Gratitude VS Panic

Gratitude.

I'm trying so hard to focus on gratitude. (A personal thing, and NOT something I would ever lecture somebody else about doing.)

When I sigh about needing to pee because it means having to wash my hands for the 4th time in the past half-hour, I remember this time last year having to drag a very heavy IV machine along with me in order to do the same thing. No thanks.
I'm grateful to be free of that, to just be me, no cords, no machines, no poles, no IV.

When I feel bored going back & forth between 2 single rooms from morning to night, I remember this time last year spending this time in a rock-hard hospital bed with stiff sheets, in a room that smelled of hospital. I had to put my slippers on every time I left the bed, too.
I'm grateful to be in my own cozy home where I can sit on my cozy sofa or in my cozy bed and feel the cool floor under bare feet & be alone with my husband, and not surrounded by strangers.
As I type this I can hear the train go by. it's cozy.
I'm grateful I can hear the train and the rain from my apartment.
I'm grateful I can open a window (even if I can't really see out of it).

When I feel the suffocating, heart-pounding, obsessive, intrusive, twisted thoughts of OCD burst their way into my head and settle into my stomach like a giant, icy, hard rock, and pinch and bend the tips of my fingers and ankles, and weigh down on my back and shoulders ominously, I don't feel gratitude at all. I feel panic. The type of panic where I plead with my own brain to just stop and let me have some kind of peace so I can go back to appreciating what I have instead of feeling like I'm being attacked and suffocated by my own mind.

I feel like I could just be fine if I could quiet down my mind for even a few days. It's so loud in here, and all of it has been distorted into nonsense.
Nonsense that seems so real.
(What if this time it's real?)

So much gratitude...but too much panic.

OCD Excerpts, part II

I really think I’d be OK and get through this whole quarantine alright if OCD just wasn’t suffocating me. The other day I had an absolute breakdown washing my fridge because I spilled the milk and didn’t know which washcloth I was "supposed" to be switch over to. I kept grabbing new ones and realizing they were “wrong” for some arbitrary reason or other. I couldn’t figure out where to move the cartons to because I had everything in its "right place" and moving anything would require a whole new thought process. My brain completely shut down and everything in front of me looked like complete gibberish. I suddenly couldn't understand anything in front of me or what I was thinking. I couldn't understand what I wanted to think.

I WISH a breakdown for me would just involve crying or yelling, because then I could get it out my system and (maybe) feel better—most importantly, I'd be able to communicate what was wrong!!—but I tend to have to keep everything inside, so instead I just panic more, and things get more and more gibberish-y, and in this incident in particular I just kinda blanked out.
In addition to that, I kept giving myself more and more arbitrary challenges (such as: move this carton here and only here, and use this paper towel this way and no other) as if to prove to myself I could handle the stress caused by all of these arbitrary rules I set myself, set at difficulty level 100.

It's also a way of checking. Checking is such a big part of my OCD. I guess when I do this, I figure if I could handle this random frustration, or this anger caused by this pointless rule I've set myself, then that means I can handle any situation.
It's hard to explain unless you've done the exact same thing.

Mike came over to the fridge help and I just told him nonsense things as my mind was so far into panic, racing with absurdities, that everything just felt like scrambled babbling.
I was trying to clean, trying to re-organize, trying to damage control, but none of it made any sense anymore. Apparently something as small and simple as milk spilling was enough to throw my whole brain into overload.
I couldn't follow what I was doing, or what I was supposed to do be doing. I couldn't follow my own actions. 
And ....what if, during all of that?
What if I sprayed the milk carton (with the windex), instead of the shelf? What if I contaminated the food in some way? What if I secretly really wanted to do it and didn’t even know it?
What if I put Mike in danger through any of this? I got a flash of pushing him away in frustration. What if I had really pushed him? (Even though I've never done that in my life.) What if I had lost my patience more? What if I pushed him and he hit his head or something dangerous?
And yeah, I've NEVER pushed him in my entire life, but OCD is just full of those "what-ifs", always imaging the worst-case scenarios (and sometimes really absurd ones), no matter how unlikely they are. And they feel so real. 
If you've been through enough therapy, you know the thoughts are unimportant and don't mean anything, but they're still unpleasant beyond belief and can feel super scary...especially during times of high stress like this, when all the strategies I learned in therapy suddenly seem to not work.

Anyway, going back to that moment--I couldn’t even keep track of my thoughts to “check them”, to reassure myself that they were the "right" thoughts to have as I was in such a flustered panic, so I couldn't really follow nor understand my line of thinking during those moments.

This is probably for the best, as I shouldn't be "checking" my thoughts; that's giving into the OCD. I'm not supposed to check my thoughts or try to suppress them--I'm supposed to just let them be. Which I did, unwillingly. So in some ways I handled this right, but it doesn't feel like it. I prefer to know what I was thinking at all times, even though that's not the way things can always be, and I have to accept that.

I plan to write an entry about how I learned to handle these obsessive thoughts in therapy. It's very interesting! I'm so grateful for all the CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) and all it's done for me. What a life-changer (and saver)!

OCD excerpts

My OCD is out of control. It hasn't been like this in 20 years.

My OCD centers on being afraid of harming people or letting harm come to them. I’m not so afraid of getting Covid as I am afraid of Mike getting it (or me letting him get it or causing him to get it).

Lately a typical day goes something like this:

Did Mike touch that? Did I warn him to wash that or not to touch that?
He shouldn't have touched that, we have to clean that now, should I clean it?
Cleaning it might infect him, I should be watching him, I should have seen that, why wasn't I watching what he was doing?
What was I thinking at the moment?
Why was I thinking that?
In what order was I thinking those things?
What does that mean?
Could he have gotten sick because I wasn't paying attention?
I should pay more attention. What have I been paying attention to?
What was I saying when I was thinking, and what was I thinking about?
I need a quiet place to go think about all the possibilities of things I might have thought and could have thought and what I could have done if they might have happened.
I need to warn him about more things.
I need to wash more things.
Oh, I touched the side of my nose or purse. That could infect him if I touch him. I have to go wash my hands again even though they're bleeding.
What if I had touched him before I realized? Was I not being vigilant enough?
Why did hesitate to wrap that food better? Did I secretly want to hurt him?
I need to watch him to make sure he doesn’t eat that without me warning him I might not have wrapped it properly.
What if I didn't wash this dish this right?
What was I thinking when I washed it? In what order?
I should start over and was the same dishes over again.
Just to be safe.
I don't want to do that. But if I don't do it, then am I being irresponsible?
I should re-wrap that food.
But then I have to wash my hands again.
Why did I hesitate to wash my hands?

This used to be 4-5 hours of my day, but it’s now stretched to 10-12 hours of my day. Thankfully my next therapy phone appointment is on April 24th. What would we do without the tireless heroes of the medical world, especially in times like these? So grateful.