after a couple of weeks. She said parasites and infection could also cause the low numbers.

So her advice was to give her another dewormer, a different medicine that covered more types of parasites. She also gave us a vitamin supplement with iron to give her. We’ll retest her blood in a month. If the numbers are still low, we’ll retest her for feline leukemia and FIV in case she got a false negative the first time.

Abbey seems to feel good. She plays hard. She gained point 4 pounds in the three weeks from her adoption to spay day. She has not shown any signs of illness. The vet said it was fine to have her out with Chase Bird as long as neither showed signs of illness.

I did what I usually do when I get worried about a health problem with my cats or Larry—I started Googling. I know it’s a way to cope, a way to feel like I have some control over the situation.

But really, other than giving Abbey her meds and watching her, I have no control over the situation. It’s a wait and see situation until we retest her blood.

I wonder sometimes why I have to keep learning this lesson that we never can know for sure that all is well, that life throws curves all the time. But I’m not having to learn the lesson any more than anyone else. We all have lives that throw us curves. I just happen to have a disorder—OCD—that make it particularly difficult to deal with uncertainty.

So we’ll deal with what it is, if it’s anything more than an infection of parasites. And we are enjoying Abbey so much. She is a sweetie and so funny. She likes to follow Chase Bird around. Sometimes he is OK with that, sometimes he runs away, and she chases after him.

I love Chase Bird and Abbey and taking care of them. I’m enjoying that every day.

Waiting and anxiety

I haven’t been very active in the blogging world lately, and I apologize for that. I miss you!

I thought I was on the road to recovery, but the cough and other symptoms came back with a vengeance. I just haven’t felt very good.

But life goes on, doesn’t it?

I am waiting to hear some news that would create a change in my life.

I applied for a job that would actually be for less hours than I work now, and would still allow me time for my editing business. And the new job would pay significantly more.

I had my interview Wednesday (thank goodness I didn’t have a coughing fit at the same time). And now I’m waiting.

And I’m not good at waiting.

It’s all wrapped up with OCD and my craving for certainty. I want to know right now that everything is going to work out, that everyone is going to be OK, that the change I want to happen is going to happen.

But that’s not how life works, is it?

I’ve been trying some mindfulness techniques to help me deal with my anxiety. All I have is right now, I remind myself. I focus my senses on what’s around me right now, the sounds especially.

I also try to accept what is. I have done all I can in the matter. The rest is out of my control, and I have to accept what the outcome will be.

And I focus on what’s most important to me regardless of anything else that goes on in my life: Larry, Chase Bird, my spiritual life, writing, service to the world.

My techniques to help with the waiting and uncertainty aren’t perfect, but they are helping me to be able to deal with the anxiety so much better than I used to. I love that there are things I can do to help myself in that way.

Do you have a hard time waiting for news, good or bad?

Deer in the road

Fall colors: red leaves and blue sky.

It’s that time of year again when driving, especially at night, makes me a little nervous because of concern over deer in the road.

Deer are plentiful in our area year-round. They often visit our yard, and we see them in other places in the neighborhood. We enjoy their presence.

 

This is a poor photograph, but it's one I took through the window at night in September. The deer set off the motion lights in the yard. If I open the door to go out and try for a better photo, they run.

But the big fear is that we’ll hit one while driving.

According to the Virginia DMV, most deer-related accidents in Virginia occur in the fall months, October through December.

I was part of those statistics five years ago, in December 2009.

I was driving back to Altavista from Forest, which is in Bedford County, a neighboring county. The back roads I took were curvy and sometimes narrow, but the route cut miles off the trip and provided lovely views.

It was about 10:30 in the morning. I had seen a deer standing in a yard as I passed, so I had a fresh reminder of their presence. I was just tooling along, under the speed limit. I wasn’t listening to the radio. I wasn’t eating. I was just driving.

And it still happened.

My car hit something as I came around a curve. I saw a deer flashing away from my car. The hood of my car was crumpled.

I was shocked, but I managed to find a place to pull over. A kind couple turned their pickup around and came to check on me. We looked at my car. Deer hair covered the hood. Everything in the front seemed pushed towards the front seats. It was a mess.

The couple stayed with me until the state trooper arrived. Then Larry arrived.

He said as he walked up to my car, the trooper turned to him and said, “She’s all right. But I think she’s more upset about the deer than the car.”

“That would be right,” Larry said to him.

And I was upset. I felt terrible that I had hit the deer. Apparently it had jumped a fence and then tried to clear the road. The trooper speculated that hunters were out with dogs, running the deer.

I was lucky. I wasn’t hurt and my car, though heavily damaged, wasn’t totaled. I was especially nervous driving for a while, but that settled down.

What I kept thinking was, I did everything I could to avoid an accident. I wasn’t speeding. I wasn’t distracted. And I still hit a deer.

That notion that we can do everything “right” and still have trouble is sobering, and not an easy one to accept when you have an uneasy relationship with uncertainty, as I do.

After the crash, my boss gave me some little whistle-like gadgets to put on the front fender. They are supposed to help prevent deer from running out in front of your car. I don’t know if they actually work, but I was willing to try them, and they’re still on my car.

And that idea that bad things can happen anytime? I have to accept it. I have to get used to it. All I can do is my best to drive carefully. That’s all any of us can do.

Do you see wildlife near the highways where you live?

The dentist and OCD

Do you dread dentist appointments? Do you hate the thought of sitting in that chair with the fear of needles, drills, and other scary looking tools?

Yes, me, too.

Though I don’t dread it like I used to do. And I consider that lessening of anxiety a triumph over a bit of OCD in my life.

I went to the dentist this week for my six-month check-up. I’ve been seeing the same dentist for 29 years, and I wouldn’t trade him for another. He understands my teeth: their thin enamel, their hyper-sensitivity. He’s good at what he does.

And he’s very kind. The other day, the dental hygienist did the cleaning, as usual, then the dentist came in to look things over. As is usually the case now, he pronounced everything fine and told me he’d see me in six months.

“But if you need anything before then, you know we’re here for you,” he said.

I have spent a lifetime being vigilant about brushing my teeth and, as an adult, flossing. But I’ve had cavities and have had to have several root canals. We’re not sure why I have such problems. Perhaps the lack of fluoride as a child. Perhaps the thin enamel. Perhaps just bad genes.

When I started having OCD symptoms, the trips to the dentist became part of my obsessions.

As a dentist appointment drew closer, I felt very anxious. More importantly, I felt like I couldn’t relax, couldn’t NOT worry, until the visit was over.

If I had to return to the dentist for a cavity filling or a root canal, I tried to get an appointment as soon as possible. The sooner it was, the sooner I could get it over with and be OK.

If the appointment wasn’t soon enough (in my opinion), then I would call the dentist office multiple times, asking about cancellations.

When I grew in understanding that fear of uncertainty is a big part of OCD, I began to see that I would have to live with the idea that painful, uncomfortable, scary things were in my future, were in everyone’s future. That’s life.

But in the meantime, I was wasting the present by not allowing myself to enjoy life until the “big event” was over. I’ve learned that the present, right now, is so important.

Life is to be enjoyed and appreciated now.

Also, as my OCD improved overall, the improvement included a lessening of that belief that I couldn’t be OK until all worries were taken care of.

So I go see the dentist every six months. I still feel a little trepidation at the thought of something being wrong with my teeth. But I get through it. And if I need to go back for some work, I no longer obsess over getting the work done immediately.

It’s nice to be able to enjoy the present as best as I can.

So, what’s your relationship with the dental office?

After 9/11

This is a repost of an entry that I originally posted on Sept. 11, 2012 under a different title. It has now been 13 years since that awful day. That awful day gave me, and I think many others, lessons about what is most important to us.

May peace and grace be with all those who died, those who were injured and those still suffering in any way from the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

I’m writing this in the waning hours of Sept. 11, 2012, and today I, as I’m sure millions of others did, remembered that day 11 years ago with sadness.

I remembered where I was on that day, as I’m sure many of you did.

And I thought of the world after 9/11 and how it’s changed.

On that day 11 years ago, I was at work at the health department and watched the Twin Towers fall on television. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I had to hear the late anchor Peter Jennings say it before I knew that what my eyes saw was really happening.

In the days that followed, and the months, too, I stayed glued to the news, on the radio, TV and online.

I knew that the world and the way I thought about it would never be the same.

My anxieties and my fears are so small when compared to the anxieties and fears of people around the world. I live in comfort and safety compared to many in the world.

But this is a blog about obsessive-compulsive disorder and the accompanying depression and anxiety. How do I, with these mental disorders, make sense of a world where things like what happened on 9/11 can happen?

The short answer to that is, I don’t make sense of it. I will never make sense of what happened on 9/11, of other terrorist activities, of violence and hate. I will never make sense of any of that.

But there are some things I can make sense of.

The stories of family members having their last conversations on cell phones with chaos in the background. The stories of men and women who stepped into the chaos to help save others. The people who still work to make sure we don’t forget. The people who work to help prevent other attacks, other violence.

And I make sense on a personal level of how I can navigate in the world of 9/11.

In the months immediately following Sept. 11, 2001, my anxiety was sky high. I worried about things I’d never worried about. I was scared for the safety of my loved ones. I didn’t know what might happen next.

I dreamed about a well-known American man, well respected, nonpolitical, a good person. I dreamed that he committed an awful act of violence.

I asked a friend, how could I dream something like that? It’s evidence that things are not like they used to be, she said. Things that you used to believe in aren’t there any more, she said.

I agreed with her then, and I still agree with her. I was reacting to a changing reality, even a changing personal reality.

Gradually, my global anxiety subsided as I grew used to the way things were. I had learned anew of the many things I couldn’t control. I had learned for good that time is precious and our loved ones even more precious.

Now my anxiety tends towards the personal again, what I’m doing or not doing, what others around me are doing or aren’t doing.

But I will never forget what happened on that day 11 years ago. And it is especially on days like today that I remember the lessons: time is precious and our loved ones even more so.

OCD and scary thoughts and dreams

Shadows

Thoughts are powerful. I’m sure you already know that. What we mull over and dwell on in our thoughts can affect our mood and our outlook, our actions. Thoughts are that powerful.

If you have obsessive-compulsive disorder, you know that thoughts can seem especially powerful, and you attach more importance to them than they deserve.

The obsessions of OCD are uncontrolled thoughts about specific things that cause intense anxiety. They revolve around concerns about things such as harm, contamination and morality.

For example, I used to be consumed with thoughts about the safety of others, especially the safety of my loved ones. I worried and agonized over the possibility that harm would come to them, and that I would be the cause of that harm.

I acted out different compulsions to try to assuage the anxiety caused by the obsessions. I washed my hands incessantly to try to avoid passing germs to others and making them sick. I prayed the same words over and over, trying to create a magical safety net around my family. I checked light switches and stovetops repeatedly to make sure I had turned off electrical devices, because I believed if I left them on, a fire might start and hurt or kill others.

Another way thoughts can be troublesome for those of us with OCD is the way they seem to be so true. If I think that I left a lamp on at the office, then it must be true. If that thought comes along with a feeling of anxiety, then it must mean that I left the light on.

I’ve come a long way since the days when thoughts and compulsions like that consumed me. But this week, I’ve been revisited by scary thoughts.

My husband told me about a snippet of a dream he recently had. In the dream, he realized that he had died at a certain age. In real life, he turns that age next year.

After he told me, I was immediately caught up in anxiety, fear and depression.

What if it was a premonition? What if it were true? Why would he dream that? What did it mean that he dreamed it?

I couldn’t let it go. I kept thinking and thinking about it.

I thought about dreams that I had had that I felt were premonitions. I thought about the times that I had awakened from a dream and believed I had learned something.

What if that was the age that he would die? What could I do to stop it, to change it?

If I spoke about it to him, to anyone, would that mean that it would come true?

Some people believe all dreams mean something. Was that true? What did this dream mean?

I finally realized that my thoughts were a manifestation of my OCD. I realized that my fears about the importance of Larry’s dream were very similar to my fears about the importance of my thoughts.

My therapist taught me a lot about my thoughts. He taught me that the brain produces thoughts constantly, many without my intention or permission. Just because I have a thought doesn’t mean it’s true or will come true. It doesn’t mean that I wanted to think it.

And just because I feel anxiety doesn’t mean that there’s a logical reason for it or that I really have something to fear.

Perhaps that is the way I should view Larry’s dream. It’s a dream, produced by some combination of thoughts, emotions, memories and who knows what. I’ll never arrive at an answer for what it means.

And as Larry told me, in trying to comfort me when I expressed concern, no one knows when he or she will die except God.

My thoughts about it, my fear, will not change anything. I will have to do what I have to do with every OCD episode: live with the anxiety until it goes away, focus on other things, and recognize for yet another time that I have to live with uncertainty.

Have you ever been haunted by a dream that you or someone else had? How do you deal with fears about the future?

OCD and self-doubts about health

I had another appointment with my orthopedic doctor on Friday and received a mix of good and bad news.

The good news is that the bone fracture in my foot has healed more since my last visit a month ago.

The bad news is that I still need to wear the orthopedic boot or a fracture shoe for another month.

The doctor showed Larry and me the X-rays. Some of the fracture is “smoothed over” and none of the jagged teeth that first appeared on the X-rays are visible.

But part of the fracture still looks, in Larry’s words, “like a Pac Man figure’s open mouth.”

The foot still hurts some when I’m not in the boot, aches at night if I’ve been on my feet for a long time. And it’s tender to the pressure the doctor puts on it.

Those symptoms helped the doctor determine that the best recommendation is to stay in the boot. I can try the lower fracture shoe, but if the foot hurts while wearing that, I’m to go back to the boot.

He thought it would heal completely as long as I listened to my body.

And then the doubts came.

An orthopedic boot is a great conversation piece. People I don’t even know will ask me why I’m wearing it.

Some will tell me their own stories of being in a boot. Some will talk about being in one for a matter of weeks.

I’ve been in one for over two months, part of that time on crutches.

People who I see often seem amazed that I’m still wearing it.

“You’re still in that boot? How much longer do you have to wear it?”

And at work, I get the impression—and it could be all in my imagination—that my co-workers wish I would get out of the boot already.

I can’t do certain assignments because of my foot. I can’t walk long distances to take photos at large events. My driving is limited. I’m working my regular schedule of 32 hours a week, but there are limitations on what I can do.

So in the doctor’s office Friday, all these thoughts came crowding in and I started to doubt myself. I asked myself questions such as, Does it hurt enough to warrant the boot? Was I exaggerating how much it hurt? Was I giving a false impression to my doctor?

I don’t have anxiety that I’m sicker than anyone else thinks I am. I have anxiety about giving the impression that I’m sicker than I really am.

One of the reasons I wanted Larry with me when the doctor talked to me was so that he could be a witness to what the doctor said and what his concerns were. I didn’t trust just myself.

Towards the end of my visit, I finally asked the doctor some of the questions that I had: was it unusual for it to take so long to heal? Was it unusual to still hurt? Was it strange for me to still be in a boot?

Absolutely not, said the doctor. If it had healed totally in two months, THAT would have been unusual, he said.

I told him that some other people were surprised that I had been in the boot for so long. He said if my fracture had occurred in a different part of my foot, they would be right. But this is a Jones fracture, he reminded me. And this type of fracture can take a long time to heal.

Later, I remembered what he had said about listening to my body.

Having OCD, I don’t always trust my interpretation of what my body is telling me. I wonder about how much pain is “enough” to warrant concern. I wonder if I’m sick “enough” to call for the care of a doctor. I wonder if I’m worth all this fuss.

I want to be certain. And I can’t.

Deep inside, I know my foot needs the boot. I know I feel pain. It’s just the OCD creeping in, causing me to doubt myself. It’s just me listening to others instead of to my body and to my doctor.

I’m not going to let those doubts compromise my health. I will just live with them. Eventually, the accompanying anxiety will dissipate.

And eventually, I will get out of this boot.

Do you ever have doubts about the seriousness of a health problem you have?

Getting around on my extra paws

Despondent. I admit that’s how I felt on Monday afternoon. I felt despondent.

I went to see my orthopedic doctor for a recheck of my broken foot. After looking at the new X-rays, he told me he saw “the beginnings of healing,” but I would have to stay on the crutches for at least three more weeks.

After the three weeks, he will check it again. If it’s still moving in a positive direction, if it’s no longer hurting when I put weight on it, and if the tenderness is gone, I’ll be able to just wear the orthopedic boot and walk on that, with no crutches.

If it doesn’t heal in three months, then he will do surgery on it.

He reminded me that a Jones fracture takes a long time to heal because it’s located in a part of the foot that doesn’t have a good blood supply, and tendons run over the fractured area.

And he cautioned me to stay on the crutches and not put weight on my foot except in the shower, where I could put weight on the heel.

OK, not horrible news. The bone is healing. I don’t need surgery now. I don’t have to do anything different at this point except be more vigilant about staying on the crutches.

So why the despondency? The doctor’s visit didn’t meet my expectations, and I came face to face with my nemesis, uncertainty.

I expected to be told Monday that the bone was almost healed. I had no proof that it was, but it didn’t hurt nearly as much as it did before, and I reasoned that it must be well on the way to complete union.

What I got was a reminder that this is going to be a long process. I’m going to have to be patient with it.

And I also expected to be told Monday whether or not I would need surgery. This was a misunderstanding on my part. Even the doctor is uncertain about the need for surgery.

But it still bothered me that I won’t know for a number of weeks whether or not, after all the travels on crutches and all the hours in the boot, I still might need surgery.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know I don’t naturally do well with uncertainty.

Uncertainty feeds my OCD and generalized anxiety. Uncertainty leaves me open to unlimited anxiety about what the future brings.

So I felt despondent. But I soon pulled myself together. Larry reminded me that the foot is healing. And I remembered that times like this are good practice for living with uncertainty.

I’ve decided to make friends with The Monster Boot. It’s a support system. It allows me to move around even with a tender, broken bone.

As for the crutches, I have a new attitude there, too. Larry told our cats that my crutches were “Mama’s extra paws.” I like that: extra paws.

The Monster Boot and I will be getting around on the extra paws.

Do your expectations about the way things should be ever result in disappointment? How do you handle the disappointment?

OCD treatment: Living with uncertainty

“Are you willing to learn to live with uncertainty?”

That is the key question OCD sufferers must answer before embarking on the program in Dr. Jonathan Grayson’s Freedom from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A Personalized Recovery Program for Living with Uncertainty.

Grayson holds the premise that there is no certainty in life. Even things that we think we can be certain about, we can’t.

One example Grayson uses is the belief we have that our car is in the driveway. But unless we’re looking at it, we can’t guarantee that it’s there. It could have been stolen and no longer be in the driveway.

  In addition, unless our loved ones are right in the room with us, we can’t be sure that they are safe and unharmed.

He says, “The inability to feel or be certain is reasonable. . . . Improbable is not impossible” (p. 9).

Grayson says that those with OCD already know that uncertainty is a given in life. No matter how hard we try with some of our rituals, we can’t arrive at absolute certainty in those things.

I can relate to that. My need for certainty tends to revolve around the safety of my loved ones, and even of people I don’t know. I want assurances that they will be safe and well, and a lot of my OCD ritualizing has to do with efforts to make that happen.

But keeping others 100 percent safe and well is an impossible task for me. I cannot guarantee their safety, and all of us are going to die eventually.

Grayson says that just knowing that uncertainty exists is not enough. We have to be willing to live with uncertainty.

“It is quite likely that you agree with the premise that you can never be certain. Indeed, the persistence of your OCD symptoms and its constant attendant doubt have shown you that certainty is unattainable. Yet you persist in trying to achieve the impossible. Why? Why won’t you accept what you know?

Answering the question with a ‘yes’ means choosing acceptance of what you already know instead of denial” (p. 52).

A way that we hold on to denial is through “fantasy and wishing. In the case of death, denial is not a delusional fantasy of believing the dead are alive; it is comparing the present with how much better life would be if the deceased were still alive” (p. 52).

There is a price to pay for living in denial, according to Grayson: “However, when we compare reality with fantasy, we also destroy and demean the moment” (p. 52).

That statement hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks. I had never thought of denying uncertainty as denying reality. I had never thought of denying reality as disrespecting the very moment we’re in.

Acceptance of reality means acceptance of uncertainty. Acceptance of uncertainty, living with uncertainty, means living with the uncertainty of whether the lights in the office are off, whether or not my hands are contaminated, whether or not the stove is off, and so many other uncertainties in life, including the big ones, like whether or not my loved ones are safe and well.

My answer to the question? Yes.

  How important do you think it is to accept uncertainty?

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?

OCD: Struggling to live with uncertainty

A few weeks ago, during a cognitive behavior therapy session, my therapist and I talked about the consequences of following through with an exposure, the one where I would get rid of my pile of unopened mail and other papers.

I could see only a positive outcome from making the paper pile disappear into files and trash bags: I wouldn’t have that task hanging over my head, causing me to feel anxious.

So when my therapist asked me what the consequences would be, I replied, “The anxiety about it will be gone.”

He then brought up a point that I had failed to fully consider: “But won’t you keep on getting mail?”

His point was that as long as I received mail, I would face potential anxiety. I would continue to worry that I had somehow missed something, an unpaid bill, the discovery of something legally important that I had failed to do, etc.

“You’ll never be able to be certain that everything is taken care of,” he said.

He was right. Getting rid of one pile of paper would not take care of any uncertainty I would ever have in my lifetime about my efforts to take care of all my business.

What I had to do, he said, was to learn to live with the anxiety, to feel the anxiety but then refocus my attention and actions and move on.

* * *

This week, a couple of my fellow bloggers wrote about uncertainty and living in the “gray” area. Sunny, of 71 degrees & Sunny, wrote about uncertainty surrounding the health of her cat and her husband’s battle with IBD. Janet at ocdtalk wrote about getting out of the black and white thinking into the gray.

Their posts prompted me to think more about uncertainty and how to handle it.

Those of us with OCD often struggle with uncertainty. One of the reasons we perform compulsive rituals like cleaning and checking is to try to be certain that, for example, there are no germs lingering on the surfaces, that nothing has been left undone that could cause a fire or some other danger.

Compulsive rituals cannot bring certainty, though. OCD thoughts are not rational. They are not rooted in reality. They cannot be tamed with some short-term assurance of certainty. Giving into the rituals doesn’t keep the doubts from returning.

Everyone, not just people with OCD, has uncertainty. There’s just no way for any of us to be certain about many things.

* * *

I made up a list of things that I am uncertain about for myself and for my loved ones:

Will we develop cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s or some other serious disease?

Will we have a wreck during any of the many times we travel by car from one place to another?

Where will the next terrorist attack occur?

Will fire, a tornado, a flood or some other natural disaster destroy our home?

Are the decisions we make about our finances the right ones?

Will we always have the benefits of health insurance and access to care?

Will I have a job tomorrow?

* * *

If uncertainty is a given, then how can I live with it in a healthy way?

The only way I know is to embrace the here and now and remind myself that I will handle whatever comes the best I can.

If the only thing I have for certain is the present moment, then I need to fully live in the present moment.

I need to make sure that what I’m doing in the present moment is something good and meaningful and helpful to the world.

I need to say what I need to say now, and do what I need to do now.

I need to be grateful for what I have right now.

Living in the now doesn’t preclude planning for and preparing for the future. What it precludes is worrying about the future.

Of course, all this is easier said than done. But I have hope and faith. They are key for me.

The easiest area of my life to live with uncertainty is my spiritual life. But that is for another blog post, which I will write soon.

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What is your relationship with uncertainty? How have you made peace with uncertainty?