In reality I am pretty normal. I hold down a really good job, have my own house, am happily married with interests such as playing music and interior decor. But I also have the ability to think myself into such a tense, anxious, frantic state, and I wonder how I will manage the next 30 minutes of living, let alone anything else.
Hang on, you might think, how can thinking hurt a person that much? Let me explain. As someone who has very recently been told I am probably suffering from the 'thinking' kind of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, 'thinking' is not just noticing a passing thought and maybe engaging with it for a few minutes like someone without OCD.
It means I think that with many thoughts that I have, however nuts or weird or random, must have a hidden and urgent meaning that I must immediately analyse and find the 'solution' to. Not finding the solution feels like a horrible, dreadful outcome in which I will, in my case, go mad, or perhaps decide life is worthless and I will jump in front of a train or suchlike.
I would like to say here that I realise now that do not believe either of these things, but my OCD makes me feel as if I very much do believe it. It is like having a Big Fat Liar living in your head alongside your rational brain. The liar tells you things such as 'you must solve this problem or THIS bad thing will happen' or 'you must not feel like that or THAT bad thing will happen'. It's hard to explain as unless you have experienced it, it seems amazing that such minor things such as thoughts could do that to a person. But they can, if a person reacts to those thoughts in an unhelpful way.
This blog is intended to be a journal of what I hope to be a successful story of how I will learn to manage my Pure OCD better. (Note, there's a very good slideshow on Pure OCD on the OCD-UK website that this slide comes from)
So how did I get here, to this day, this blog? To be fair I have had until recently pretty much 10 years of low-anxiety living, where my OCD has been targeted mainly at specific things which I avoid as, though perhaps I've only recently recognised this, they bring on feelings and thoughts which are too strong for me to manage. Flying for example, which I have successfully avoided now for nigh on 5 years.
Up until a month ago, I thought I just had a flying fear, with some other related fears such as claustrophobia. About a year ago I went to see a Cognitive Behavioural Therapist to start to deal with this, and deal with it we began, starting with helping me deal with my fear of tube trains stopping in tunnels, and to begin to stretch my limits in terms of travel.
But while trying to assess this, it turns out fear of flying etc was just a cover for what's really been going on. I successfully went on a trip to the south of France, the furthest I've been for a good few years - by high speed train, but all the same it was stretching my 'limits' in terms of what I considered 'safe'.
I did pretty well, with some rumination (the term used for obsessive thinking) but generally without having a full on panic. But then I got home. Instead of feeling relaxed and happy with myself, I felt on edge, as if I had upset some kind of balance in my life. Very quickly mentally I went downhill as I started to think the worst, with some 'old' thoughts and fears I'd not had for a while coming back very strongly. That I might want to hurt myself as I couldn't control my thoughts and feelings, that I might go mad, and 'fail' as a person. Beating yourself up is quite a big part of OCD as well.
I quite like this example of what Pure OCD can be like - around a normal fear like weeing yourself in public.
Anyway after I got home I went straight to see my CBT therapist, who quickly suggested that actually what has been the problem all along is that I have 'Pure' or 'Rumination' OCD which is quite hard to spot, as its the OCD type that doesn't come with rituals such as hand washing or door closing. Certainly I wasn't aware of it!
My 'obsession' or greatest fear is, at its heart, that I can't trust my thoughts and feelings, and my compulsion is to try and solve my 'lacking' by working through it in my mind to try and 'solve' this problem, to resist the thought and the feelings that come with it. It's trying to use rational processes to solve irrational problems. Using the head to calm the heart.
As you fail to 'solve' the problem - ie above, that you cannot reassure yourself you definitely won't wee yourself - you get increasingly and increasingly panicky and desperate, which in turn feeds back into your inner fear that you can't manage, you can't deal with your thoughts and feelings. Its a very slippery slope and before you know it you've gone from balanced individual to seemingly a total mess in the space of a few days. As I did just a month ago.
Four weeks on now I have finally realised that my thoughts are, although they don't feel like that, just thoughts. Also, that my mind will carry on thinking them, as my mind is, in part, a wild creature that creates thoughts from all kinds of bits and pieces, some based on memory and experience, some of which is no longer relevant, and that I have a choice in how I react to them.
What I need to try and learn to deal with is, just because I have a thought, I don't need to 'do' anything with that thought, and the feeling that comes with it is best experienced, and not fought against. The more I allow myself to think and feel, the more likely that the most extreme thoughts and feelings will start to dissipate and leave me in greater peace. Much much easier said that done, as I have 30-odd years practice of resisting unwanted thoughts and feelings, and only a month now of recognising my whole 'coping' strategy has actually been part of the problem.
This is enough for now, things to do.
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