Tag: Beating OCD

Magical Thinking – OCD

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It feels weird to actually put proper names to things which have been part of me for so long.  ‘Magical thinking OCD’ is, I think one of the hardest parts of OCD for someone without it to understand.  For someone with ‘Magical thinking OCD’ it is one of the most terrifying parts, there is no rhyme or reason to it.  You are aware as someone with OCD experiencing the thoughts that they are completely irrational but the feelings inside our so strong you can’t take the chance.

With a very quick google this definition came up, which for those who don’t have ‘Magical thinking OCD’ I thought summed it up quite well:

” Magical thinking is an illogical thought pattern characterized by the linking of unrelated actions or events. Individuals may become preoccupied with lucky or unlucky numbers, colours, words, actions, sayings or superstitions and link them to catastrophe or ‘bad things’ that might happen”

I have had lots of these ‘magical thoughts’ over the years.  I hated the colour red (blood, contamination etc) and certain words like AIDS (still hard to even write it here).  I have also had massive issues with the ‘finalisation’ of things.  Such as thoughts associated with leaving somewhere for the last time (maybe a holiday cottage) or clicking the ‘buy’ button online, as if a horrible thought comes into my head whilst I was doing it, such as: ‘You’re going to die from cancer’ then because I can’t repeat the action (compulsion) it creates anxiety and all the associated OCD baggage.

Over the years it has made doing almost anything particularly stressful and taken the pleasure out of pretty much everything.  Wedding dress shopping, venue picking, holidays, travel, work, driving, well everything.

It is one of the hardest aspects of OCD to kick and it’s one of the most embarrassing to talk about because you know in your heart of hearts that the thoughts are irrational but you just can’t get your mind to believe that.

Ultimately magical thinking is just another way of us not being able to accept and sit with uncertainty.  There will be certain themes which you find distressing and OCD will spot a weakness and pounce.  It is just another way to occupy your thoughts and cause you distress.  A lot of the time I think magical thinking catches us because it can seem easier in the moment to just do the compulsion – whatever it may be – but ultimately the brain just thinks the compulsion solved the issue and so the next time we find ourselves in the same situation again, up pops the magical thought and the urge to do the compulsion, because hey, last time we did the compulsion and it worked.

The only way through this one is to not do the compulsion and sit with the uncertainty, in fact you need to willingly accept the uncertainty to really let the brain know it’s, ‘all good’, and that there’s nothing to be concerned about.

Why not try out: ‘Thanks brain that’s exactly the thought I wanted right now’, the next time it throws the magical thought your way.

The more you let the thoughts be, the easier it becomes every time.  Even though the thoughts still come, you will be able to dismiss them quicker and quicker and an hour later you won’t even remember the thought you had, hard to believe I know but this is true.

Ironically just not doing anything can feel like the biggest mountain to climb, as humans we like to do and fix and sort problems but really with OCD and anxiety too we just have to sit with and accept that uncomfortable feeling.

Know that completing the compulsion will have ZERO effect on whether a thought happens or not.  We cannot make things happen with our thoughts, we are not magical.

You could sit there and think about winning the lottery but my guess is it won’t happen unless you actively go out and buy a ticket and even then.  You cannot manifest things you don’t want either, with manifesting you have to want the thing, badly and actively pursue it. The distress the thought causes you is all the proof you should need that this is not the case.

Sit with it, accept it, be OK with uncertainty.  

and Relax, nothing is under control.

You can do this!

Stay strong xxx

OCD – Letting Things Slip

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Recently I seem to have let things get on top of me a bit, life has been so busy and I caught a few bugs over the winter period which have set me back a bit.

OCD recovery is a very delicate balance, it is really important not to take your eye off the ball but if you do it can start to slip before you really notice.

So the results of not feeling great and having less time have been that I’ve:

  • Eaten more junk food
  • Exercised less
  • Not worked on my mindfulness
  • Not given myself any time

All of this has resulted in my anxiety levels rising and my motivation to get out and do things falling.

So now I’ve noticed that this is happening (yes, I didn’t notice straight away) what can I do to get myself back on track?

  • Well the first thing I’am doing is writing this blog post, hopefully this will really help me pay attention and take action.
  • I am going to make a conscious effort not to reach for the snack food first and up my fruit, veg and general healthy food intake.
  • Get out at least once a day in the fresh air and try and do it mindfully.
  • I am going to try and carve out some time for myself, this one is hard when you have a family but I really do think it is important, after all if you’re not on top form how can you give the rest of your family 100%.

One really important thing to remember not to do (and which I am currently telling myself) is beat yourself up for slipping.  It happens to us all, recovery is not a straight line, the important thing is to notice and get yourself back on track asap.

So a bit of a post for me this week, hopefully it might help someone else too, perhaps I can add writing more inspirational blog posts to my targets too!

For now please bear with me you wonderful people and as always,

Stay Strong xxx

 

OCD – Coming out of the Lows

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Nowadays this is something I’m finding a little easier.  As you get stronger and better at dealing with your OCD you also start to know that the low days will pass and that you will feel happier again.  It’s not always easy to believe it when you’re in the depths of a low, I know that for sure but I also know it to be true.

Over the years I’ve had long periods where I’ve felt I’ll never feel happy again, I couldn’t see ways out of the thoughts and when I’d get over one another would come swooping in and take me down again.  How I got through this part I’m really not sure, I think I spent a lot of my late teens and early twenties in quite a depressed state which I self medicated myself through with alcohol.  I had rubbish job after rubbish job which I didn’t seem to be able to lift myself out of and I just didn’t look after myself in anyway.  In fact I am sitting here now thinking; how did I pull myself up and out?

It definitely wasn’t an overnight fix and I definitely think it coincided with meeting my now husband.  He gave me something worth fighting for (might sound a bit lame but in all honesty it’s true).  He valued me and so I started to value myself more, no one else had ever done that in the same way.  I have to say this was only the starting point though, I still got a lot of dark periods.  When you’re feeling low the world can feel pointless, everything can feel dark and you just want to curl up and block out everything.

So how do I pull myself out now?  I have to say I don’t have the massive lows as often anymore but when they do come it’s always good to have a go to plan, so here’s my attempt at one, which can hopefully help you guy’s too.

So depending on how low you feel the options may vary a bit but here goes:

  • If you can get out of the house – fresh air and socialising are really important
  • If that’s too much write a list of all the things you have to be grateful for; health, family, friends, the roof over your head, food in your stomach, re-read it whenever you feel low.
  • Watch a feel good movie
  • Talk to a close friend/family member, if they’re free see if they can come over
  • Find someone who will give you a hug – this always feels good
  • If you have an animal pet it, this I am told helps to release feel good hormones and reduce stress
  • If this isn’t the first time you’ve experienced a low then remember that you do come out of these periods.  If it is your first one, trust that it does pass.
  • If you’re feeling like you can’t cope, talk to a medical professional.
  • Treat yourself to something you enjoy, always treat yourself with compassion.

If you are a friend or family member looking for advice on how to support someone going through a low this can be tough but always persevere they need you so much, even if they’re not showing it (which they probably won’t be).

I hope some of these things can help, they’re just my personal list and like I have said before I am not a medical professional, just someone recovering and trying to share something that may help someone else.

Stay Strong, you are not alone xxx

 

OCD – Procrastination

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Now I’ve been dealing with my OCD demons for a fair few years now (over 20!) and although I feel I’ve gotten to grips with them to a certain extent, I know if I really look at my life that they still hold me back in many areas.

I have, I believe, reached a sort of plateau or ‘comfy place’ in my life and though this isn’t necessarily a bad thing – to have a steady job, relationship and social life – it does make it quite easy to just coast along.  Never having to step outside of my comfort zone means some of my OCD ‘fears’ can just be left and never confronted so to speak.  It also means that when something does come along where I do need to step out of my comfort zone – say I have to drive somewhere new/faraway –  normally my first reaction is to feel anxious and think of all the things that could go wrong, catastrophize.

Another side effect of my ‘comfy zone’ is that I never seem to get anything unessential done, things are only sorted when they have to be, rather then when they should be and therefore normally done in a rush and without much thought.  I believe this stems partly from my fear of making decisions.  Final decisions can have OCD thoughts associated with them and so cause me anxiety, therefore I avoid them where I can, naughty, naughty I know.

I feel I do get overwhelmed quickly and it doesn’t take much for me to start spiralling out of control, it definitely makes achieving things tricky.  It can also make me lazy, if I can pass a decision/activity on to someone else then normally I will, not good for OCD recovery I know and ultimately very frustrating for me.

So less of my moaning anyway, lets see if I can try and implement some solutions rather then posing endless problems.

My overall aims are to become more confident, to not let anxiety be the first thing to hit me when trying something new, to find solutions rather than problems and tackle my OCD head on and not avoid it.

  • I think I might start with a list, by writing down all the things I have been putting off/avoiding and then finding a way to tackle them one at a time it will feel less overwhelming and more manageable.
  • It would also help to see new experiences as exciting rather than scary, after all if we never do anything new how do we learn/progress?
  • I should have more confidence and believe myself worthy of new experiences.
  • I should try and get to the route cause of what is causing the anxiety and tackle it head on.
  • Remember that uncertainty is a good thing, would we want to be certain about everything?  There is a good exercise for dealing with uncertainty here.
  • Looking towards end goals and achievements will help to spur me on.
  • Accepting the worse case scenarios so I have nothing to fear.

Wow, so that’s quite a list.  Even the list itself feels a bit overwhelming to be honest but by just trying to take one step at a time hopefully I will start to achieve more of my goals.

Hopefully it can help you too.

Stay Strong xxx

 

OCD – The Grey Area

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I have recently been exploring the OCD community a bit more.  Looking out for new resources and ideas for continued recovery is always a good idea.  In the past I’ve been quite scared of other OCD blogs and forums as I have had times where I’ve just been reading about other peoples OCD thoughts and experiences and this has sometimes made my OCD worse – not what I went looking for.  However as I’ve gotten stronger my curiosity about who else is out there, fighting the OCD battle has been piqued so to say.

Today I was listening to a podcast from the OCD stories website, a fantastic resource which I would definitely recommend.  It was episode 104 of their podcast and something that Dr Elizabeth McIngvale said that really struck me.  She said ‘OCD isn’t black and white’.  Wow I thought, now this can be applied to OCD on so many levels.

I think when you have OCD you do think about a lot of things as being black and white, especially if you catastrophise things.  Always jumping to the worst outcome and blocking out any other possibilities, OCD feeds off your darkest fears – definitely black.  So if we can remember to pull back when a thought hits and remember that life is actually made up of lots of shades of grey rather then extremes then this could help to lessen the strength of the thought.

Another time when it’s easy to think of things in black and white – when you really shouldn’t (which was also touched on in the podcast) is through your recovery.  One bad day or compulsion which you give into, does not mean you’re back to square one.  Be calm about it, take note of why it happened, do something about it if you can and then move on. Don’t feel guilty or upset, just let it go.  Easier said then done I realise but the less time you give the thought to begin with, the easier it will just slip away, never to return.

It can be easy to want OCD to vanish completely and for some people I believe it does but an acceptance of the fact that you may sit in the grey area for ever is important and that that’s actually ok.  Afterall it’s ‘normal’ to have intrusive thoughts, it’s just your ability to process them that is the issue.

I believe it’s really important to keep in mind that one in four people at any one time is suffering from some sort of mental health issue and so you are more normal then you think.  We, most of us are floating along in the grey area which always makes me feel less alone.

Stay Strong xxx

OCD – Food

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The title ‘Food’ probably sounds all a bit random but for me if has been one of my long standing OCD ‘issues’ which annoyingly I’m STILL fighting to this day.

Over the years some of my OCD intrusive thoughts and habits have become really ingrained in me and they’re so annoyingly hard to crack, argh!  Driving is one of them – so many variations on one theme – and food is definitely another.  There are just so many different ways that you can obsess over food.

It’s hard to give examples without going down the rabbit hole (which I promised not to do on this site) but just as a couple of random samples (please feel free to skip over the next two paragraphs if you feel this could trigger your OCD):

1: Today for instance (hence what prompted this post) when I came to open the meat I was using to make a stew the top of the packet was slightly loose.  Now I’m more then aware this probably happened when I was getting it out of the freezer and that it’s absolutely fine but that didn’t stop my intrusive thoughts going off on all kind of possibilities about how the meat might not have been sealed properly when it was packed and all manor of bacteria etc etc might have gotten in, blah blah blah.

2: The other day I threw an entire meal in the bin because I had burnt it slightly and I just couldn’t get past it.

Right examples over I promise, I will not share anymore of my intrusive thoughts. 

Needless to say this has been a real issue for me over the years and still is.  I think it has been harder since I have been cooking for my little boy as well.  It makes fighting the thoughts even trickier as I’m not just saying ‘I don’t mind eating burnt food’, I also have to justify in my head serving it to the most important person in my life, this makes things really hard.

So last week I failed and the entire meal went in the bin – not for the first time I’m sad to say.  I cringe at the waste when there are people in this world with hardly anything.  I get annoyed at myself for giving into the OCD again.  It makes me sad that something I should enjoy – cooking – I now find quite stressful.

So today I didn’t give in and I cooked and ate the stew.  I battled my intrusive thoughts for half the day as a result but I am proud that I did – as hard as it was.  Will I be able to fight it next time, I don’t know but I will keep fighting and maybe one day the thoughts won’t even come and I won’t have to fight it at all, now that’s something to aim for.

Stay Strong xxx

OCD – Unexpected Events

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So these are always fun.  You’ve been coping nicely with your OCD and you think you have everything under control and then bam, out of nowhere, something unexpected happens.

This happened to me this week, it snowed and we got loads of the stuff.  Normally this would be an event for celebration as it would mean, time off work, lots of fun to be had, perfect bliss but when you have a 1 year old who has only just learnt to walk and isn’t terribly keen on walking in 6 plus inches of snow and you can’t get your car off the drive then you are faced with a potentially stressful situation.

Most people who have suffered from some sort of mental health issue will know that getting out, even if it’s just for a walk is very important.  Being stuck in with only 4 walls as your friends can be unwise and so I’ve got to say the last 5 days have really tested me.

My normal routine (something that helps keep me grounded) was thrown out of the window.  My food shopping delivery was cancelled twice and so I’ve had to improvise there as well, working on limited supplies and having to adapt to new food brands and shops (as anyone with OCD will know familiar things bring calmness).

You know what though, I have survived and I have been able to adapt and so what I should draw from the last 5 days is that I am more adaptable now then I have ever been.  Even by writing that statement I am now looking back more positively on the last 5 days.  My perspective has been changed and so maybe this is the lesson I should pull from this experience.

Everything we go through teaches us something.   If we can look back on past events and try and find a positive lesson from the experience rather then a negative one, then maybe our memories will be more positive and we will look back happily instead of negatively.  I personally don’t have many good memories, most of them are tainted by OCD but perhaps I can now reflect back and see if I can put a positive slant on them?

Hopefully this can help you too, try and see the positive lesson from a bad OCD experience/memory.

Stay Strong xxx

OCD – Setting yourself up to fail

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So once you’ve had OCD for a while you start to know what your ‘triggers’ are.  These ‘triggers’ can then start to control your behaviour.  For me, public toilets, driving at night and drinking are just three of the things I can think of that can cause me anxiety, even before an event occurs.  Most of this anxiety is triggered I guess, from past experiences.

If I go into a public toilet and there’s something on the seat, this will cause anxiety, intrusive thoughts etc but I’m going to take a punt and say not many people would like to sit on something unknown on a toilet seat?

Unfortunately for me that’s just where it begins, if there is a mark on the toilet paper dispenser or on the toilet roll itself – here’s betting most people don’t even look at the toilet roll – these can immediately trigger intrusive thoughts which can stay with me for at least the rest of the day.  I’ve already mentioned in a previous post that I always rip off the first piece of toilet roll wherever I am through fear of contamination.  If someone has placed the toilet roll on top of the sanitary bin or on the floor then that can be game over, I just turn around and walk back out.

I’ve already blogged about driving and some of the anxiety it causes me but at night I would say everything is multiplied and it’s much harder to dismiss, potholes, bumps in the road, noises from the car etc.  I would say every time I drive somewhere at night I get back home and there’s some sort of intrusive thought on my mind which I just can’t budge, so frustrating.

So if you start to get anxious before you even get to your ‘trigger’ situation you are completely setting yourself up to fail.  Your mind is already putting the thoughts into your head before you’ve even tried and so it creates a viscous cycle, which causes reluctance to do things and go places and so starts to create behavioural changes.

I’m not sure I will ever completely free myself of some of my OCD intrusive thoughts and thinking patterns, some of them are so ingrained in me after so many years.  I do still make myself face them day in and day out but who knows if I will ever completely win.  I guess the fact that I’m not letting them stop me doing things nowadays is a win in itself.  To live life without the thoughts at all is the battle.

So the point of this post was to try and find a way of avoiding the preemptive anxiety, somehow trying not to fail before you’ve even tried.  It’s such a tricky one because as soon as you start thinking about the situation you’ll probably start feeling anxious about it, another one of those ‘don’t think about the pink elephant in the room’ situations.

I would say the best way to try to combat the preemptive anxiety would be mindfulness.  If you are living in the moment then you shouldn’t be worrying about whats happening later.  If you know you have one of your triggers coming up, then do everything you can not to think ahead to it until you have to, this should help to stop the anxiety kicking in too early.

Every time you face one of your fears and succeed make a mental note of how amazing you are for beating the OCD and anxiety.  We never give ourselves enough credit when we do well and we always beat ourselves up when we are weak – human nature I guess. Make a list of every win and refer back to it every time you are struggling.

Stay Strong xxx

 

 

Reflection

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So I’ve been writing this blog for 6 months now.  This for me is a massive achievement as I find it incredibly hard to concentrate on anything for a sustained period of time.  I get terribly excited about the idea of things but when I realise I’m going to have to apply myself and my mind fully, often I find myself unable to.  Focusing my mind on something, really concentrating, has always been difficult for me, my mind is quite often off, distracted, somewhere else.

There have been many reasons for this over the years, at times my OCD would apply fears/thoughts to actions.  I can remember practising my piano when I was younger and having to keep playing the same piece until I’d managed to get through the whole thing without a bad thought entering my head.  Sometimes I would have to play the piece four times because that’s how many members of my family there were at the time and if I didn’t then something bad would happen to one of them.

I like baking but if I am making a cake and I see a little mark in one of the eggs or perhaps a crumb gets into the mixture then the whole activity can become hugely stressful.  I don’t know how many cake mixes I’ve thrown away over the years through fear of them being contaminated.

The list goes on and on, I find it so hard to get my head into an activity and apply myself  without having to deal with some sort of OCD thought along the way.  I am guessing this is quite common for people with OCD?

OCD makes everything more difficult, cooking, relaxing, driving, decorating, seeing people, going places, work, relationships, pregnancy, events, absolutely everything I do is just a bit harder and over the years I’ve just had to get stronger and stronger to deal with it.

So how have I dealt with it?   

  1. I’ve talked to people
  2. I’ve had CBT therapy
  3. I’ve faced it head on
  4. I’ve learnt to control my thoughts better (most of the time)
  5. I distract myself
  6. I breath through the anxiety when it hits.
  7. I remove myself from stressful situations (when I can)
  8. I’ve read blogs
  9. I’ve started to practice mindfulness
  10. I’ve read books
  11. I’ve learnt what my triggers are
  12. I’ve learnt what relaxes me
  13. I’ve learnt to appreciate what I have
  14. I understand that the thoughts and anxiety will pass in time
  15. I’ve learnt to like myself more
  16. I’ve learnt to be kinder to myself
  17. I’ve educated myself

To be honest this list could probably go on and on.  It makes me realise how far I have come since I was 11, scared, not knowing what was happening to me, completely alone, feeling out of control and upset.  This was the reason I started this blog, no one should have to feel the way I did, ever!

Actually this blog has been very cathartic as well – which I didn’t see coming – so I would probably add ‘write’ to the list above.

I hope by sharing what I am learning and what I have learnt I will be of some help to others.  Life can be pretty tough at times and we all need to talk more to each other about whats going on inside our minds.

I feel like OCD in particular is a hard one for people to talk about as there’s normally an element of being ashamed of or embarrassed by the thoughts.  I guess if they were ‘normal’ thoughts there wouldn’t be an issue.

We must remember that everyone has intrusive thoughts, most people are just able to dismiss them straight away and so they never take hold.  As soon as you notice the thought and give it some time it makes the thought stronger and then if you keep thinking back to it, even if it’s only to think ‘why have I had that thought’ then it will get stronger and stronger and so the viscous cycle continues.

So to sum up the last six months have been a huge learning curve for me, thanks for everyone who’s followed so far, I really hope it’s been of some use.  Here’s to the next six.

Stay Strong xxx

 

OCD – Driving

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So this has been a huge one for me over the years and it still affects me today.  I guess with OCD there’s an element of wanting to control as much of your surroundings as possible and when it comes to driving, even though you have control over the car itself, you have no control over anyone else on the road, pavement, carpark etc etc and so my OCD is able to go a bit crazy.

Checking mirrors multiple times, not driving to certain places because I don’t like the road or car park, avoiding driving at night and driving back to check roads where I’m sure that a pot hole was me driving over a person/animal.  I’ve done it all through the years and at times I’ve felt like giving up driving completely  – luckily I am a bit stubborn.

I do think there are lots of crossovers with this one.  I definitely know people who also get quite anxious and worried about driving in general, who don’t have OCD but the difference is when they get to their destination, they can switch off and know they arrived safely.

For me I find I’m calmer in the car but once I’m done and get out, that’s when the OCD thoughts start to kick in.  Obviously I can’t remember every single step of the journey therefore how can I know that I didn’t hit anyone/thing etc etc.  For me this has been one of the most limiting parts of my OCD, its stopped me going places, seeing friends, it’s trapped me in the house for days at a time, while I wait for the police to come and arrest me, so they can tell me what I’ve actually done.  Gosh writing it down sounds crazy but when you’re going through it, it feels so real.

However on a brighter note I do believe I’ve made progress when it comes to driving this past year.  I’ve had to push myself to go to places I would of previously avoided, which has pushed me to face my fears.  Sadly as with most of the things that cause us stress, facing them head on is normally the solution.

Talking to my husband about the thing that’s stressing me out has also helped, particularly if he’s in the car at the time, as he will know whether it’s happened or not – this one should be used with caution, as obviously there won’t always be someone else in the car and you need to be able to overcome your fears on your own but sometimes just saying it out load can diminish the thoughts power over you.

Trusting yourself is another solution, this one can be really hard but knowing that you are a good driver and will be able to react to changing situations if you come upon them is essential for confident driving.

Knowing that it’s actually more dangerous to be continually checking your mirrors and not concentrating on the road ahead properly.

One of the things that makes driving particularly tricky to master is that it’s a constantly changing situation, every time you go out in the car the circumstances will be different.  You have to learn to trust yourself and your reactions.

As with most of the things I blog about, I am still wading my way through them myself, so I hope the above has been helpful.  As I find new ways of coping with driving, I will share them on here to try and help others.  Please feel free to share any tips you have for overcoming driving with OCD in the comments below.

Stay Strong xxx