Side note. Have you heard the, don't pray for patience or something bad (but patience-building) will happen. That irks me (the word "irks" doesn't. I like the word). Patience is something God wants us to have, and does he really permit extra bad stuff to happen just because we pray for patience? I don't think so. I wish that meant no bad stuff ever, prayer or not, but it doesn't.

I spent the weekend at home, trying to speedily get through this cold I have. It is a somewhat onesided cold; one side of my throat is very sore, and the other is not. Along with the cold came the dizzy/lightheaded/buzzing waves through my head. I didn't drive Saturday or Sunday. But I'm doing better today. Not completely rid of it, but not having the really bad waves that make my eyes feel like they move a bit with the wave.

Managing versus obliterating. (See, I'll get around to OCD or depression some time.) I don't know if I'm lowering my goal, which may lower my results. But if I think about managing my OCD and depression, then it's like an underlying health condition. Usually (hopefully) I'll be able to keep it under control, maybe to the point of symptom free. Maybe that will mean counseling for a while. Maybe that means medication for who knows how long. That's okay (but I wish I didn't need to go to counseling every week, but I think I still do). Maybe "managing" is my way of accepting. It permits me to feel discouraged some days. It permits relapses, though it tries to avoid them. It permits me to continue to get help (psychiatrist visits, counseling). It encourages me to get OCD under control.

But, supposedly if you don't completely squash OCD, it'll come back. I can't see myself totally rid of OCD. I mean, I'm much better currently with medication and/or therapy. But a life where thoughts didn't fill me with unreasonable anxiety and even stranger questions and reactions, that I cannot immagine.

My brain asks, "What would OCD free be? Which actions are okay and which are obsessions. What thoughts are normal and what thoughts are ruminating." This, I think, could easily become yet another expression of OCD. (Oh, and the "I think," is the compulsive escape clause lest I tell a lie.) (These escape clauses on an application may be detrimental to getting the job.)

Comments

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