Help for Hoarding

I was in touch with the international OCD foundation and they provided me with this link for finding providers to help other people with hoarding.

I have also placed it under the Need Help? side bar
http://www.ocfoundation.or​g/hoarding

I didn't realize that I was a hoarder

So i guess on top of checking, contamination, symmetry, and intrusive thougths, I have a problem with hoarding.  My home isn't like what the show Hoarders focuses on, I have a lot of paper work that i am afraid to throw away and have been sucessful in keeping it until last night when my husband decided that the house need to get purged and cleaned last night.  Well this is something that i didn't know was coming and i wasn't warned that we were going to be doing it and i was not happy at all that we were going to wbe working so aggressively on it.  last night my anxiety was so bad at a couple of points that i thought that it might actually kill me.  and i know what all the doctors and nurses have told me in the past that you aren't going to die from an anxiety or panic attack but it sure as hell felt like i was going to die right there on the spot.  i was having pseudoseizures that i could not breathe through at all and i felt like i was going to collapse.  right now i am even upset writing about the whole experience because i want nothing more to do with it even though i am going to go through it all again tonight when we continue to work on it.  it is almost worse now because i know that the episode is going to be coming and i would like to avoid the whole situation if possible.  even medicated and using all of the techniques i have learned in therapy over the past couple years seemed useless in the face of having to get rid of all my paper clutter and start to organize things.  i honestly thought that hoarding was just about the only OCD symptom that i didn't have.  i am embarassed at the fact that the whole time my husband was cleaning up his side of the bed room, the living room, the kitchen, the bathroom i only got 2 baskets of laundry put away and most of the floor cleaned on my side of the bedroom.  i want to cry just thinking about it.  i have to say that i have a new respect for people that have problems with hoarding it felt like i was going to lose complete control of everything if i didn't know what was leaving the house.  my husband was taking out bags of trash and i had no idea what was in them, he kept saying that if it hadn't moved in the last 6 months and was covered in dust that i didn't need to have it anymore because obviously i wasn't going to be using it.  i am still dealing with the compulsions of wanting to drive home from work and go check the trash cans and go through our bags.  I almost did that on the way to work this morning truth be told, but i stopped myself because i thought that it would be really unhealthy. i am dreading going home and working on it again.  i was going to beg my husband to take me to the hospital because i was having such a bad panic attack and it wasn't stopping.

i hope that tonight is better.  i am not sure that i could go through that anxiety again.  it was paralyzing.  i will update or write a new entry probably tomorrow when the issue isn't so raw for me again.

No I don't like to travel and please don't touch me.

No I don't like to travel and please don't touch me is what i need to have printed on my clothing and my luggage my car, on my voicemail....pretty much everywhere and that explains alot of my issues.  I am generally OK to get out of the house to get to work, i have some rituals that i have managed to habituate over the past two years so that i can get out of the house in a more timely manner.  I am OK being out of my house for about 10 hours during the work day which makes it hard for me to hang out with people after work.  I start to obsess about the safety of our animals at home.  That is always where my obsessive thoughts take me, I come home and find that someone has tortured and killed all of little bunnies and smashed all the fish tanks so they have suffocated on the floor.  So I am always rushing home to check on all of the rabbits and fish.  I compulsively call my husband over and over again to ask him if they are all ok, these days he doesn't tolerate that behavior from me so much.  I can take day trips with some difficulty, I have irrational fears about where I am going, that somehow i am going to run out of gas on the middle of the highway or i am going to get lost (truth be told that is my worst fear) i don't like going to new places, I have real problems with it.  Incidently I am going to set a GOAL (giving ocd another lifestyle) to go to the water shed near my house and i am going to ask help from my support group to go.  Now back to the traveling issue.  Both my husband family and my family live a couple states away and it is drivable but incredibly stressful for me to make the trip so to be quite frank on the matter we tend only to visit his family because mine is like walking into a nightmare.  I will obsess and compulse for days upon days about leaving for a drive down to my inlaws.  I obsess that the house isn't the clean enough, that someone is going to break in and kill our animals, that i will forget something like my medication or that something else horribles going to happen and if i had just thought about it alittle bit more before we left everything would be OK.  I get worried about leaving the house physically leaving it.  That the locks are going to fail and I get stuck pulling on the front door from the outside as if to try to get in and if i don't have my husband with me I could be there a good 10 minutes.  I have a hard time enjoying what ever trip we take because i am so worried about getting back home and I really have a problem staying in new places.  Some part of it is the contamination issues that I have some problems with but most of it is centered around the paranoia i have with people that i am not so sure about.  It is just really hard because there are lots of places in the world that i would love to see and go to and I just mentally can't right now.  I think that i would have to be heavily sedated to get on a plane right now.  I don't like planes for a variety of reasons including the fact that they don't seem very sanitary, in my opinion the bathroom is nasty, i keep feeling like i am rebreathing everyone else air that has been inside them and finally that you can't get away with not getting touched. which leads nicely into the second half of this entry....don't touch me

I have noticed over the years this issue has gotten worse and worse.  I don't like people that I find stressing, am not fond of or unfamilar with being close to me, like touching distance, I don't like handshaking these days either.  It is probably something that I should start working on before it gets bad.  I don't like having people follow me around anywhere, which is a problem for my side of the family because what ever i seem to be loking at they seem to find to be the most fascinating thing on the whole planet and are essentially my shadow. 

This whole touching aversion has made it hard for me to go to the doctor or the dentist or pretty much any other appointment other than my therapist and psychiatrist visits. (no touching there) Crowds of people are out of the question and shopping in bookstores is a real problem because I don't ever seem to be able to find my own space.

Well i will try to write more about this later. Please comment if you have a resource you would like to share or if you have any questions.

Resources for People in the Boston MA area, or areas nearby

This information needs to be shared for people who are not sure where to turn.

McLean Hospital: http://www.mcleanhospital.org/ 

their phone number is: 617-855-2000
They are fantastic people, I have never been a patient of theirs and they have helped me time and time again so don't be afraid to call them and ask for help THEY WANT TO HELP PEOPLE SO PLEASE CALL THEM

Mass General Hospital OCD Clinic:  https://mghocd.org/clinical-services/ocd/

Their Phone Number is: 617-726-6766

Please reach out if you are suffering with this condition you need help and there are people there that can help you.  Google is really good about searches like ocd clinic in anywhere usa. 

There is help for you.

hot and antsy

So from time to time I get the urge to obsess or compulse over some thing and it is hard because in the moments i am not sure what i am anxious about or what is upsetting me.  it is really upsetting to me right now because i think that i had a good day and then this evening it partially went to hell.  we went grocery shopping and the store that we went to moved from the original building to one adjacent.  It shouldn't have been very upsetting but I don't like going into new grocery stores and this was one that I had grown comfortable and now the whole lay out was going to change. 

I started to get paranoid that someone was going to follow me from the parking lot into the grocery store and then try to follow me home after i left and try to kill me there.  Mind you this is all with my husband with me so i don't think that i should've been as apprehensive as i was.  but it was a nightmare. the store was crowded and i was trying to stay with my ERP's for these sorts of situations and to my best effort i did what i could.  but with every aisle i kept seeing repeat faces and that is the part that really gets to me and makes me think that someone is going to try to hurt me.  so my husband doesn't do well in crowds and kept saying that he was ready to go home and i was freaking out because of symmetry and contamination and the crowds of people.  and i started to have the seizures and i hate having them in public.  i am always convinced that someone is going to notice and that they are going to call the ambulance and try to put me in the hospital.  it is a whole intrusive thought that takes me through the state hospital where they won't let me you.  this whole thing is going through my head as i am having the seizures.  i would just rather stay home so that i don't have to deal with the rest of the world because i don't think that they understand how hard it is to get out of the bed most days.  let alone go to the market. 

this heat wave hasn't been helping because i feel like i am either trapped at home or i am trapped around other people.  it is hard because when i am at work i am so worried that the rabbits are going to die from the heat even though we have the air conditioning on and the fans going.  i worry that there is going to be a power outage and then i am going to come home to all of the fish dead and the rabbits dead.  I worry about this the entire time that i am driving home if i am not already obsessing over my husband driving home safely.  I am always worried that someone is going to be dead if i can't get a hold of them.  i get stuck where i just ritualistically call people to the point that they probably want to block my number.

i feel like if i don't check on them enough then there is going to be something that is horribly wrong that is going to hurt them and no one else will be able to catch it.  this has gotten so much worse since both of my grandmothers passing.  i feel so responsible for their deaths even though there was in REALITY nothing that i could have done to save either one of them.  My fathers grandmother died from a brain tumor and i was the one that called her and discovered that she had no clue who i was saying that she had been talking to my mother that had been dead for 7 years.  with my maternal grandmother who i was so close too, she and i clung to each other for comfort ever since my mothers death.  and losing her has crippled me in a way that i am not sure that i can articulate.  I feel orphaned. my side of the family i don't speak too and i think that it is largely because of the fact that i have ocd and depression and anxiety and you name it.  it is just not something that they want to be associated with so i truly feel like an orphan on my side.  my husbands family is really supportive of me and want to know how i am doing all of the time and are really gentle with me if i am obsessing or compulsing around them. which is something that my family can't handle they get so angry and so loud saying we don't understand what you are upset about we are all just sitting here talking.  alot of people just don't understand that i could be seizing about something that happened that was stressful for me over a year ago and have nothing to do with what is happening in the moment.   it is hard.  i just want to scream at them you know my illness isn't about you it is about me and what i am struggling with and what i am trying so hard to do every day to make it through with some level of normalcy.  even now i am upset about the last visit i had with them before our wedding.  sometimes i wonder if i should share this blog with them, other times i think that would just not understand what is happening.  they never seem to ever try.

anyway back to the heat.  i just don't feel like i can get out my nervous energy without getting sick.  hot and depressed is not a good combo.  well that is enough of my drama. thanks for taking the time.

Note Cards, Serenity Prayer, and a blessing in disguise

So truth be told the miscarriage has hit me harder than I would care to admit too but I have been trying to make really positive steps to move forward.  I am using a technique that one of my friends in my support group uses which is to write things that ground her on notecards so that she can take them out when she is having a really hard time.  So i thought well i will give it a shot, and the one thing that i really find alot of knowledge and peace in is the serenity prayer.  I have modified it slightly because I am not strongly religious, I have noticed that I have picked up some international readers so i will post what i use as a grounding mantra.

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;

The courage to change the things I can;

And the wisdom to know the difference

So i have this on a post it note on my dashboard in my car to remind me what I am capable of at the start of my day if I am having a hard time with something in my life.  I also have it on a post it note at my desk at work and another one in the laboratory.

 

This mantra has motivate me to chase after two things in my life that are critically important: understanding my psychogenic non eplileptic seizures better and get ready to have a healthy pregnancy for both me physically and mentally and of course for the baby.

That being said, I have gotten in touch with the folks at McLean Hospital and i am going to strongly note that i am not a patient of theirs and they are really reaching out to help me with this condition and they are such good people with good intentions to help people understand what is going on with themselves mentally.  If you are really stuck and need some help getting in touch with resources you should check out the link that i have on the side of my page to get their contact information.  So that being said they have kindly taken the time to do some research and speak with their medical directors and they have consulted with their other colleauges and have come up with 2 specialist for me to see.  I am amazed that they can find these people becuase i have been looking actively for specialist to help me for the past 2 years since my diagnosis.

My psychiatrist has gotten me in touch with a group of specialist at Mass General Hospital that do consultations for women that have mental illness(es), are on medications, and are either pregnant or trying to get pregnant.  So finally have 26 phone calls I have an appointment for a consultation with them in October of this year. 

These two things i am not sure i would have done if i hadn't been pregnant and miscarried. or i don't know that i would have worked on them as aggressively as i have over the past few days.

My OCD has flared to the point that i am also crippled at times by my contamination fears they are almost worse when i am in the house then when i am outside of the house.  well maybe that isn't entirely true, the issues that i have with paranoia are also hitting hard right now. that has been keeping me from really getting out of the house and doing some shopping.  The contamination is so bad that i am infact terrified to take a shower in my own bathroom because i feel like the whole room is contaminated all of the surfaces and infact most of the floors in my mind are untouchable.  i have it stuck in my head that i bring home awful things on my shoes from my work to my house.  I am not worried about making myself sick i am so worried about making everyone and everything around me so sick that it is going to die.  Like my favorite rabbit, i am perpetually afraid that i am going to do something that is going to kill her and it will be all my fault and i will not be able to forgive myself at all.  That being said for the first time ever i am bringing my husband to a therapy session with me so that he and i and my therapist can put together an ERP plan that can be done at home because i have so much difficulty following through on it by myself.  I will have to write and say how that went.

Well that is all for now, please reachout to someone you know who is struggling or if you are struggling let someone you trust know. 

been a while

its been a while since i last posted.  i am hitting a rough patch right now and thought that maybe letting this thoughts that are buzzing around my head out it might help my sanity.  my husband and i were pregnant (less than a month along) and there was something that trigger a miscarriage. i don't know if you can call it a miscarriage that early. but that is what i am calling it.  i was experiencing a ton of pregnancy symptoms and talked to my doctor who said go get a home test and take it, i got two positive tests and then a day or so later had another test done at the local womens health clinic and found it negative, a blood test also confirmed it.  i know that there is nothing that i did to cause this to happen but there is the little voice in the back of my head that keeps asking....are you sure, did you not check something, did you touch something that you shouldn't have, did you drink water that was contaiminated or breath air that was contaiminated.  it is hard to get rid of those thoughts. its just hard. and its sad. and depressing. and life doesn't seem to let me stop and pause for a moment.  and my symmetry has taken over most of my thoughts, and i see the lines of symmetry everywhere, in the phone, computer, desk, carpeting, laboratory and all the things i work with, everything at home, the car, when i am driving everything looking for symmetry or trying to find a way to make it symmetrical.  it isn't only the symmetry, for some reason my ocd has latched on to my car is a crazy obsessional manner. and it isn't really about the locking obsession that i work on everyday.  this one is more of a cleaning obsession and getting all the scratches off my car. it is driving me nuts right now.  some days it feels like i am a hamster running in a wheel and not being able to get off.