Hopelessness

There’s nothing left of me

except

depression, OCD, GAD,

labels that sound like excuses.

There’s nothing left of me,

nothing to make me want

to reach out, to reach beyond

the labels that sound like excuses.

I’ve forgotten what I wanted

to ask for,

forgotten the words that made sense.

I’m left with labels

that sound like excuses.

I will write about what I’m doing to fight a general sense of hopelessness in a later post.

Have you ever felt hopeless?

Top 5 things that hurt my OCD

  On Monday I wrote about the top things that help my obsessive-compulsive disorder, so I thought I’d look at the opposite and discuss things that hurt my OCD.

Not getting treatment

I wasn’t diagnosed and treated for my OCD and depression until I was 26, after suffering from both for much of my life up until then. That was a lot of needless suffering because help was available.

Even after I became an adult and was responsible for my own health, I didn’t speak up and tell my doctors what was going on with me. I didn’t tell them about the strange thoughts and even stranger compulsions that were wreaking havoc with my life.

I was in talk therapy for about a year before I even mentioned my obsessions and compulsions to my therapist.

I was ashamed of my bizarre habits and thought I was the only person in the world who did such things.

Depending on medication alone

For more than 20 years, the only treatment I had for OCD was medication.

I am not discounting the tremendous help I have received from medication. It lifted me out of the worst of my OCD and depression and allowed me to live a better life.

But I ignored doctor’s suggestions that I get therapy specifically for OCD, like cognitive behavioral therapy. I didn’t want to take the time or spend the money, and I really didn’t think I needed it.

Now I recognize that medication can do only part of what I need to rid myself of the subtle ways OCD intrudes on my life. I need practical therapy, and I’ll be back to it soon.

Not taking GAD seriously

In addition to OCD and depression, I have generalized anxiety disorder. I tend to forget that and focus all my energies on fighting the “top two” disorders in my life.

But GAD has a very real effect on my OCD. The more anxious I am generally, the more I have to deal with the OCD. The generalized anxiety feeds the obsessions and makes it harder for me to fight the compulsions.

That tells me that I need to consciously take steps to lower my anxiety overall.

Giving in to compulsions

I know by now that giving in to compulsions just makes the cycle of OCD worse. The more I check, for example, the more I want to check, and the more I check.

I can’t let up. I can’t give myself a break from tolerating the anxiety until it goes away instead of performing the compulsion.

Not taking care of my health

If I get really tired, I find that I am more prone to anxious feelings and depressive thinking. Those just feed my OCD. So I have to get plenty of rest.

That’s not always easy, especially on days when I have to work late. On such days, I also tend to eat erratically and too much. Then I don’t feel like going to bed and stay up too late. Then I don’t sleep well. And the cycle continues.

I feel so much better when I get enough but not too much sleep, when I eat several small meals of healthy food, when I exercise. When I don’t take care of my health, it shows in my level of anxiety and thus, my OCD.

  What things make your OCD and/or other anxiety worse?

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?

Poem: When I was afraid of dogs

When I was little, I was afraid of dogs. I would run from them, afraid that they would jump up on me and scratch my legs.

It’s funny for two reasons to think of running from them.

I love animals now. I don’t have any dogs of my own, but I enjoy being around them and don’t fear them.

It’s also funny because of what I eventually taught myself as a child: don’t run from animals. This came from my father’s lesson to not run from the cows, which I wrote about in a previous post.

So for a while, I ran from our pet dogs, which were outside dogs. My parents didn’t allow us to have animals inside.

Ironically, as soon as I was “safe” inside, I started feeling sorry for the dogs because I thought they looked sad at having to stay outside, with no one to play with.

I would talk to them through the back screen door, tell them they were pretty and good. And yet when I was outside with them, all I would do is run from them.

Poor critters.

The poem below grew out of my memories of one dog in particular, Prince.

Prince

By Tina Fariss Barbour

I was afraid of my dog

when I was seven.

Climbed atop porch chairs,

railings,

mimosa branches,

ran shortcut across the grass.

Then inside I stood

at the back screen door,

rampart,

watched Prince

hang his Collie head,

fall sideways.

Good boy.

Sweetie boy.

Supper’s soon.

I sang hymns.

Standing on the Promises.

  Did you have dogs or other pets as a child? What was your relationship with your pets like?

Breaking through fog: therapy lessons

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:V%C3%A9theuil_dans_le_brouillard.jpg

It worked out this week that I saw both my psychiatrist and my psychologist, and I had helpful sessions with both. But I still feel like I'm trying to break through fog.

The psychiatrist

I discussed my increased anxiety with the psychiatrist Wednesday, and he was concerned because of the sense of dread I was experiencing and because I had reached the point of starting to fear driving, like I did a few years ago when I was in the midst of the worst anxiety I’ve ever had.

So he decided to take me off of one of the medications, Wellbutrin. It could be having unintended consequences, especially in combination with another medication.

It’s a balancing act to not tinker with the medication enough to allow the depression to get worse, and yet help the anxiety. It’s trial and error sometimes, and that’s not always easy to deal with, especially for an impatient person like me. I just have to wait and see.

At least it won’t be long. He said I should notice a difference by this weekend if it was going to have an effect. Here’s hoping it will help.

On an added note about the anxiety, I’ve been listening to a mindfulness CD by Jon Kabat-Zinn, and it has helped me to be able to fall asleep fairly quickly each night. I’ll write more about the CD and what I’m learning in a future post.

The psychologist

My psychologist and I, as usual, did a situational analysis yesterday, and this led to a discussion about anger, fear and anxiety.

I don’t express anger very well. A lot of the time, I don’t express it at all.

In the particular situation we discussed, I was feeling anger but interpreted my feelings as fear. I never expressed my anger in words.

My therapist said the bodily reaction to anger and anxiety is the same. What I’m not always recognizing is that I’m feeling anger. I recognize it as fear. I then fail to verbally express my anger in healthy ways.

I also tend to think of anger as something bad, something I should feel guilty for feeling.

Something that my therapist told me that was helpful was to think of the motivation for anger and the method of anger.

A motivation for anger might be the fact that you care about someone. A method for showing that anger might be yelling. No one likes to be yelled at. That’s not an appropriate way to express anger.

But the fact that you yelled doesn’t negate your motivation for the anger. You can apologize for yelling, but you don’t have to feel guilty for being angry.

I certainly don’t want to hold on to anger. I just want to stop feeling like I’m a bad person because I sometimes get angry.

It’s all in the balance.

  So that was my week in therapy. To say that I’m frustrated at having to work on these issues at my age is an understatement. I know such issues have no age limit. But I’d have thought I was past them.

  I’ll just keep plugging along, going forward.

Do you ever get frustrated at your progress to become a better person, improve in a skill, or make a positive change? How do you handle it?

Waiting and delaying: Procrastination

I make a daily practice of procrastination.

I put off tasks I don’t want to do. I lie in bed and sleep until the last minute before I have to get up.

Recently, I was reading through old journals and discovered that I had some of the same goals five and six years ago that I still have today. Unmet goals. Goals I haven’t made much, if any, headway on.

There are things that I should do and want to do that would help my depression and my obsessive-compulsive disorder, things like exercising, getting on a regular sleep schedule, eating a healthier diet, doing more exposures, working more on my writing, getting more involved in my community.

I nap a lot. I usually take a long nap on Saturdays and Sundays. Sometimes I come home from work during the week and take a nap before dinner. I tell myself I’m tired.

But in reality, most of the time I am avoiding doing things, including moving towards goals that would not only help my depression and my OCD but also give me confidence and satisfaction.

I am so frustrated with myself.

What is procrastination?

There is a chapter called “Break a Procrastination-Depression Connection” in The Cognitive Behavioral Workbook for Depression: A Step by Step Program, second edition, by William J. Knaus, Ed.D. He says the following about procrastination:

“Procrastination can be a simple default reaction. You feel uncomfortable about an activity, so you avoid it. More often, procrastination is a complex process that coexists with distress conditions, such as anxiety and depression. You put off dealing with what you fear. You believe you are disabled by your mood. Uncertainty can trigger the discomfort-dodging feature of procrastination. If you view yourself as overwhelmed and unable to perform, you are likely to delay taking corrective actions. As a reaction to anxieties, a negative mood, uncertainty, and other unpleasant conditions, you do something different or nothing at all” (p. 58).

So what is a person to do?

Knaus gives lots of good advice. Cognitive changes are one way to address procrastination. You can change your perspective, he says: “To break this procrastination-depression connection, look for weak points in the connection. For example, if you have the energy to think depressing thoughts, you have the energy to think proactive thoughts, such as ‘I can slowly work my way up from under this malaise’” (p. 60).

He advocates taking actions that are “definable, purposeful, measurable, and achievable” (p. 60).

One way to do this is to use the procrastination flip technique, which is the process of doing the opposite of what procrastination thinking wants you to do.

For example, if you are putting off exercising, something you know could help your depression, you push yourself to go for a walk.

Emotive changes can be used to combat procrastination, too. “A combination of normal discomfort-dodging and depression can be like a double whammy. It will help if you accept that this combination goes with the territory. You are then more likely to feel tolerant of discomfort and more willing to allow yourself to start” (p. 61).

That connects with what my therapist told me about accepting my anxiety and the feelings it causes.

Thirdly, behavioral changes can be used against procrastination. Recognizing the diversions you take to avoid doing what is more important can help in coming up with an action plan. For example, an action plan to help you move beyond mindless diversions may be to do one small productive activity every day for five minutes at a set time.

Taking action is a key component of Knaus’ techniques. Taking action, even small actions, whether or not you feel like it, can help to fight procrastination.

So there are things I can do about my procrastination besides just complain about it and feel bad about it.

I can work to recognize the thoughts that lead to procrastination and talk back to the thoughts. I can accept that my depression and anxiety may make my procrastinating ways worse. I can take small actions every day to combat the problem.

I’m working on it.

Do you procrastinate? How do you get past it? Please share your ideas!

Words of Anxiety

I’ve been feeling a lot of anxiety lately. I can pinpoint the causes in some cases. Some of it comes from my habitual procrastination, which I’m going to post about on Wednesday.

Some of it comes from things going on in my life.

However, I can’t always name the cause. I just feel it and experience it.

Some days I have anxiety in the 7 and 8 range. I’ve noticed that I feel it especially at night when I’m trying to go to sleep.

I’ve had trouble falling asleep. I’ve tried my usual tricks of reciting poetry and prayers and thinking positive thoughts, to no avail.

I toss and turn and watch the minutes, and then hours go by on the clock. My anxiety rises even higher.

I finally fall asleep, but wake up again and again throughout the night.

Then I wake up in the morning with anxiety, sometimes with my hands actually shaking.

Since my usual tricks haven’t been working, I’ve been trying to “sit” with my anxiety, as some of you fellow bloggers have written about, including Krystal Lynn.

Metaphorically speaking, much of my anxiety seems to settle in my chest and move outward to my arms and hands.

My heart doesn’t always beat fast, but I feel bursts of adrenaline. I feel hyper. I feel like something bad is going to happen. My arms and hands feel tingly and agitated, or sometimes numb. I can’t relax.

And, of course, my thoughts are racing, moving from subject to subject.

I’ve started concentrating on how my body feels. I focus on my chest and at first try to just experience the feeling without describing it to myself.

Then I talk silently to myself, describing how I feel, using words like afraid, antsy, adrenaline, dread, excited, wired.

I even used a thesaurus to come up with other words to use to describe how I feel: apprehensive, disquieted, distressed, jittery, taut, troubled and watchful.

And, in a surprise to me, it seems to work. I have awakened during the night, realizing that I fell asleep a lot faster than I thought I would. I use my self-examination tools again, and fall asleep again.

And I haven’t been waking up in the morning with as much anxiety either.

I don’t really understand how this is working. Accepting the anxiety and just concentrating on experiencing it is somehow easing it.

  What are some ways you deal with anxiety with no apparent cause? What words describe your anxiety?