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)!
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