Category: OCD

Enjoy!

diariolottatore1 Comment

I hadn’t visited my psychologist in a while. I notice, after two years of this “psycho-routine”, that I go when I am down, and I don’t go when I am up. I mean, I don’t want to spend money or take extra time from my busy schedule when I am feeling good. But that is the point: unlike other organs in the body, I am learning that when the head aches inside, it is not such a matter of a day or a month to heal, and it won’t heal with tablets only, it will heal with work, loads of work that I must put into it. And I am learning that I need to be constant with the psychotherapy, and do it when I feel good and when I feel low.

It was actually good to see Dr. G. again. I don’t particularly like him, he is very Swiss in the “detached” kind of way. Plus he is a psychoanalist, and I don’t particularly fancy that practice, cause they often boil it down to the mom-related issues. There’s dads too. And loads of other elements that shape our identity. Plus, it is a loooooong therapy, it takes years, and looking at my budget, I feel I could use that money for more fun things, such as financing my podcast.

I realise though that this reasoning it to my own detriment. I am earning enough money to do both, and I live frugally anyway, so money should not be a problem. Away with this. So what’s the problem? Che ne so. Or, yes I know, I am learning to figure out, identify my problems. The source of them, how to catch myself getting into the wrong habit, and how to remedy that situation. It is such an invigorating process. I am doing it now that it is summer, the days are long and warm, sunshine has finally appeared at my doorstep, after many spring weeks of weird climate-change slash climate non change storm and snow in the month of May and June. Bring it on: Covid, weather unpredictability, solar eclipse, sunset sunshine, rainshowes and wind. I take it all, because I am happy at the moment, I am content, satisfied, proud of myself, on many fronts, and it’s all due to my own doing. I pet my own back and tell myself: brava L., you are achieving the potential in you, the famous or infamous potential everybody tells me about. Oh, you got so much potential, you are beautiful and smart, you can conquer the world… etc. Well, it gave me pure rage when I heard it during my low times, because I KNOW I am beautiful and smart, but somehow, this isn’t taking me anywhere… wasn’t. And I couldn’t see the path, I wanted everything and now, hic and nunc, and it doesn’t work that way. not for me. I have learnt that I need to be patient, and things will come in due time. I have to put effort on what I do, things don’t just fall from the sky, I make them fall in the right place, through my actions, my intelligent, my luck, my destiny, ma chaos, my fate, my doing, my education, my encounters, my new and old friends, my family, the good and the bad of everything.

We are yin and yang, I am coming to grips with my internal strength, I am learning to protect myself from others regards, I am learning, and it will probably take my whole life. But the beauty of life is the process, not the end.

Dr. G. was happy to hear my story, me learning, me doing exercise to not fall into traps, to learn to avoid OCDs, to go through them when I stumble into them, to prepare happiness when winter comes, when the days are shorter and gloomier, when I won’t feel like getting out of bed… I will be ready then. I will not allow myself to go lower than what I can handle. I will be ready. “Enjoy!” he said.

Enjoy this state of mind. Enjoy !

OCD [obsessive compulsive disorder]

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For sake of defition, here is a meaning of OCD that I have found on the internet:

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a mental illness that causes repeated unwanted thoughts or sensations (obsessions) or the urge to do something over and over again (compulsions). Some people can have both obsessions and compulsions.

https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/obsessive-compulsive-disorder#1

I think that each of us has some OCDs. I wouldn’t talk about mental illness, for the OCD I am referring, but I’d say they are little personal compulsions and obsessions that we feel the need to execute, otherwise we can’t proceed with the rest of the day. If you think of my OCD, I can find many. And now that I an working on knowing myself consciously, to strengthen my inner core (not the muscles…), I feel that OCDs are part of the things that distract me from being a better me.

WebMD writes: “OCD isn’t about habits like biting your nails or thinking negative thoughts. An obsessive thought might be that certain numbers or colors are “good” or “bad.” A compulsive habit might be to wash your hands seven times after touching something that could be dirty. Although you may not want to think or do these things, you feel powerless to stop.” (source link).

I definitely can live without washing my hands seven times an hour, an excessive cleaning of the house, repeatedly going up and down the stairs, or rearranging objects to ensure a specific symmetry. If you search for common OCD behaviours you’ll be surprised. But: I do have some impelling push for certain things that comes from within inside, sometime during my regular week. For example when I am looking for a specific tab in my browser (I usually leave 10-15 tabs open for work), I can’t but look at all other tabs and close them or act on them, before I finally get to my tab. Sometimes I feel the urge to clean the room where I am working before I can work; I start with the PC table, and then continue with other surfaces (the kitchen is just behind me, with a long long metal counter that asks me to clean it well); if I don’t stop, I can continue with an OCD propulsion towards cleaning up the whole apartment, getting the vacuum cleaner, the calc remover for the bathroom appliances, the dishwashing soap for the two glasses left in the sink from the morning breakfast, etc. This behaviour has been more evident to me since isolation time due to COvid. Being at home most of the week, I end up being a lot in company of furniture, sinks, WCs and showers, and have started cleaning more than usual.

I remember my sister in law had an OCD that would drive my brother crazy sometimes: after dinner she had to clean the kitchen spotlessly, and she would not relax until she did; this involved mopping the floor with detergent and all. Like deep deep cleaning, not just a wet cloth over the dinner table and off you go.

I am not too interested in why we have these compulsive behaviors, I find them amusing and irritating, I find them as an organic part of who we are as human beings. I haven’t met a person who has no OCD, small or light that it might be. In my case, some of my OCDs are distracting and I want to sever them from my everyday life.

So, part of my conscious “getting better on my own” process involves forcing myself to catch these OCDs and correct them. Not easy, but if you want to try you’ll realise how liberating it is. I give you an example: instead of cleaning all the surfaces of the apartment at once, I force myself to clean only one or maximum two, and stop. I put the cloth back to the closet and resume my work on the laptop. Easy? Hell no. But when I have done it, I feel satisfied, as if I had won a lottery! Another example: I follow my train of thoughts in an extreme way, a little bit like in James Joyce’s “Ulysses“. This is the most distracting of my OCDs, as I start off with one aim, say going to the bedroom to pickup my phone, and on the way I find an empty glass that I feel the need to put in the sink, so I do, and while doing that I am reminded by my car keys on the living room table that I need to change the parking disc in my car before the agents write me a fine; and my next thought goes to the paper I need to pickup at the office with the car, cause I can’t print at home anymore; more thoughts surface and after many minutes I still haven’t fetched the phone in my bedroom. Thoughts and objects distract me and oblige me to act immediately iupon them, for fear of forgetting (my short memory is as bad as Dory in Finding Nemo) :-).

I have found a solution that works for me, which helps me not only remember and not distract when I go from A to B, but also to be more organised: I started writing post-it notes in the places where it makes sense. I need to change the car’s parking disc? I will write a quick note next to the keys (or set the phone alarm 5 minutes before); do I need to respond to a client and at the same time I get another call where I have to urgently finish up an email for a colleague? I take the ten extra seconds required to write down task n. 2 so I can finish task n. 1 without stressing. This is so helpful, and takes a lot of pressure off me. If I find myself too stressed, I take a break, go for a walk, pause for 20 minutes-half hour and resume later. I take more the time to breathe and this makes me enjoy the moment more. It’s such a great excercise. I feel good about it.

More soon. Oh: this is day 3 of reducing the intake of Fluoxetin: 10 mg a day instead of 20mg. So far so good.