Skip to main content

A small victory in the OCD fight

In OCD terms, I catastrophize. My brain takes situations to the extreme, often resulting in horrific outcomes -- in my mind.

So I'm pleased with the battle I won last night with OCD.

I fell asleep on the couch and woke about 12:30 in the morning. I got up and reached down for my computer bag to bring it over to the dining room table.

It was about a 20-foot walk from couch to table, but in that short distance I felt a searing pain up my left arm, across my back and down through my right arm. I was losing the grip on the bag and barely made it to the table before dropping it.

Then I felt a sharp pain in my chest.

Typically, OCD would have taken over about this time and told me I was having a heart attack, something my brain has been expecting for years.

Or it would have tried the degenerative spine scare -- telling me I've put off surgery for too long and now I'm going to be paralyzed.

But to my surprise, neither of those health threats came to mind. I was able to swipe away the OCD and figure that the pain, though severe, was most likely the result of my new -- and poorly designed  -- upper-body workout routine.

Victory! I went to bed and fell asleep.

Somewhere during the night, OCD must have gotten it's strength back, because when I woke OCD was babbling away:

"Maybe that was a heart attack -- doesn't your left arm feel funny. Isn't that a sign of a heart attack?"

"Maybe your spine is about to give out -- that's what you get for canceling the doctor appointment. If you get into an accident on the way to work you might not be able to walk again."

So OCD won this morning.

But I won last night.

I'll take the split decision and call it a win.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Could I be clinging to OCD?: Part 2

In a recent post, I suggested that, as much as I fight the idea, I could be holding on to OCD rather than letting it go. That it's a safety net. I made the argument that having OCD around gives me something to blame if things go wrong. But I think I missed the point. The more I consider it, the more I feel that if I am clinging to OCD it's because the compulsive rituals give my brain a sense that I have control over things. Oh sure, in my clear mind I know touching something a certain number of times or counting to a number that feels "good" isn't going to keep every driver I see on the road from getting into an accident, but my OCD brain doesn't acknowledge that. So the OCD repetitions give me a sense that I can have a say in how things turn out in a world that, in reality, is extremely random. As psychologically painful as OCD is, the concept that I can control things just by doing some rituals offsets that -- at least in my OCD mind. Letting g...
Post a Comment
Read more

The First Signs

It wasn’t until I was in my 20s that I even had a hint I had OCD – or what OCD even was. But then, just by chance, I came across Judith L. Rapoport’s groundbreaking OCD book “The Boy Who Couldn’t Stop Washing.” Even the title resonated with me. It sounded like my story. Up until then I just thought I was quirky, maybe weird. But looking back, the signs were there at least dating back to my early teens. My first memory of an OCD compulsion was when I used to line up my shoes on the floor. To my OCD brain, they couldn’t be crooked, one couldn’t point right and the other left. They had to be parallel or it just didn’t feel right, something would be off. Truth is, that compulsion stuck with me until I was probably well into my 30s, when I forced myself to just toss my shoes into my closet and whatever happened, happened. I guess I’ve drifted back toward keeping them parallel, now that I think of it. Next, I recall picking up clumps of dust in the hallway leading ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Does this sound familiar?

How many people with OCD have experienced something like this? I reconnected with a childhood friend recently on Facebook -- haven't spoken with her in decades. Turns out she travels to near where I live on a regular basis and she told me she'd let me know when she's in town next. Of course, OCD told me "she'll forget" ... but she didn't. And we're planning to meet up in a couple of weeks. As soon as I confirmed we'd be having dinner, OCD leaped into action. Instead of me just being excited about seeing a friend from my elementary school days, OCD made sure I had other things to worry about. "What if you have nothing to talk about? It's not like you talked much before." "Who's going to pay for dinner? What if she doesn't like the same food you do?" "Where will you park? It's a crowded area." "What time will you need to leave work to get to dinner on time?" "What about tr...
Post a Comment
Read more