unreasonably rational

Well, it wasn't a particularly thoroughly planned out Exposure Response Prevention exercise, but then again, I did put some thought into the over all problem. So I sat through the sermon telling myself that the pastor might deceive me and lead me to hell. Added in that he might deceive us all and lead us all to hell. Added in that it might bring some families ten years of grief, and somebody might end up with a mental disorder like somebody I love from the past church ended up with (causation completely unproven) (that friend wasn't me, either). Well, it was a loooong sermon. And I was very distressed. I guess if I step back and look at the thoughts rationally, it makes sense that they would disturb me. Nonetheless, I continue to be surprised and dismayed whenever OCD disturbs me. I wanted the distress to go down noticeably by the end. And it didn't go down as much as I wanted. I'm not sure if this is because I almost automatically kept making the exposure harder by...

Thus far, my weekend has been too full of stressful social situations. I went to a 2.5 hr training last night and another 8 hr one today, both intended to help the child care worker improve their work. Two more among many trainings out there letting you know how to have a better class, how to develop smarter kids (why, so they can have a higher risk of mental illness?), how to have better behaved kids. Last nights might not have gotten so into behavior issues, but today's sure did. If only I do such-and-such, there will be less behavior problems in my classroom. If only the teacher does his/her job in the best way (which varies from trainer to trainer, depending on what theory they advocate as fact), the children with have much less behavior issues, will learn lots more, and, well, it will just be better. So, in my emotionally depleted state, I've gotten grumpy, sarcastic, and developed more depressed thoughts. But today's training was just extra special (introduce sarc...

At least in my life, this has been true. OCD issues are more or less disturbing aspects of my life that are liable to change with changing seasons in my life, with changing medication, with changing therapy participation and methods. But before I get too far, I'd like to mention a conversation I recently had with a friend living with depression and anxiety but without the OCD label. I talked about having trouble making decisions at the store. She agreed with me, and labeled it depression. So I got more specific. I have trouble making decisions at the store, whether I should buy this or that, whether it is worth it to spend that much money on this, or would it be wasting my money and therefore a sin... And suddenly she was saying that that would be hard to deal with. And yeah, it is. So part of me was happy she respected that. And another part of me was thinking, yeah, but this is my life. This is my normal. Stressful? I guess so, but I don't always think about that, because s...

This past week has been interesting. I read some cheap romantic suspense novel, Code of Justice by Liz Johnson (Steeple Hill Books, New York, 2011), but it contained two people feeling responsible for things they really weren't completely responsible for. In one person, this was manifested in guilt from the past. In the other person, she felt like she had to do something to be responsible. Anyway, it was a Christian novel, so they end up giving it over to God and being free from their incorrectly assumed responsibility and guilt. So then I was thinking about myself and past church experiences where churches fell apart. And I'm not really sure why I said it, but I said something to myself about my not being responsible for either church's demise. And saying that made me feel relieved. The confusing thing to me is that I know so clearly that I couldn't be responsible for either one. I wasn't one of the main actors in the drama. In fact, I didn't do much. A co...

I finally found a successful anti-suspense-novel-dreams method; read a suspense novel during the day. Well, it seems to be working. I read one Sunday and one Monday, but not one yesterday, yet, I have had three mornings of acceptable dreams. :) This actually doesn't mean they aren't at all disturbing, it just means I've broken my run of suspense novel dreams, for which I am very grateful. So here is one piece of subjective evidence for justifying reading cheap suspense novels! Today, I felt like I might have wasted time with my counselor. Yay; undesired Exposure. So, I don't know if complaining about it counts as a form of sitting with anxiety? But I hope it does, because that's what I'm doing. Maybe I wasted counseling time. I wonder why I think that is so terrible? I mean, maybe if I was in desperate straights, and really needed to talk about subject A and instead talked about a very non-pressing issue B, maybe that would be a problem? But then again, someti...

My experiment writing a story yesterday did not buy me dreamless sleep, at least not yet. I had yet another adventure/suspense novel dream, as I now like to call them. And I'm tired today! Though the clouds could explain some of that. But I had trouble falling asleep last night, so I'm planning to avoid napping. (Last week, my Sunday nap did excellent things to my mental health, though, so it can be hard choice.) On the church front, the pastor "passed" my last test regarding how he handled a conversation about depression with me. He explained that his understanding of hope was that it was a belief and assurance that things would get better at some point after whatever dark time, however dark the time might be. I didn't have to be happy in the darkness. I guess I didn't get into the anxiety disorders questions, but his perspective on depression was non-judgmental. And pretty much, if I need to, I can frame my worst mental health struggles into depression ter...

Today turned from a (possibly) depressed day to a good day when... I cleaned my bathroom. And here it is; I cleaned my whole bathroom , did it all at once , for the first time since I moved in , if not before that. That was a triumph for me. And I cleaned my guinea pig's cage (one of those tasks I tend to put off). And I took out my garbage. (Well, most of it.) And I washed, folded, and even put away my laundry. I was about to list what I haven't done, but that wouldn't be such a good idea, would it. It would be adding the "but" to my list of positives. (My sister and I discussed this, how easy it is to add on to any telling of a good thing a negative "but ...." statement. "I'm good at music, but I hardly ever practice." "I'm academically gifted, but I'm getting a high B/low A instead of a high A this semester so far." "I had a good day, but I didn't do all my chores.") So back to the positives, because I...

Last weekend, in my emotional confusion, I once again sought out biographies of people struggling with mental illness. I guess this would be part of my ongoing search for inspiration, understanding, coping skills, and hope. But I found a really neat book. Brave Girl Eating: A Family's Struggle with Anorexia , by Harriet Brown, (William Morrow, 2010). It was told from the mother's perspective as she struggled along-side her daughter (referred to as Kitty in the book) and, as it turned out, along-side her whole family. Not because they all personally struggled to eat, but because the struggle impacted the whole family. Anyway, my perspective is influenced by all I have read that puts eating disorders and OCD in a related category. And the mother's understanding of Kitty's illness grew into one that definitely had similarities to my own. Food set off alarms inside her daughter. It was both feared and desired. And it set off guilt. Even suicidal ideation. (Spell check n...

I don't think voting was made for people with OCD. No perfect choice. Candidate A has these good points, these disagreed with points, and these concerning indications. Candidate B has those good points, those disagreed with points, and those concerning indications. Thus, voting means I will probably make a mistake even while I choose someone doing some good things. Rats. Now for the topic I planned; Depression or Not? Because my counselor challenged my thoughts. I thought, feeling that disconnected feeling from normal life, that was evidence of depression. However, on Sunday, it kindly left me for the moment after I took a long nap. "What if you were just tired?" she asks me. "I would be tired because I'm depressed." "What if you were tired because you didn't sleep well. You woke up in the middle of the night and then forgot about it?" "If I don't sleep well, it is because I'm depressed. But she got me thinking. What ...

My neck is sore right now. Probably because I swam yesterday, and I was very committed to keeping my face out of the water. I did try to re-teach myself to stick my face in the water, especially since I even had goggles. But I didn't get it working very well, so I worked a few extra muscles and kept my face up. Anyway, I haven't been swimming in a long time. There are multiple reasons for this. But some (if not all?) are just anxiety issues, especially at this point. For example, somewhere in their long list of rules, I'm pretty sure it said you had to be two weeks healthy from being sick. Possibly specific enough to refer to stomach issues, not just the common cold. Well, I wouldn't want to break a rule, so if I even might have been sick or experienced any such symptoms, I'd better not go in, right? I might possibly make someone sick. Actually, I'm not too worried about making someone sick from a bug I had a while ago. I think it has more to do with breakin...

Today, the sky is very blue and the sun is bright again. Fall weather for where I live. And today, I am scared. I'm scared of severe depression as well as scared of getting any closer to it. I'm scared because I feel like I've begun the slide, a slide that I can't stop, into that realm where existing takes an unbelievable amount of energy. I feel like I am invisibly cut off from the world around me, like it is hard to truly connect with normal reality. Like I'm in a bubble or a locked glass trap while an invisible angry cloud is slowly blowing the keys away, keys I can't reach, but can see slowly floating further and further from me. But on the other side of the invisible wall, the world isn't just normal, it is happy. The sun is bright, the colors beautiful. The people smiling and friendly, only not knowing that I'm in this bubble, so that while they think they are reaching me, they can't, really. But some people, probably including you, have ...

Advice for the unwary blogger. There seem to be trigger words that get you lots of spam comments. They just keep coming on one of my posts about Elaine Petrone's Miracle Balls. I thought if I took the name of the balls out of the title, that would stop it, but no, it continues, on that particular post. So now I have taken out the link as well. We'll see if that works. But I think I put the link in another post, and they left that post alone. So I don't really get it. If this post starts getting spam, I might just remove this paragraph. That, or perhaps once you start getting spam it just keeps coming? I hope not. But so far, it just keeps coming to that one post, so I might be all right. But I'm almost ready to delete the entire post. Only, it was a really good one on OCD. So I'll wait and continue my experiment modifying the post to unattract spammers. Yesterday was one of those weird days for me that is a combination of a really good day with particularly depres...

Here I am, on what would have been a working afternoon, blogging (connecting with people) and trying to relax. Of course, along with having the afternoon free, there came a little second guessing. But over all, I'm still glad. Less than an hour ago, I had a stomach ache from stress and wondered why I was taking the afternoons off when I could work them. Sometimes my thoughts seem so silly. I'm taking the afternoons off so that I don't get too stressed and also in the hope that it will help me get more studying and better learning done for my classes. I'm taking the afternoons off for my mental health. It is okay. And I know that. And it is still scarey. Change gets scary for me. I know, that's normal for humans. But I think OCD/anxiety makes it worse. Like changing from having a gym membership to taking tap dancing lessons. I've thought this out. I spent time making my decision. But I'm still a little afraid. I'm afraid of guilt. I'm afraid of do...

Well, I worked the afternoon today (I expected to for a few weeks until my boss gets another arrangement up and running). And I'm really glad I asked to have them off again. I went home for my lunch break, even layed on my Miracle Balls to relax (it worked this time, as well as last night; I have added relaxing music to the combination, as well as figuring out OCD's tune so I can ignore it better). Because by the time I got to my lunch, my back hurt from tension (it does this fairly often). Anyway, my back felt better, but started tensing up even as I drove to work. And the afternoon work was stressful. But now I'm done with today's work. So I can relax. I got an 88% on my test Monday! That was encouraging. It's pretty close to a ninety, and I want an A in the class (though I no longer "need" a 100%).

My OCD decided to join me on the Miracle Balls last night. I talked about The Miracle Ball Method, by Elaine Petrone, a couple posts ago, but basically, it involves strategically lying on the balls in such a way as to help various muscles relax. Of course, there is some sort of, if it hurts, don't do it clause in the beginning. Through an OCD screen, it reads more like, "If it might hurt, even just one little muscle, you might be damaging your spine and/or body for life! " And then the completely unfounded note of caution that OCD added without any help from the author, "If you don't lay on the floor in a symmetrical way and place the balls exactly evenly, you might end up lopsided for life, and that lopsidedness might include spinal damage, and any injury to your spine is a bad thing, you already know that." Apparently OCD's high school teacher was unsuccessful in teaching it not to use run on sentences. And having an OCD attack, if that is even a te...