OCD and ME

In June, I wrote about "good" and "bad" numbers , according to my OCD. That's just the tip of the iceberg. My compulsions lead me to do a lot of things in certain number groupings. It's a fairly common OCD characteristic. In my case, sometimes those number groupings work in tandem with those "good" and "bad" numbers, sometimes they don't. OCD likes to play games. In this post, I wanted to just mention a fraction of my common numerical repetitions: 7: The number of times I pump the soap dispenser. If 7 doesn't feel quite right, then I increase it by multiples of 7, usually stopping at 21. (I go through a lot of liquid soap.) 4: Paper towels I pull out of the dispenser in the restroom to dry my hands. If 4 doesn't satisfy my brain, 7 generally does. If there are other people around, it's usually the quicker the better. 4: The number of pieces of garbage I will often throw out at one time or in quick succession. I...

Mirror, mirror on the wall, I can't look at you at all... If it were socially acceptable, I would cover up all mirrors I come across. I can't stand looking at myself -- even catching a glimpse of myself. If there's a positive attribute, my brain puts a negative spin on it. And if it's a negative attribute -- of which there are many to chose from -- my brain takes the opportunity and runs with it. I've never been formally diagnosed with body dysmorphic disorder, but given how I see myself, and the connection of BDD to OCD, I'd say there's a pretty good chance I have it to a degree. Growing up I was way overweight and short -- I'm still short (still waiting for that growth spurt into adulthood) but having spent time at the gym and paying some attention to my food intake, the weight has evened out. That said, when I look in a mirror, I see the unattractive stuff. Is it all real? I honestly don't know for sure. It seems real. And my OCD trainin...

It's not often, but sometimes to get a slight advantage on the bully that is OCD, I throw it a curve and think about the benefits of having OCD. Yeah, I know, there aren't many. And maybe it's stretching it to say there are any at all. But I came up with a few to throw in the bully's face. First, I believe having OCD has made me a compassionate person. There's no way to truly understand mental illness without experiencing it, in my opinion. I have empathy for others that I might not have if I didn't experience OCD first hand. I try hard to be non-judgmental. OK, I judge myself 90 percent of my waking hours -- but I do try hard to be non-judgmental of others. I give a lot of credit to my mother, who lived her life that way. But I also credit OCD. I have a better sense of what people may be going through because I know what I'm often going through. Speaking of my mother, she was excellent in a crisis. She was a nurse and a caretaker for her ill and a...

Early on in my battle with OCD, someone described it as being a bully. I didn't really get the comparison at first, but now I see it's 100 percent accurate. Like a bully, OCD picks on your weaknesses. Like a bully, you can beg it to stop and it won't -- in fact, it generally takes your begging as a sign to attack even harder. I know, because I've had bullies -- and OCD -- and I see the similarities. Though truth is, OCD is a bigger bully than my several human bullies ever were. Some examples: One of my OCD issues is having what I call "bad thoughts." Even as a kid I referred to them as "bad thoughts," I guess, because to categorize them more specifically seems impossible. They are all over the map. Anyway, when the subject of the thought is a person, it's inevitably a person I care deeply about. The bully knows I love this person -- my parents, a friend -- so it targets them. I don't tend to have bad thoughts about people I don't ...

As much as I have come to depend on technology providing instant access to information, I sometimes wonder if it's causing me harm when it comes to OCD. I mentioned in a previous post that I have a great fear of forgetting things -- people's names, common facts, it runs the gamut. When I can't recall something, I go into a panic. Breathing becomes more difficult. My mind spins into thoughts of dementia. I'm sure many, if not most, therapists would tell me to sit with that discomfort of not remembering as a means of exposure therapy. Sit with it as it diminishes, and then ultimately, the hope is, I become desensitized to it and it holds no power. I agree with that approach. But so many times, now, as I sit with the anxiety of forgetting something I know it's just a Google search away. And more times than not, I take the 20 seconds and find the answer online. What was the name of the actor who starred in that movie? Check with Google. What band was it tha...

It was one of those moments when I knew I wasn't alone in my anxiety. I was at an OCD conference and the speaker had just described something I'd experienced for years. I just never had a name for it -- and frankly, wouldn't even have known how to describe it in the first place. But he knew what it was -- "memory hoarding." As it's explained in an article from the OCD Center of Los Angeles , memory hoarding is "a mental compulsion to over-attend to the details of an event, person, or object in an attempt to mentally store it for safekeeping. ... People with memory hoarding OCD exhibit two major errors in information processing. The first error is the distorted belief that they will need this memory someday, and that it would be catastrophic if the memory weren’t 100% accurate. Second, people with memory hoarding also have the distorted belief that memories can be treated the same way as inanimate objects." (Essentially, as I understand ...

Working most of my adult life in a newsroom, it makes sense that I would hear a lot of fingers tapping away at keyboards. When I started, I enjoyed the sound -- it was the sound of important work getting done. Then one day the click, click, clicking of a room full of fingers on keyboards sounded much louder than usual. It was all I could hear. Suddenly, a sound that I had come to look forward to hearing was making my skin crawl. What was happening? A little research and I found that what was happening probably falls into the category of misophonia, a heightened sensitivity to certain sounds that has been linked to OCD and other forms of anxiety. Give me a barking dog any day. But someone chewing food? It unnerves me. Want to crack your knuckles? Go for it, I'll do it too. But a lip-smacking sound -- even a very quiet one -- can cause my anxiety to skyrocket. None of this makes much sense to me. And I certainly would never ask someone not to chew food. It's...