Memoir: The jug of water

She set the jug of water on top of the toilet.

It was a plastic milk carton being re-purposed for a lesson.

She said something like, “This is all the water you can use today. You can’t run the water. You’ll have to use what’s in the jug.”

There was no convincing her to do otherwise.

And I thought I was going to die.

I was about 13 at the time, which would make it 1976. We were living in the country, in the house my parents built after they sold most of our farm and the farmhouse.

I understand now where my mother’s anger came from. I ran water long and fast, washing and rewashing my hands, trying to get them clean.

I usually used the bathroom just off her and my father’s bathroom, instead of the larger one in the hallway, because it seemed more private and less contaminated. So they could hear the amount of water I was running.

“You’re going to run the well dry,” she warned me.

My parents had told me to stop running “so much water.” But I had disobeyed, something that wasn’t done lightly in my home.

I didn’t understand why I felt compelled to wet my hands, soap them up, rub them together for a certain time, then rinse, and then do it all over again, again and again. All while running the water.

My hands and wrists were red and raw looking. But I thought I was just doing what everyone should be doing, washing my hands thoroughly.

I hadn’t heard of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and I don’t think my parents had either.

With the jug of water, I had to pour water out, just enough to wet my hands, then lather up with soap, then pour water on my hands again.

I hated getting soap on the jug when I lifted it to pour out the rinse water.

I worried about so many things: was I getting all of the soap residue off? If not, and I touched a plate or something that someone else might touch and then eat from, then that person could get diarrhea, because I had learned from my mother that eating from dishes not properly rinsed could give people diarrhea.

What if my hands didn’t get clean from the cold water? What if I had germs on them and spread them to others and made them sick?

What if I used all the water in the jug and there was none left, and I still had to wash my hands?

Oh, I hated the jug.

  My mother made me use the jug for a few days, but gradually, I started running the water again, warm water, hot water, to get my hands cleaned well and rinsed well.

  And the jug went away. But nothing else did.

  If you were reading more about this 13-year-old girl, what would you like to know about her?

Unmet goal: Running in the 5K

I won’t be running in a 5K on Thanksgiving Day.

Back in June, I stated publicly on this blog that I had set as a goal to run in the Giblet Jog 5K. I stated it again in August.

But I won’t be able to participate.

The reason I won’t be able to participate is quite simple: I didn’t prepare.

I allowed my procrastination to get the better of me and kept putting off starting an exercise program that would have gotten me on track to run the 5K.

I would occasionally take a walk, and I could recognize how out of shape I was, but I kept thinking, I’ll do it later. I’ll get in shape later. I still have time.

Well, the time has come. The race is in less than two weeks. And though this week I have walked three times, I have done no training in running, and my walking is full of huffs and puffs.

That’s because I’ve also gained weight over the summer.

I know it does no good to beat up on myself. But I am very disappointed in my behavior. I haven’t exercised regularly and I haven’t eaten in a healthy manner.

I’m trying to make changes in my eating habits now, and I plan to keep on walking. When I’ve lost some weight, I want to start jogging.

And maybe I can run in the Giblet Jog 5K next year. Or maybe there will be a race I can run in before then.

How do you stay on track with your exercise and eating plans? Do you have any motivational tips you could share?

Hit-and-run OCD

When I was in graduate school, when my OCD was at is worst, I drove certain streets in my college town a lot.

If I hit a bump in the road, or if I even thought I might have hit a bump, I turned the car around and drove back to look for bodies. Or I stopped in the road to look behind me and try to see if I had hit anyone.

I drove up and down some streets enough that I started to get worried that someone was going to call the police and report someone casing the neighborhood.

My long trips on visits home could turn into nightmares. I remember on one trip, while traveling around Columbus, Ohio, I frantically tried to find a local radio station, listening for any reports of an accident on the freeway that I may have caused.

In reality, I knew I hadn’t caused an accident, but I felt like I may have.

Over the years, the obsession lessened, but I still go through time periods when I obsess over whether or not I’ve hit something or someone with my car.

On my checking hierarchy, hit-and run-OCD is a 70. It causes me some distress, but not as much as numerous other things on my hierarchy.

Here are some recent driving experiences I’ve had:

·  I actually turned around my car to drive back over an area to make sure I hadn’t hit anyone or anything—even though I knew that I had hit rough spot in the road.

·  On a positive note, I drove for about 192 miles round trip recently to attend a church meeting out of town. I didn’t turn around and drive back at all, and I looked in my rear view mirror only occasionally to check the cars behind me.

·  I offered to drive a co-worker to a work related workshop in a nearby town.

·  I drove along a street crowded with trick-or-treaters rather than drive the long way around to avoid them.

The difference between the “bad” driving experience and the successful ones? My willingness to put up with the anxiety until it subsided.

Something that has helped me tremendously is something that Dr. Jonathan Grayson said in his book Freedom from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A Personalized Recovery Program for Living with Uncertainty.

In laying out the rules for doing ERPs for hit-and-run OCD, he says the rules for not driving back and not looking stopping the car to check “may only be violated if you have no doubt that you hit someone—if you have the slightest doubt, continue driving” (p. 162).

This helped me tremendously. I have started applying it to other checking compulsions. I tell myself that if I’m not 100 percent sure that there’s a problem, if there’s any doubt of there being a problem, then I’m not checking.

Sometimes I’m more successful than others, but that mindset is helping me be successful more often. I feel the anxiety of not checking, but I have discovered that it dissipates fairly rapidly once a few minutes have passed and I become focused on something else.

  Do you have anxiety about driving? How have you dealt with it?

My fear hierarchies

In last Friday’s post about my obsessions and compulsions, I mentioned the fear hierarchy.

In his Freedom from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A Personalized Recovery Program for Living with Uncertainty, Dr. Jonathan Grayson defines what that is: “A fear hierarchy is a ranked order of the situations that cause you anxiety, ranked from most to least anxiety-provoking. This hierarchy will be the blueprint for your exposure and response prevention program, guiding your decisions about what to expose yourself to and when” (p. 67-68).

He suggests using a rating of subjective units of discomfort (SUDs) to rank the anxieties (p. 68). Sunny at 71 & Sunny wrote an excellent post about SUDs, and I urge you to check it out.

I’m using a SUDs scale of 1 to 100, with 100 being the worst anxiety, 1 being the least.

I created a fear hierarchy for every type of OCD I experience. The hierarchies help me organize what I want to work on. I am trying to work on exposures from more than one hierarchy each day.

Grayson suggests starting with the lower ranked items, the ones with the lower SUDs (p. 68).

Here are some of my fear hierarchies, which reflect what I'm working on:

Contamination Hierarchy

Toilet in public bathroom 95

Shower walls and floor 90

Rinsing dishes 90

Washing dishes 80

Home bathroom door open 80

Rinsing recyclables 80

Cleaning off stove 80

Floor in public bathroom 70

Toilet seat in own bathroom 70

Sticky substances 70

Greasy substances 70

Kitchen floor 70

Walking in house with no shoes or socks 70

Walking in house with just socks 70

Cleaning off kitchen counter 60

Eating utensils in restaurants 60

Water faucets in public bathroom 50

Brushing teeth 50

Door handles in public places 40

Checking Hierarchy

Cooking on stove 98

Leaving office without checking lamps 90

Leaving home bathroom without checking lights 90

Checking for sharp objects, contaminated objects on floor at home 90

Checking coffeemaker after using 90

Writing without checking/reviewing 90

Reading without going back and rereading 80

Making sure others know of potential dangers 80

Going upstairs without checking basement lights 80

Checking area around dryer for lint 80

Using bath soap/shampoo bottles without rinsing them afterwards 80

Checking dryer vent 80

Checking between washer and dryer 70

Water taps in laundry room 70

Paperwork 70

Checking to be sure razor is on medicine cabinet shelf 70

Making sure others know of recalls 60

Driving 70

Checking food bags to make sure properly sealed 60

Car brake set 50

Mail slot at post office 50

Car doors locked 40

Perfection, Movement and Magic Hierarchy

Nodding my head 90

Being perfectly understood in written words 85

Saying things perfectly 80

Being perfectly understood in spoken words 80

Rewriting words or letters to make them perfect 50

Only buying items that are perfect 40

Counting steps 30

Mental Compulsions Hierarchy

Praying 90

Knowing or learning everything about a subject 80

Checking memory to determine if harmed in past 80

Doubting religious beliefs 80

Analyzing thoughts for appropriateness 70

Past actions, possible sins 70

  Do you think using something like the fear hierarchy would help you make changes?  Have you ever used anything like this before?

November river

  Here are some photos of the Staunton River on a cold November morning:

  What is November like where you live?

Obsessions and compulsions: The worst ones

As I’ve previously written about, I am doing exposure and response prevention therapy on my own through Dr. Jonathan Grayson’s book Freedom from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A Personalized Recovery Program for Living with Uncertainty.

Part of this work in fighting my OCD involves completing checklists to arrive at a list of the obsessions and compulsions that are most troublesome to me.

I like having such a list because it provides me with an idea of what I need to work on the most. And it was eye opening to realize how much OCD affects my daily life.

This list is not a fear hierarchy. As Grayson writes, “A fear hierarchy is a ranked order of the situations that cause you anxiety, ranked from most to least anxiety-provoking” (p. 67).

Rather, this list is a general overview of what my OCD looks like.

But I did use the list to help me come up with my fear hierarchies.

Below is a partial list of my obsessions and compulsions from the checklists that rated a five (highest rating) and a four. In other words, they are the obsessions and compulsions that take up more of my time and attention than others.

I’m providing this information for two reasons. If you have OCD, maybe you’ll see your own obsessions and/or compulsions here, and you will be reminded that you are not alone.

If you don’t have OCD, you will get a sense of some of the obsessions and compulsions that can occupy the life of someone with the disorder.

Obsessions rated at 5

• An accident, illness or injury happening to someone else
• Causing harm to others through my own negligence or carelessness
• Doubt about whether or not I have harmed or injured others in the past
• Bodily waste or secretions
• Perfectly understanding what I have read
• Perfectly communicating my thoughts through writing
• Questioning whether I have told the truth perfectly
• Questioning whether others perfectly understand what I have said
• Doubting my faith or beliefs
• Fears of having acted sinfully or unethically
• Wanting to do, think or say everything (or certain things) perfectly
• Wanting to know everything about a specific subject or topic

Obsessions rated at 4

• Dirt or grime
• Grease or greasy items
• Sticky substances
• Repetitive questions which are unimportant or for which there are no answers
• Excessive awareness of normal bodily functioning (breathing, eyes blinking, heartbeat, etc.)
• Being rejected by a loved one
• Being deliberately sinful or blasphemous

Compulsions rated at 5

• Handling or cooking food
• Using public restrooms
• Electrical appliances
• Stoves
• Light switches
• My paperwork or writing for errors
• Reading or rereading every word in a document to avoid missing anything
• Rewriting or writing over numbers or letters to make them perfect
• Questioning others, or my own memory, to determine if I have harmed or insulted someone (recently or in the past)
• Collecting or removing objects from the environment that could harm others
• Having difficulty using sharp objects
• Checking on the whereabouts of others to be certain that harm has not come to them
• Trying to limit the activities of others to prevent harm from happening to them
• Repeatedly warning others of potential harm or danger
• Saving excessive quantities of informational matter (newspapers, old lists, magazines, junk mail, etc.)

Compulsions rated at 4

• Bathing or showering ritually and/or excessively
• Avoiding specific people, places or objects that may be contaminated
• Excessively questioning others about contamination
• Washing dishes
• Washing clothing
• Driving situations (to verify that I did not hit someone or something with a vehicle)
• Objects dropped accidentally
• Container tops or lids for closure
• Remaking decisions to ensure picking the perfect one
• Moving my body or gesturing in a special way
• Asking others if they will be safe or if things will turn out well for them

Halloween memories

   I hope all of you in Sandy’s path are safe and weathered the storm well. My thoughts and prayers are with those who were injured and killed in the storm and with those suffering from the aftereffects of the storm.

  We got through the wind just fine. It wasn't very bad, and we're very grateful that we didn't even lose power.

***

Since Halloween is today, I thought I’d write a bit about some of my Halloween memories.

When I was a child, I was afraid to say “Trick or Treat.”

I would either let my brother or friends I was with say it, or I would mumble it myself.

I was very shy and timid, and it took all my courage to even walk up to the door and hold out my bag for the candy. To speak out loud? Well, that was too much usually.

I wasn’t afraid of the spooks that might be out and about on Halloween—I was afraid of the people handing out the candy, even though they were people in my community.

But I still enjoyed Halloween—getting dressed up and, the best part, getting candy, which I loved.

We lived out in the country, so we had to load up in the car and drive from house to house to trick or treat.

I remember the year I had a store-bought costume of a princess. It had a blue dress and a mask of a golden haired girl with a crown.

Not many people saw my costume because that year, I wouldn’t even get out of the car. My brother had to go by himself to the doors of the homes we visited. Some of the people put in extra candy for me when they found out I was in the car.

One year, my brother was in the hospital on Halloween. I was staying with my great-aunt. Her daughter took me trick or treating with her daughter. I didn’t have a costume, so my aunt and cousin dressed me in odds and ends to make me look like a man.

Another year I wore an old purple dress that was my mother’s and dressed up with lots of jewelry and make-up and went with some friends of mine.

They knew people I didn’t know, so that year I went to more houses than I ever remember going to. I ended up with a bountiful supply of candy.

I’m sorry to say that I still love candy, too much, and eat too much, especially when it’s around the house and the office like it is now, in preparation for trick-or-treaters.

  What is a Halloween memory that is special to you?