OCD gains strength and old mascara is doomed to the garbage.

Knowing some friends who keep their mascara until it is gone... I used it last week after letting it sit unused for possibly up to a year, probably a little under that. Now I have an itchy eye. Add OCD. "My eye itches. Maybe it is serious. Maybe it's not. Maybe I shouldn't work. Maybe I should work. It doesn't look that pink. But it does look a little pink. And it itches, since I'm thinking about it. Let's try to think about something else... it still itches.... and still itches.... it doesn't feel right..." And on and on and on. I'm thinking the fluvoxamine that I've been tapering off of is loosing its control on my OCD.

There is another reason I think this. I have a particular OCD issue that really bothered me at work. I couldn't figure out how to get around it, because it just seemed to wrong not to follow my compulsions. (This is my reigning OCD symptom.) Then, after taking the fluvoxamine and getting more depressed... suddenly this obsession became less of an issue. I could forget it and move on. Now, it's gaining strength. And just like I keep thinking my eye feels funny and so it keeps feeling funny because I keep thinking about it, my OCD issue just keeps going.

Fluvoxamine let me forget OCD issues. Ah, the ability to forget. It is very important.

But the fluvoxamine wasn't helping my depression enough and might have made it worse, so now I'm on to venlafaxine, or however it's spelled. This weekend, I was convinced that this med also increased my depression, but yesterday I had a good day, so my hypothesis has some disagreeing evidence.

A good day; not perfect. Calling it a good day brought in stress. "Oh, no, it's a good day so far, and I'm going to mess it up, maybe even by thinking about it being a good day..." But I told myself, it's a good day, not a perfect day. That gave me more freedom to enjoy the good without insisting perfection. I feel so successful when I can talk to myself and get a worry to go away or at least loose strength.

The research paper I worried so much about came through at 100%, without revision! I needn't have worried so much. I forget that what I consider a B can be seen as and A by someone else.

Happy Tuesday.

Comments

  1. AnonymousOctober 18, 2011 at 8:31 PM

    Karin says:

    Hi! and congrats on your paper!!! I am amazed at what people do at the same time as dealing with their ocd issues. Working and school and ocd- that's a full plate.

    ReplyDelete

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