accepting loss

http://www.ocdhelpdoc.com/2010/10/jonathan-grayson/the-cruelest-obsession-obsessing-about-obsessing/

I just read the article by Jonathan Grayson about "obseessing about obsessing" that's link is above. Reminds me of me.

Monday I was discouraged and my counselor and I came up with the idea of asking my doctor to write a note so I could take a few days off of work. This was supposed to be helpful; a break from the stress.

Tuesday, I worked part of the day, then left with the note from my doctor. Today, I'm so frustrated. Why can't I work? (Well, I could work, but I'm taking a break.) My own appreciation of my value is so tied into my work. If I do valuable work, then I feel valuable. If I feel valuable, I think I am valuable. If I'm not doing work that I percieve as valuable, then I don't feel valuable and think that means I am less valuable. I KNOW it's not true, but it feels that way.

So, oh, what a priviledge, I get to sit here and not work while my brain yells at me. Please, can it go away now?

Dr. Grayson talked about accepting what we do have, which includes mourning what we don't have. Mourning that, in fact, I'm not at my paying job today. Mourning that I'm scared and procrastinating certain tasks. Mourning that my brain doesn't always tell me the truth. Mourning that I'm not "better" yet. Mourning that it takes so long. Mourning that I'm afraid my life is doomed because I went home from work yesterday and because of what I said to this person and/or that person.

But if I wasn't so busy trying not to explode with frustration at my irritating brain, I could be enjoying writing this. I could enjoy how well I can sometimes type. I could look to see if going to a college this winter interests me. I could enjoy the sunny weather outside (like really, can't it rain when I'm in a bad mood?!). I could take a walk. I could go to the gym even if I was afraid that I'd make some terrible mistake there. I can enjoy my teacup even if I'm not so crazy about tea. I can enjoy my book even though I'm not at work earning money. I can enjoy life - what a thought!

Sometimes I try to write out two "good" thoughts for the next day, coping thoughts or hopeful thoughts or something. I started writing, "I deserve..." last night and then got stuck. Do I deserve anything? I don't think so. But I'm thinking that deserving is based on doing, not being. If we have to do enough to deserve life or happiness or respect or anything, well, that gets tricky. Have we done enough? What is enough? Where is the line? But if it is being, well, I happen to be a person, regardless of what I do. If people deserve respect and love...? then I do, too, because I'm a person. Oh, so hard for my brain to grasp. I don't know if we deserve it, yet God grants people mercy.

Comments

  1. AnonymousNovember 3, 2010 at 2:32 PM

    Hi Abigail! I just stumbled on your blog a few days ago and am enjoying reading it. It was interesting you wrote about how it's a struggle to be able to even enjoy the things that should be "easy" for us ocd-ers. That's a daily struggle I deal with - I try to write about it on my blog, because it sometimes totally affects how I handle my exposures if I can just keep my chin up and enjoy what I DO have access to. Hope your days off go well.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My merry-go-round

I've been keeping a mood log since sometime last May, or maybe June. I've done it on the OpenOffice software similar to Excel. This means I can do cool stuff like make charts and graphs to see how my mood has swooped around over the last year. This last week, I found that you can also put in a trend line over your chart. This was neat, but disturbing. I used it over charts made from week averages for the last 10 or 11 months. I learned that: My depression at its best (each day, then averaged per week) is getting better. My depression at its worst (each day, then averaged per week) is getting worse. My anxiety is getting worse. My sleep time is increasing. My exercise time is decreasing. Or, in short, my worst is getting worse. So then I wonder if I'm using the same standards to judge my mood as I was using in May last year. After all, the mood ratings are subjective, done each day, or occasionally every few days. But what if anxiety that I called a 5 in May would ...
Read more

OCD meddling in my education (again)

Image
What do you know, the insert picture function thingy is working today! Hence my photo not taking over more of the blog than it should. Today, if OCD were little g gods, I would have offended the gods. Actually, I did it last night. Thank you so much, professor, for giving OCD the opportunity to knock me to my knees. I'll have you know, however, that I am making some small show of resistance. Which I will explain. This is what I did. I did the communication screen with a little kid as per the instructions. Then, looking over it at home, I thought I missed something, so proceeded to correct something to say how the child actually pronounced it, not how I forgot and left it. And then the monster pounced. Because, being an hour or so removed from the situation, I no longer knew for absolute certain how the child said that word anymore. But I had just struck through the assumed mispronounced sound. So do I go all the way a...
Read more

Sunday

Well, played guitar in church today. I only dreamt about it two nights since Wednesday when I agreed to play. And neither dream was a total disaster... Anxiety, how much you do for me. Glad that's over until I start working up to playing next Sunday, too. Two Sundays in a row. Probably good for dealing with the anxiety monster. The pastor preached on Psalm 4 today, the second half of the (very short) chapter. It included dealing with upsetting emotions. He was good about saying that having the emotions themselves wasn't the problem, but then we have to deal with it. By stopping. A good old "be still" type verse is stuck in there, along with that vague "meditate" word (but not in my version; mine used other words for about the same meaning). The pastor's paraphrase of the meditating part was to address yourself, telling yourself to "be still" etc. Anyhow, by the end of the sermon and the chapter, he was hoping that people around us would see t...
Read more