feeling worse and worse and feeling like i am losing everything.

so i finally filled out my 50 page admission application for the intensive in patient treatment program i am trying to get into and the wait list after to you are accepted is 2.5months. 75days. if i do get accepted i feel like i should get a count down clock to the days to when i will be getting checked in.  in the mean time.  i feel like everything is falling apart around me.  i feel like i am destroying my husband.  i feel like living and being around me must be complete and utter torture i cry having to be around me i hate to think what it must be like for other people to be around me. i am struggling to make it to work everyday.  today it took me 4 hours to get to work.  i got up at 6 and got to work at 10 with only a 1 hr commute.  that is how desperate i have gotten.  i kept writing all over the application please help me i am coming apart at the seems.  please i am losing it.  i am not sure i am going to be in one piece by the time the middle of november rolls around.  i am trying so hard to work at my job and i am trying so hard to do my therapy and i am trying so hard to be a wife and a member of the household and take care of my animals.  and i can't do it all, and these days it seems like i can't do any of it.  and i feel worthless, less than worthless, worse than worthless, a burden.  i don't know how i got this way. i don't want to be this way. i can't live this way.  this isn't who i am, or who i want to be.  i don't go out.  i have almost stopped eating because i am so stressed out i don't even feel hungry, i am throwing myself at my work in the laboratory.  because if i stop for one second even a second i feel like i am going to completely lose it and just fall apart.  no one seems to understand it and i can't seem to explain it to anyone.  it just feels like mentally i am crumbling from the inside out.  i want to clean up the house but i can't it just isn't there, i just can't motivate myself to stand there and do it, i can't sit and watch a movie because i am distracted by something that isn't symmetrical in the house, or i have to check the rabbits, and i know that it makes my husband upset.  he has started hanging out in boston with friends on monday and wednesday nights and says it is becuase he likes hanging out with them and he is doing things that he enjoys doing and i am sure that is true but i also have to think that some of it is to get a break from being around me. and all my chaos, and all my nervous anxiety, and panic, and sadness.  i am finding it hard to figure out how i am useful still. 

stuck and miserable.

i feel that blogging should help me right now but i am not sure that it can.  i am feeling so profoundly stuck that i am trying to get into an inpatient treatment program at one of the hospitals in Boston.  I am getting depserate for help.  they have a multimonth waiting list and i wish the whole process would just move along faster but i know it is where i need to be.

the medication adjustment i had about two weeks ago feels like it hasn't helped and i don't know what to do all i know is that my doctor is going to do is say give it more time but i feel like i am falling apart right now.  it is just miserable trying to live with this and work on the ERPS and go to work everyday.

i just wish i didn't have to deal with this.

oh like on the tv right that is the type of OCD she has right?

So I am alittle IRKED to say the least by the ignorance of the people around me and the people in the lives of me and my husband.  over the past weekend my husband had a going away graduation going away party for one of the women that he went to graduate school with and a number of the people at the party were asking where i was. some of the have a cursory understanding of OCD and my husband had explained that i sometimes have a really hard time going out with people and especially when it involves going to parties where i don't know the people at the parties and that i really try to suppress my rituatlizing. to the point that it really stresses me out and i am afraid that i am going to have a psychogenic seizure.  so there were a couple of women at the party that were inquisative and asked more about the condition and what it entailed and were actually educating themselves.  which i think is GREAT i have no problem with my husband sharing information about my condition i want people to understand OCD and understand that people like me can have it and seem to be OK on one day and then really be having a very hard time with it on the next day.  So then one of the people was really going after my husband about why I wasn't there and where was.  So my husband said oh she is having a really hard time with her OCD and gets really self conscious at parties about her rituals and it is just too much for her to come down right now.  and this person goes. oh so you have like his and hers towels right? and he goes what? yeah like on tv like his and hers towels? he goes no ***** (<---this persons name) that is not what her OCD is and that isn't an accurate representation of the disorder.  she is like well you must have seperate towels. and  could not get past the fact that handwashing is not the only ritual in the ocd community. when i heard about it i wanted to call this person up and just yell at them.  but that isn't an appropriate response to ignorance.

I just feel that the media has done such a good job of either making fun of the disorder because they somehow think that having this disorder is somehow laughable or saying that people who have OCD have these violent inapproriate thoughts and should be shunned that no one really knows about how much suffering as a community we are suffering.  There are days were I just cry continually on the way to and from work over it.  It physically hurts me and no one without the condition can fully appreciate it.

Trying to stabilize and feeling like a zombie in the process

So part of the process of reaching out for me is recognizing that there is a chemical imbalance in my brain that needs alittle help getting adjusted I have come to the conclusion through the years of depression that there is nothing wring with taking medication as prescribed to help you out if your body isn't producing the appropriate levels of chemicals in your brain for example. If you disagree that is fine you are entitled to your opinion and I am entitled to manage my medical care as I see fit. That being said I am one of the many people on psychiatric drugs that is sensitive to minor changes in rising and finds gentle titrations up to higher doses a more tolerable approach. However I am currently in a state that a jumper to anhigher dose was more appropriate than the gentle technique. I will share that I was having very bad issues with paranoia- I had a grocery shopping exposure turn into an utter nnightmare where I was convinced someone knew my husband was going to be out for the evening and try to hurt me or worse. I was actually driving with my little mace in one hand my steering wheel in the other and my cellphone charging in my lap. It was super bad. I called a good friend and she came over and stayed with me until my husband came home which was a god send. She is a true blessing. So as you can see I am really in a bad place. So with this jump in medication I have been feeling like a zombie! All cloudy and somewhere else like day dreaming without the dreaming it is a sensation I haven't felt in a very Long time. Part of the problem is that I am also stepping up on my mgraine medication with has a sedatig effect on me you will have to excuse typos I al doing this from my small touch screen before bed. I wish I could take FMLA right now and get my mental Healy in order but I am not so sure it is in the cards. I need to ge ME in order first and for most and I have to figure out how to go about doing that

Reached out and got help.

So last night I reached out to my psychiatrist and got help.  This took the form of increasing one of the medications that I am on and it turns out that one of the migraine medications that I am on is also a mood stabilizer. He said it is a good things, so maybe it is a good thing.  The medication that he increased is supposed to help me calmed down and help with the compulsions and the nervousness.  I have been feeling so freaking nervous all the time and jumpy too. People walking past me from behind at work either in my cubicle or in the laboratory makes me jump out of my skin.  For a little while I was seriously considering driving myself to the state hospital and checking myself in going I am losing it and I can't be in charge of my self right now (not that I would ever hurt myself, I am not someone that enjoys pain on any particular level)  I am on the path of becoming "stable" again. I really hope that there is a day where stable could mean no pills, but at this rate I doubt it. 

So I talked to my doctor about the whole therapy dog thing.  He said yes yes get a dog it would be great for you!!! But NO! I won't sign a paper lining out your disability, I don't want you discriminated against.  I felt like saying, seriously you are the one that is discriminating against me already.  I said to him if i had a dog i could stay in my house on my home and not worry that some one was going to try to break  in and kill me, i could sleep in the house on my own (something that will not be achieved this evening, my husband won't be getting home until late) I would actually leave my house to go for a walk, or sit in a park, or read a book in a book store, or go to the movies, live my life..... could be time to find somone more supportive of my efforts.  Also the price for the dog is prohibitive.  However there are a number of people that have said that I could train the dog on my own, which is true I am 100% of a dog person. So who knows.

So heres to starting to "stabilize" and looking into german shephards that will fit my needs.

Really Struggling Right Now.

Guess I am the one that should be reaching out right now.

I am really struggling right now. 

It is hard everything is feeling really jumbled inside of my head and it feels like it is sloshing around.

I have been staying really well on my medications not missing a dose or anything.  Which is even more frustrating for me because I think that it could be time for a medication adjustment and I don't look forward to those. 

I am seriously considering trying to obtain a psychiatric service dog to help me out.  My husband thinks that it would be a really good thing for me to have.  I have come to discover how ever that on AVERAGE they run $20,000-$30,000USD. 

Which isn't money that is in the cards right now or the forseeable future.  And I think I could really benefit from one.

My depression is getting worse, I feel myself falling deeper into the hole as I refer to it.  Where everything becomes alittle numb-er and darker.  Where I want to cry more where the things that are internal hurt more.  And the OCD has more power.  Where the checking and symmetry compulsions take over.  My paranoia is getting worse too.  I am having a hard time getting out of the house. 

We went out with a very close friend of mine and my husbands this weekend with her boyfriend to an Airshow and I could barely handle it.  I mean I had fun watching the plans, fascinated actually.  But the crowds were so hard to handle, I don't like being bumped into and I don't like being in close proximity to other people and it was just really hard.  And I felt really contaminated.  We had to take shuttle buses in from where we parked. And the shuttles were infact school buses.  And we were packed in.  And I will share a detail about me.  I am 5 foot 10 inches tall. Trying to sit in a school childs seat. uncomfortable to say the least. So contamination and just being jam packed in like sardines.  It was hot and I didn't stay as hydrated as I should have.  So just the crowds and everything got to me more than I thought it would. Since I have moved out of Boston to a quieter part of the country it has been really hard for me to get back into more crowded areas.  It is just really rough.

Anyway, moving away from the weekend.  I am really finding it hard to aggressively go after my ERP work as I have been able to in the past.  I feel like I am running up against a wall.  I have so much fear surround our bathroom I would rather never go in there ever again.  Which is horrible not to want to use the bathroom in your own house.  I have sorta stopped dehoarding for the time being, I should push forward with it but the spark of lets move forward with this has died and I feel so overwhelmed by it and it is so seizure inducing and I don't want to have the seizures.  I am so sick of experiencing them.  I just want them to stop, I don't want them anymore. Not that I ever wanted them in the beginning but I especially don't want them anymore.  They feel like the world is ending around me and that I am going go to have a heart attack while I am having them.

It is just miserable.  I am just not in a good place right now.  Now to "Keep Calm and Carry On" or as close to that as I can muster.

The Disorder And Family

Ah the topic that no one wants to talk about but I am going to more than touch on it. 

So i had a conversation with my sister and for the first time i think she started to understand how complicated parts of my life are.  it is hard because i am the older sister and i have always felt like i have to be strong for her and it is hard for me right now when i feel like i am falling apart and she is at a turning point in her life when she is really trying to go out on her own.  I have found that over the past two years of diagnosis I have tried to shield her from much of my disorder, the rituals and my therapy.  I told her tonight that I don't want to leave the house very much, that it is hard for me to leave the house other than to go to work and back to the house.  When she and I were living at my father's house I don't think that either one of them knew that I was going down to the basement everynight to check that the garage doors were down and then the two basement doors were closed, followed by the back door by the laundry room, the kitchen slidding door, the front door, that all of the windows were down and locks (like fully locked) and then i had to check the windows upstairs that weren't in the bed rooms that people were sleeping in.  and then i would go into my bedroom and check all of my windows and then lock my bedroom door.  I would sleep for a couple hours and then get up and do it all again.  and again. and again. and again. and no one ever said anything to me.  (this was mainly after mom died) but even before her death i was always checking things. she would ask me to check to make sure that the door was locked.  and it wasn't her fault but she didn't ever say which door i had to check so i had to check them all.  and it killed me when she was sick, especially when it was the house between when i was home with her and my sister would come home, and then for the hours before my father would come home.  the paranoia would hit. that something horrible was going to happen and all of us were going to die.  i couldn't say how it was going to be, and then one day someone left the stove on, and that is when the checking compulsion for the stove kicked in.  but now i am getting off track back to the disorder and family.

So i let my sister in on more of the disorder than i have in the past and i cried because i have been trying to protect her from it.  and with my father i feel that he thinks that there is absolutely nothing wrong with me.  that i am making this all up to get attention he gets angry with me when i start to ritualize about something when i am back at his house, which is incredibly stressful for me, like more than i can articulate.  for christ sake i am going to be 29 next year and i can't stand going home.  i feel that i am dealing with more discrimination in my own family than i do from most of society.  it is really sad.  but i almost feel hated by member(s) of my immediate family.  And i don't know if it is denial that a daughter could be mentally ill or that society has instilled such a horrible view of the mentally ill that to be a family member of someone suffering with something like OCD is something they don't want to be associate with.   Well it is wrong and shameful for a family to have those feelings towards their daughter.  It kills me.  I have lost a huge support in my life.  And I have cried so much over it.  I try not to think about it, but when I do I become so very angry that someone would have the audacity to treat me that way to be angry at me for not being able to control a compulsion.  Or yelling at me while i am having a psychogenic seizure.  It just feels abusive to me. 

People don't think about how their actions affect other people.  People say to me Just stop doing it that is all you have to do. JUST RELAX, WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR PROBLEM. Seriously? You think I want to live my days this way.  I want to spend my life pulling on locked doors and dreading that I might have done something to kill my husband and all of my pets. You seriously think that I am doing this all to get attention.  Who would do this for fun.

No one voluntarily does this. Someone said to me don't you get sick of doing and tired? isn't that enough to make you stop.  I said well when you are coughing when you are sick and you are tired do you stop doing it? well no they said i have get the gunk out of my lungs. my response was exactly except this is the gunk out of my brain.

All I want from my immediate family is a little compassion.  I am not looking for pity or a handout.  Just a little understanding.

On the other hand my husbands family is really supportive of me.  Especially my brother in law, when he was out for our wedding he was really helpful and came with me everywhere for running errands and I felt really safe and it made it a lot easier for me to get out of the house and do the errands that I needed to do to get out of the house.  My in law are fantastic there has never been a judgement and if you would believe it I rarely ritualize about locks or my car or the stove when I am at their house?  You know why? Because I feel safe with them I feel accepted.  And I feel loved. 

My husband.  I am convinced my mother has sent him to watch over me and to protect me. And I love and cherish him.  He supports me so much and loves me entirely. And I couldn't ask for more.  And I love him more than I can ever put in words.  I am so fortunate to have a spouse that is supportive of my treatment, therapy, and helps me when I am stuck.

destructive compulsion and my talsimans

so there is a compulsion that comes out from time to time that i never act upon but have a strong urge to and that is to cut things. i will give examples. if i am working in the lab cutting pipette tips i will have the urge to snip my ear bud wires, or a power cable, or my hair.  Lately it has been the charging cables in my car and the ear buds.

lately when i have been getting angry i feel like breaking something. i don't and haven't but i wonder what it would feel like if i did. strange huh?

well in other news i am getting my tattoo tonight which is somthing that i have been working towards for over a year now.  it is really important to me. they are both symbols that remind me of important things.  the first is an infinity symbol which reminds me that all things in life are intertwined, and that i will see my mother and my maternal grandmother in the next life and the trinity knot which represents the three promises my husband made to me by giving me my engagement ring with two trinity knots on it.  the reason i am getting them tattooed is because i have to get MRI scans done every 6-12 months to monitor demylenation in my brain. and i can't ever take these symbols in with me to protect me during the scan (superstitious i know but any port in a storm right) so now i will always have these symbols with me to protect me when i am in one of the loneliest places in the world.

Checking is back, so are cleansing compulsions, but in positive news

Hello 2:14 AM its been a while.  I can't say that I am happy to see you at all, but I know why you are here. And my logical brain doesn't want me to do what you want me to do, but by OCD brain hears you whispering....check...check...check.  This morning I am able to roll over and put it off for a while. 2:27AM You aren't going away are you. Can't say I am surprised. You never do.  Well maybe this time I just have to pee.  I grab my iTouch (big mistake) and head to the bathroom.  There are tons of things that I can check using my iTouch in the middle of the night.  Check Facebook, Check Email, Check Weather, [should have checked my bank account too that would have saved me a headache this morning], discover I didn't have to pee at all. Flush, feeling drugged from the night time meds but the flush didn't feel right, wash my hands, that didn't feel right either, refuse to wash them again. Never give in to that compulsion.  Strong urge to touch the front door lock, didn't do it, small seizure.  Compulsion to ritually check back lock, didn't do it, small seizure.  Feel drugged from the night time meds.  Make my way back to the bedroom through the guest room.  Want to check Jasmine...make sure she is still alive, i have to check my baby bunny girl...don't know what i would do if she is dead...I sit up in bed. Fight the urge to go and wake her to check her. The living room is quiet so all the bunnies are asleep.  I can't tell if they are alive.  There is nothing to prove they are dead either.  I take the risk and don't check Jasmine.  I cry sitting up in bed and have a 3 min pseuodoseizure.  Somewhere before 3 am I am back to sleep.  This morning I am awakened by my husband getting dressed, and duchess digging in the living room.  I look out into the living room to see Jasmine chinning her water bottle.  I wish I could say that was a sigh of relief but I obsess about her all day while I am at work to the point that at times I have to excuse myself to cry in the ladies room if it is a really bad day.

Yesterday I had to go into a part of the building at work that I view to be incredibly contaminated, like if i could wash down with rubbing alcohol and change into brand new clothes afterwards i would.  but i can't. and i feel that i bring this contamination home with me. and in my ocd mind it seeps into everything my hair, my skin, my clothes, shoes, socks, you name it the contaimination is in there. So my husband and I are in bed last night and normally his feet are not allowed on my side of the bed because i think his feet are contaminated too.  So i was sitting indian style and he goes to try to touch my foot and i freak out because without tell him i have been trying to fight not rubbing my feet to the point of bleeding with a pumice stone all night.  This is a behavior that I engaged in about 5-6 years ago, I don't do it any more but if i am in a bad place i may feel the urge to.  So i got all upset and told him about it and he talked the logic through with me about not doing it which was helpful. and then the whole checking at 2 am thing happened [see above if for some reason you started down here]. so when i got out of bed this morning and was in the bathroom when i was done brushing my teeth i felt like i hadn't done it perfectly and wanted to do it again but only did it once because a. i am not giving into that compulsion and b i don't think there was enough tooth paste left. and then when i washed my hands after i was done they didn't feel clean and i wanted to wash them again but stopped that compulsion in its tracks because that is a road i refuse to go down.  that one will land me in the hospital and i will do anything to stay out of the hospital.

So in positive news NAMI NH has asked me to be part of their "In Our Own Voice" program which works towards changing the public perception of mental illness in the public eye.  Which is fantastic because that is what i am working towards.  I want to tell my story.  I am not ashamed of what life has dealt me.  This is something that feels like a second calling to me.   I am someone who lives with mental illness everyday of my life, I have a stable life, a healthy loving supportive relationship with my husband, a great group of friends and a career that for the most part is intellectually stimulating.  I think that it is important the the world see that what you may see on day time television or on the big screen is not actually how reality is, that it isn't right now treat people with mental illness differently.  We have equal rights as anyone and should be treated with the same dignity and respect as the next person.  Period. No conditions.

Check out NAMI's link over under the Need Help section to the right!

dehoarding continued...

ok....i don't want to work on dehoarding tonight.  i am going to be honest.  this really sucks.  i didn't want this blog to be something where i sit and bitch about the sitatution that i am stuck with but honestly there are so many aspects of this disorder that just suck.

any way.  i am really not looking forward to working on dehoarding later tonight but i know that it needs to get done.  i just don't know where to put things and how to get rid of things.  it is really hard. it is just really hard. i kinda want to cry just thinking about it.

that is all i have for now on it.

Dehoarding and Symmetry Flare

So recently i have been talking about dehoarding and how i wasn't aware that this was a problem until my husband started throwing things out. still i have problems when he is picking things up off the floor even scraps of lint or something the rabbits have chewed to smitherins still it is so hard for me to throw those things out.  So as part of my ERP's I have had to dehoard a portion of room every night for the past week.  it has been incredibly hard work I dont know that any ERP i have ever done has felt this challenging.  With the other ones i will just giving up an action now i am giving up objects that i had to do something to acquire.  It is very hard for me to throw out things, I always knew when we were growing up that we were poor, not food stamp or welfare poor, but we got hand me downs instead of new clothes, i was never allowed to through out shoes because some day my sister would be able to wear them, same thing with winter jacks, jeans, anything more durable than a T shirt or underwear or socks.  My mother and father never said out right we are poor what do you want from us and they always tired their best to give us everything that we needed.  We went to the doctor when we were sick and were able to get medication when we were sick but we always had a packed lunch for school and had 25 cents for milk.  Took the bus and rented movies from the library for free.  So anyways, there were somethings in the house that you just didn't throw out.  And i don't know if it is a case of my parents also had issues with hoarding, which i don't think is the case.  My father has the personality disorder version of OCD (OCPD) and always had the house in a particular order that he found comforting and flew off the handle if it is wasn't kept that way.  To this day he would say that it was because of his time in the military that made him organize eveuthing the way he does but let me tell you i see all the signs of OCD in him and all the components of the personality disorder in him as well.  but i am not a doctor so i could be wrong.

So here i am in my late 20's having taken this don't through out anything out to an extreme which is in appropriate.  so fastforward.  I am done dehoarding the bookshelf in the living room.  NOW all i see is a huge MESSY NON SYMMETRICAL group of books and candles.  And i get horribly upset. because i have dehoarded this bookshelf which is incredibly stressful for me and now i am faced with a huge challenge in that the one thing that i will always turn to when stressed is the one thing that i can't do! Symmetrically clean up the bookshelf.  So i burst into tears and have pseudoseizures.  it is so miserable.  i can't hoard things that isn't healthy and i want to ritualize so badly to deal with the stress of dehoarding and i can't i have to do a second ERP.  it is miserable. it makes me angry and sad. and frusterated. i hate this disorder. i hate that i will be doing ERP's for the rest of my life.  It is a depressing out come. it is such a hard diagnosis to swallow.

my husband was saying that NPR (national public radio) was talking about treatments for OCD and deep brain stimulation came up as an effective treatment.  he said he thought i should look into it, i got so upset because to me it just seems like a new form of a lobotomy.  I get upset because he is worried that I am on too many medications, that i shouldn't take as much of the benzodiazepam as i am on (i am not exceeded rx dosage), what if you take benedryl instead he asked me, what if we got a dog that slept with us (i would love to but i lease won't allow it)  It is hard, I am stabilized on the medication i am taking and it seems when ever i talked to someone about my meds they have some brillant idea that i shouldn't be on so many and that there must be away for me to be on less of them.  well good luck pal, that aint how being mentally ill works, at least not for me anyway.

Be your own advocate.

Be your own advocate.

That is something that I learned the hard way at the beginning of my diagnosis.  It is something that is hard for many people to do and it is hard for many families to deal with the fact that their husband/wife/child/brother/sister has to find their own path for treatment.  And for alot people they don't knkow that this is what is coming for them.  I certainly didn't.  Back in 2009 I was in Brigham and Women's Hosptal Neurology ward for a number of days and was diagnosed with depressed (yep knew that one), generalized anxiety disorder (new), panic attacks (already knew that), anxiety attacks (already knew that) and OCD (new, but had a strong suspicion).  Then I was told that I would be getting a social worker to help me get mental illness treatment.  Well that person never came to my hospital room, or my home when I was discharged, or called my phone number that i had listed at the hospital.  I was completely on my own, with a diagnosis that i had now idea how to deal with other than what i had seen on TV.  My fiance and I agreed that it made sense that it was what I had going on, but we didn't know where or who to turn to to get help.  It was so overwhelming, I think I spent the first 3 days out of the hospital crying when no one was around and throwing up all the food I tried to keep down because my new medication was making me sick.  I tried to get help from ther therapist that i was seeing at the time and i use the title therapist with her lightly because when i told her i was diagnosed with OCD she just kept repeat the three letters over and over again as if playing with them in her mouth, finally she said i will have to talk to the department head because i don't know what that means.  I wanted to scream at her YOU DON"T KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS!!! YOU ARE A MENTAL HEALTH CARE WORKER AND YOU DON"T KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS!!!!!  well i did scream that to the phone after i told her to call me back once she figured something out.  That was the first step in being my own advocate reaching out for the first time to someone even though they didn't have the information they needed i made the first connection.

She called me back the next day and said that I should call McLean Hospital and that they should know more about "this OCD diagnosis".  So I called them and asked them for help, told them my sad story.....and low and behold they told me about the therapist i am currently using how to get in touch with them and where they were located.  All this for someone who was never their patient.  There are good people in the world, and they will help those who are helping them selves.  Again I was advocating for myself.  No one was holding my hand making the calls for me.  I had to do it on my own.  And when you are involved in setting up your own treatment I believe you try so much harder in it.  You have to want to do it for yourself, and understand that you need the help. 

We moved out of the Boston area, well not completely out of the area but far enough that i couldn't not have my treatment in Boston, so I started to work with this therapist that I found through McLean. And it has been almost 2 years since I have been working with him, and i sleep through the night without getting up and checking my locks 30 times a night, and I don't lock my car 25 times a night.  I still have contaimination issues but with each of these rituals they have been habituated through ERP therapy.

Every time I do an ERP I am my own advocate.  My husband can't do it for me. My support can't do it for me, although they are supportive and do some of them with me! But the bottom line is every time I don't lock the door, or touch the light switch or put something down symmetrically I am being my own advocate for leading a better life.

So be your own advocate, reach out.  Only you can change your life by find a doctor who can work with you, by getting into a support group (if that is your style), by doing your therapy, by taking your medication (if you are on any), by not being ashamed of yourself and getting help.

You are not alone in your OCD.  I am in the trenches with you every day. every moment.

Did you check it? Yes. Are you sure you checked it? YES!

So it is really hard when you are a checker when you have people who are not aware of your disorder start to nagg at you as to whether or not you have double or even triple checked an item or thing especially if you are in a position such as mine where you are working with data that is used to make large financial decisions.  that stress these days is really getting to me.  i have a feeling that it may have been something that was lurking in the background and sort of working it was up to a fever pitch.  it is even worse when you say to someone oh i am just making sure that what i am giving them is the correct information and that i am not missing something  (and you are trying to do it in a "normal" amount of time) and through professional and ethical courtesy they say well take as long as you need until you are comfortable releasing it, that is our job in this department to keep the standards of the data that we release really high.  which is true, and one of the reasons that i really like working in my department but someitmes it is really crippling because you really can't slip up so this has the ability to send my checking into over drive.  it is hard enough getting out of the house let alone checking things at work!  I was horrified when my colleague said take as much time as you need until you feel comfortable releasing the data.  My heart sank.  I said well it would take me days because i would want to go over everythig with a fine tooth comb, which is something that is not an option given the sheer volume of items we are dealing with.  I now just realized that this must have been the ritual that cost me my two other jobs in pharmaceuticals, being too careful.  I can't work with too rapid of a turn around time because i freak out and miss the mistak that are actually present in the work that i am doing. 

I am really sad acutally that i had such a strong checking response to this data analysis, this is because 3 years ago i could sit in from of the computers and stare at these graphs for hours and it was intellectually stimulating and challenging and ENJOYABLE.  now looking at them it just brought high anxiety and stress, and i almost wanted to cry, because i wanted to run away from these things that i once loved working with.  The OCD checking snuck in the back door and was laying in wait for me to walk in and ruin it for me.

I am seeing now why so many people are unemployeed with this condition.  It is really hard and stressful towork with OCD.  Some days it is just days filled with 100% panic and anxiety throughout the whole day and i have people ask me well why do you look so upset is everything ok, or why are you crying? and invariably i say oh i am just stressed out or oh i just don't feel good.  and when pushed as to why i don't feel good or why i am stressed out it is just a flood gate opening for answers and I find that very few people actually want to listen.  Which is i guess why i have started this blog because it is just to get the buzzing thoughts and stress out of my head.

On a side note, now that i have dehoarded parts of my house, the symmetry compulsions are coming into play hard core. i want to touch everything and match it by size and weight and height, and every single parameter.  My husband keeps saying how good the rooms look and all i keep seeing is a mess. i almost think that it might have been better when there were items that i had hoarded around the items we were keeping because it was harder to tell if things were symmetrical or not.

Dehoarding: Day 1

So it started off on monday night with my "confession" to my support group that i have an issue with hoarding.  there is one other woman in the group that has been dealing with hoarding and is still dehoarding and tends to hang on to the same things that I do.  I really hadn't realized that how hard it was going to be to tackle this project.  This is something that to me feels like well i have lived like this for so long i don't know that it has to change, and i know that it is the ocd thinking.
so tuesday morning my husband came with me to my therapy appointment so that we could get together a game plan and make a hierarchy list (that we still have to do).  I thought that it was good that my therapist said out right that my husband can't just throw things out that i have to be involved in the decision making process.  and that I have to sit with the anxiety and have the habituation start to happen. a secondary thing came up that i think that i should share.  so spare your judgement, but i don't like to shower every day or even every other day because i have a feeling that the entire shower is contaminated along with the whole bathroom, all of my floors in my house, pretty much any surface.  and walking around wet just makes it worse for me, i will go into the explaination of that at some later date but not right now. i am just trying to get out the thoughts that are buzzing around my head.

so last night, after having anxiety all day i started to dehoard part of the living room that my husband had already started working on the other night that had really upsetted me.  so i was working on a book shelf that is next to the chair that i normally sit in and have a tendacy to use it as a "satellite" storage spot for things.  So before i started on the items in the bookshelf i decided to go through my mail and throw out what i don't need to keep.  I have a hard time throwing out coupons because "they could be useful one day" (which is the catch phrase for hoarding) so i went through and actually kept the items that i needed to and then started on the bookshelf.  i was finding things from the fall of 2009 when we had moved into our current apartment.  magazines that i am not sure that i had ever read, fortune cookie inserts (which i love to keep and have taped up at my cubicle at work) anyway at the end of it with a couple of pseudoseizures and tears and panic attack i had filled up a trash bag.  then came the task of throwing it out. which induced all the symptoms again and i am going to be really honest that i wanted to dig the bag out of the dumpster this morning to check the contents of the bag and see if they could thrown out.  but you aren't supposed to do that so i hung in there and didn't check it and tried to habituate.

tonight will be night 2.