Looking forward to 2013

In my last post, I wrote about 2012. In this, my last post for the year, I’m looking forward to 2013.

Usually I make some New Year’s resolutions. Last year, I tried setting some goals. But I think I set too many and my attention got scattered.

This year, I am thinking of a theme to carry me through the year and to guide my goals. That theme is “Letting go.”

Letting go is something that I need to practice. Letting go of fear, of anger, of resentment. Letting go of feelings of helplessness and worthlessness.

And in letting go of these things, I am leaving room for courage, compassion, peace. I am leaving room for hope and initiative and a healthy self-esteem.

I have been thinking of “Letting go” for a while, and it seems a good thing for me to concentrate on this year.

I will let it guide me in making decisions about my health (physical, mental, emotional and spiritual), my relationships and my work (which is more than my job).

I’m looking forward to 2013, and I hope you are too. I wish you all a joyful and peaceful New Year and beyond. God’s blessings to you!

What about you? Are you setting any resolutions or goals for the New Year? What do you want 2013 to be like for you?

Looking back at 2012

I’ve been thinking about what kind of year 2012 has been. I guess it’s not unusual to do that as the year winds down to a close and the new year begins in just a few days.

As I thought about the themes of this blog—living with obsessive-compulsive disorder while also dealing with depression and anxiety—I kept coming back to what has played a big role in my life this year: therapy.

I thought about the many times this year that I’ve climbed the front steps and walked into the red brick building where my therapist and my psychiatrist have their practices.

I have spent hours in their offices, feeling the gamut of emotions: fear, anger, joy, sadness.

I’ve talked, I’ve listened, I’ve role played, I’ve wept.

I’ve heard things and learned things that have reached my very core.

I had been away from any type of therapy other than “medication checks” with my psychiatrist for many years, but I had the goal of starting exposure and response prevention therapy, or ERP therapy as I started the year.

I had my first appointment with my psychologist in January. At that time I discovered that we would do cognitive behavior therapy instead of strictly ERP therapy, which was fine with me.

My therapist and I worked on my OCD for a while, and I made headway in learning to accept and deal with anxiety instead of doing compulsions to try to lessen it. I did ERP exercises and reported back to my therapist.

The therapy took a turn in April when my therapist noted that my depression—which he diagnosed as chronic—was affecting my ability to deal with the OCD and other anxiety.

We started CBASP therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy. It’s made up of intense sessions using situational analysis. These sessions have chipped away at the anger and subsequent helplessness that feeds the depression.

In October, I decided I needed to simultaneously work more on the OCD, so I started doing more ERP on my own, using as a guide Dr. Jonathan Grayson’s Freedom from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A Personalized Recover Program for Living with Uncertainty.

Compared to this time last year, I feel like I’ve moved down the path towards real recovery. I deal better with my interpersonal relationships, my OCD is better under control and I feel hope that I’m going to get better.

All this has reminded me of the importance of treatment for OCD and for depression and anxiety. There are many kinds of treatment, and each person is different. Different things may work for different people. The point is to reach out and get the treatment that is right for you.

I plan to continue climbing up those front steps in 2013.


What are some of the things 2012 has taught you?

OCD and Christmas Day

I hope everyone is well and at peace, and if you celebrate Christmas, I hope you had a wonderful day.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were both busy and fun for Larry and me. We visited with his mother and my mother, attended the candlelight service at church on Christmas Eve and enjoyed time together. It was a wonderful holiday.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder didn’t ruin the holiday, but I found it sneaking in a few times to remind me that it’s still there, Christmas or not.

I felt it Christmas morning, when Larry and I opened our gifts to each other.

We keep our wrapped gifts on the dining room table until Christmas morning because our cat Sam likes to chew on boxes, wrapping paper and ribbons. She can’t climb up on the table anymore, so it’s the safest place we can keep them.

Christmas morning we took the wrapped presents to the big tree and sat in front of it to open our gifts. We had Celtic Christmas music playing, and it was a peaceful and fun time as we discovered what we had picked out for each other.

We were prepared. We had a trash bag to put the used wrapping paper in, and a box to put the ribbons in.

But I still found myself anxious about leaving a piece of paper, a bit of tape or a sliver of ribbon on the carpet for the cats to eat.

So I grabbed the paper and tape from Larry’s hands as soon as he tore it from a package and stuffed it down in the trash bag. Then I scanned the carpet for any pieces I might have missed.

It was not a big deal, compared to some other compulsions I have and have had in the past, but it was enough to take my mind momentarily off the festivities.

The real anxiety-producing obsession came later, when we visited my mother and had dinner with her.

She lives in an assisted living home, and has a large bedroom and bath, plus a lovely living room and dining room that she shares with the other ladies that live there.

My brother and his wife were also visiting, so we had to get an extra chair out in mother’s room where we talked with each other after dinner. Mother had a folder chair stored behind her bathroom door, so I got that out to sit in.

When it came time for Larry and I to leave, I refolded the chair and put it back behind the door.

That’s when the self-questioning started.

What if I didn’t set it firmly enough against the wall? What if I didn’t balance it well enough? If it fell, it might cause my mother to fall.

I turned the chair both ways and leaned it against the wall. I couldn’t tell which way made the chair more balanced, so I asked Larry to look at it.

My mother heard me and said, “There’s a certain a way you put it so it won’t fall.”

I asked, “Which way?”

My mother just said, “There’s one way to put it so it won’t fall.”

I was really anxious then. She apparently didn’t know how it should be set up, just that it had to be a certain way.

Larry looked at it and moved it around a little. We did our best to set it right.

He told me later that he thought he understood what my mother meant and put the heaviest part of the chair against the wall.

But as we said our goodbyes and left, it stayed on my mind. What if the chair fell? What if my mother fell?

Outside, my brother was taking a smoke break. I knew he was going back in, so I asked him to check the chair again for us to make sure it wouldn’t fall. He agreed to.

Looking back on it now, I should have just let it go. The chair was fine the way Larry and I had it. But I wanted the extra “checking” that my brother would give it.

Small things in the grand scheme of OCD, but they were enough to give me pause during the day.

Did OCD or anxiety sneak into your holiday activities?

Merry Christmas



Our big Christmas tree.





Our little Christmas tree.



 



Larry made the Christmas trees surrounding Santa in our front yard.





The manager scene.



We include a stocking for each cat, including stockings in memory of Waddles and Thunder Cat.



From my heart to yours, Merry Christmas!

Spirit of hope

As I write this Thursday night, it’s raining and cold outside. I just got home from work, and a hot shower has helped my chilled bones.

And I’m thinking about what this day has brought me.

This morning, my husband and I did our second stint of ringing the bells for the Salvation Army. But I didn’t think much about my OCD this time.

Instead, I enjoyed seeing people’s generosity. I enjoyed their friendliness in saying hello or Merry Christmas. I enjoyed seeing children coming up to slip their money into the slots of the bucket top.

This afternoon, as part of my job as a newspaper reporter, I interviewed an investigator with the sheriff’s office who is retiring after 30 years.

I listened to his stories of his time of service and was impressed by his commitment to the victims he encountered and their families, his commitment to giving them some kind of closure.

This evening, also as part of my job, I covered a vigil held to remember the victims of the Newtown, Connecticut shootings.

In the pouring rain, people huddled together under umbrellas, holding candles and praying and singing.

I saw a lot of hope today.

I saw hope for those in poverty, those who have been victims of crimes, those who are in need of comfort and peace.

I felt hope in my heart at a time when I needed it.

I saw and felt the spirit of hope move throughout this day.

May the spirit of hope move throughout our lives this season and always.

Have you seen any signs of hope lately?

Wishing as an OCD obsession

I went to two undergraduate colleges. The first was a state university.

I left after two years because I told myself I was homesick and wanted to go to college closer to home.

I lived at home and attended a local college for two years and finished my degree.

The real reason I left the state university? I was suffering from deep, untreated depression and increasing symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and I thought going home would help alleviate my pain.

I have regretted the decision for the many years since I made the change after my second year at the university.

The university was more prestigious than the smaller college, and I have wished I had stayed. Perhaps I would have had more and better job opportunities, I’ve thought. Perhaps I would have done better in life. Perhaps I would be happier now. So goes my thinking.

I never attributed this type of thinking to obsessive-compulsive disorder until I read about wishing in Dr. Jonathan Grayson’s Freedom from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A Personalized Recovery Program for Living with Uncertainty.

Grayson names several functions of rituals, one of which is wishing: “Everyone has dreams, hopes, and wishes; these lie at the core of our creativity and humanity’s greatest achievements. However, when we pursue an impossible wish, it can lead to our downfall” (p. 40).

He uses as an example a man who left college for a short time because of his OCD. “He constantly obsessed about the events of that year and how much better his life would have been if he hadn’t dropped out. In other words, he was constantly wishing he could undo his negative experience.” (p. 40).

That example struck a chord in me. I realized that my thoughts of regret—which I still had 27 years after graduating—were based on an obsession. I have been wishing that things could be different, haunted by my decisions, playing over in my mind how things might have been.

But I’ve been wishing for something impossible. I can’t go back and change the decision I made.

With the realization that my thinking was an OCD obsession, I’ve been working on ending the wishing.

Getting away from this type of wishing is giving me a new attitude. Instead of spending time regretting the past, I am slowly getting better at focusing on the present and what is in front of me. I am getting better at focusing on things that I do have control over.

  And I’m getting better at facing the fact that there’s no certainty involved here: I don’t know that my life would have been better if I had stayed at the state university. It might have been better. It might have been worse.

I’ll never know. And I don’t need to know.

Have you held on to wishes for too long?

Praying for Newtown

I’m sure that the thoughts and prayers of all of us have been with those involved in the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on Friday.

I can’t truly imagine the depth of the pain that the families of the victims and the survivors are feeling.

I feel like all I can do is pray, and praying is not always easy, especially when my thoughts and feelings seem numb from the shock of such news.

On Friday, as news about the shootings came out, my pastor posted the following on Facebook:

In the face of the violence we have seen today in CT, the most appropriate prayer seems to me to be a simple one: Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.

That’s what I have been praying: Lord, have mercy.