My Thoughts Hurt Me

Some time back, a woman I know online wrote about her young daughter's newly discovered OCD and said that her daughter's thoughts hurt her. That's what obsessive thinking is like: your thoughts hurt you. They beat at you without stopping.

Most of my obsessive thoughts are divided between being abusive to myself ("Stupid! Ugly! Fat! Irresponsible!", things that mostly have never or rarely been said to me) and visualizing bad things happening (such as using a knife to cut vegetables and cutting my hand open, or standing near a ledge and falling over to my death ... things that have never happened to me). Even benign thoughts such as getting a song stuck in my head hurts; I most often get such "earworms" that are of sad songs, songs of lost love and loneliness. And having any song stuck in my mind on a continuous 24/7 loop (whenever I wake up, there it is) makes me want to drill holes in my head to let the demons out (thus the reason why some cultures still practice trepanning).

So Karen the Phenomenal Therapist and I are going back to working on cognitive therapy instead of the other therapies for the time being. As she put it, better to work on what currently has the greatest negative effect on me. And my negative thinking is almost literally killing me. After all, you have to talk yourself into suicide, and I almost did. 

There is no rational reason for me to consider myself so worthless and disgusting, but I frequently do and what you believe about yourself tends to become true. I have come to believe that I don't have integrity or follow-through, and that I will eventually disappoint people, especially people I work for, and they will eventually become unhappy with me. Ta da! It happened with someone at work who I was working for. The fact that this occurred due to "broken thinking" that led to a self-fulfilling prophecy is besides the fact, almost like a coincidence, in the way my mind considers it.

So yesterday I began wearing a couple of wide rubber bands on my wrists (representing two different issues) to remind me to think about what I'm thinking and feeling. What am I saying to myself? How do I feel when I do so? 

As we get into the book that Karen recommends, which I've ordered for myself, I'll learn how to fix my broken thinking so I won't always have to be on the lookout for it. But by then, I will have developed the habit of mindfulness, which is a good thing to develop. 

The book is SOS Help for Emotions; Managing Anxiety, Anger & Depression by Lynn Clark, Ph.D, just in case you think it might be useful for you or someone you know. So far, it looks good. 

I hope we get through the book fairly quickly, because I see myself going nowhere good as long as I keep thinking the thoughts I currently think.

Deep thoughts #3 --- Deep thinking

I'm a thinker. I've always considered myself an intellectual, but I also have considered myself very emotional: a "feeler" as is described in the Myers-Briggs Personality Types. But a previous therapist told me that few people actually think about their feelings, like "what am I feeling?" "why am I feeling this?" "what does this feeling mean or related to?" and that sort of thing.

I was stunned. I thought that everyone approached life that way, or almost everyone. I feel. I think. I look at each of those things from the other perspective to understand myself. Apparently not everyone does this. It somewhat explained some of the areas where my mother and I lacked rapport. I think my brother was probably more like me in this than like our parents.

So I think all the time, even when I shouldn't. I think when I'm trying to sleep. I think when I'm on the toilet or in the shower. I even think during sex when I shouldn't be thinking (or rather, back when I used to have sex), making orgasm a very difficult feat for me, one worth cheering for when it did happen. I do it even with myself! (So I understand how frustrating it can be for a lover ....)

My mind doesn't turn off. And if there are no deep thoughts currently needing attention — or my medications are turning me into a zombie — then my mind plays with superficial or tiny thoughts, the way a kitten plays with a piece of fluff. Back and forth, back and forth. I've also just recently learned that this back and forthing, as much as my mind does it at any rate, is part of obsessive thinking. That explains a lot, too. Like how some thoughts won't leave, much like Daffy Duck getting stuck in taffy, repeating the same movements back and forth over and over again until I would like to scream. But I don't because my mother taught me not to make scenes.

If only my mind would get stuck on positive thoughts, that would be acceptable. But, of course, my brain gets stuck on the negative things, or disturbing thoughts or images (Never, ever, EVER watch even a tiny film clip about the Human Centipede movie. Don't even look at the poster. Just. Don't.) In addition, I have a vivid, creative imagination and a vivid, detailed memory. Do all obsessive thinkers have the same kind of imagination and memory? Are all people with such memory and imagination obsessive thinkers? Am I the only person I know whose mind does this to them?

For the most part, I love my mind. I love the detailed memory and imagination, I love the vividness and the full-sensory details they provide me. Some of my dreams are unbelievable! But the obsessiveness has got to be controlled. The latest drug that was supposed to handle that is probably the one making me a zombie. Maybe we can handle it with therapy; I'd love to cut down on the medication, for certain.

Do you have a love-hate relationship with your mind?

Dream a little dream

I did not accomplish all that I planned, but I accomplished much of what I wanted today. Tomorrow I must be very focused and energetic to finish it all. But I have the time, before I go to bad, exhausted and surrendering in the struggle against the mosquito bites: I've put stuff on them (Campho Phenique), I've put bandages over that. Some I haven't managed to bandage (try putting bandages on YOUR scapulas!). I'm just giving in and feeling itchy. Because some things still itch, I'm not sure if the other stuff itches less, or even not at all. You know how that happens? The sensation simply swamps your receptors and there's no way to differentiate incoming signals.

Which, unexpectedly, leads me more or less to tonight's topic: dreams and PTSD.

When I dream, my PTSD hallucinations are real. So the bug-shapes I see out of the corner of my eye in real life are large black bugs that jump at me or pursue me or go where I cannot see them in my dreams. The pet-sized shadows I see are actual dogs and cats and who knows what in my dreams. And sometimes there are people, too. As you can see, my PTSD shapes are generally not beneficial in my dreams.

Except this morning. In my dream, I was getting into my car and struggling through black webs and spiders and tree roaches and just webby kinds of barriers. When I got into the driver's seat I jumped and brought my foot up to see what was on it and it was a skinny black lizard. It wasn't scary and I wanted to catch it, or at least leave it in the car to eat the pests.

So, Julie, Dream Interpreter Extraordinaire, tell me what the heck this means?

(Does this sooth your OCD cravings for my blog posts?)

The balance between gravity and flight

Tonight, I and several friends spent time on Facebook accomplishing a group project and it spawned a great deal of activity; double-, triple-, and quadruple-checking; and laughter. It has also left me with the jittery feelings that come when I let loose the dogs of hypomania, to completely destroy a phrase. The feeling is the same as when I was in college and didn't know about mania and mood swings and crashes as anything other than the regular feelings I experienced and assumed that many others experienced as well. 

In my 20s, I always encouraged and followed that emotional arrow as it flew up and up, past the birds, then the clouds, sometimes clear into the lower Earth orbit. The arrow would halt there, for a moment, balanced almost perfectly between both up and down forces, and that moment of balance was better than alcohol, better than pot, better than sex. However, gravity always won and the emotional arrow would plummet down, faster and faster until it achieved terminal velocity and crashed into the solid Earth, leaving me exhausted, in a vicious mood, confused, and often ill. 

When my first therapist first talked to me about controlling my highs in order to control the crashes, I was ferociously against it. I was convinced I would lose my personality, be some dull drone. I knew I would lose my creativity and my whimsy and spontaneity. It was another 3 years or so before I gave in and, tired of the crashes, began to recognize and control the arrow as it flew upward. I was relieved beyond words to see that it didn't kill my creativity or those parts of my personality that I valued so much. In fact, I think it made those facets better by virtue of my achieving some control. Later, when we decided to go further and add a medication layer of control, I wasn't so dead set against that. I'd grown accustomed to and grateful for control and the loss of those crashes.

In the past few years, I've also learned that I do have a cycling mood disorder and that the medication doesn't remove the cycling, it only dampens it. The rest is still up to me. I didn't have any awareness of those cycles until a friend who had gotten to know me very well and who has a keen perception pointed out to me that I fell into these phases where I would feel as if rabid hamsters were running on wheels in my mind and I couldn't control them. During those times, I would become dramatic and sure that the very worst thing that could happen would happen. These phases happened, he pointed out, every three weeks. Nothing I could lay to female hormones. 

Now that I've become aware of those three-week events, I've been able to perceive and control them. Over the  years I've come to appreciate control. So do my OCD and my PTSD and my hypervigilance and my regular anxiety ....

A laundry list of sadness

I'm still feeling good, and waiting for the hammer to come down. (Sorry, Mable, I haven't read your link yet.) I know I have to change that way of thinking. There is also the quote that you can view the Universe as either friendly or hostile, and whichever one you view it as is what you get. Of course, the writer didn't mention neutral.  :)  I've felt it was hostile since I was very little.

I'm not sure if it's more useful for me to talk about my issues in the order that I'm doing them in therapy, or just as they come to my head. I'm OCD enough that I want order. I'm an Air sign, which means spontaneity. It's very confusing.

Okay, why I think the hammer will always come down and destroy my happiness. The facts:

I was molested by a cousin starting when I was 2; the first time it was him, age 5, and another cousin age 8. My mom and aunts found us in a closet and laughed it off as playing doctor, as if a 2-year-old had any choice in the matter. 

My cousin continued off and on until I was 11. His final act was to say he wouldn't bother me again until I was 17. Way to keep me in fear. That 3 year difference was always a huge power differential, and since the first, I was completely in his control, and knowing it was wrong and uncomfortable. My parents had told me, in front of him: do what he says. He knows more than you. I was to always do what anyone older than me said. Way to go with the protection, Mom and Dad.

He wasn't happy just touching me and stuff. He also had to terrorize me with terrible things that would happen to me. Monsters, when we were little. Psychopaths when we were older. I think my cousin was a sociopath.

My grandfather molested me once when I was 11 or 12. I was glad he died the next year.

I never told anyone about any of this until I went to therapy at 23. Then I eventually told my mom. She didn't take it well at first and it took her a year or so to be able to talk to me about it without making it kind of my fault for not telling her and Dad.

There's some less horrific stuff in between.

When I was 16, we moved 1100 miles away from everything I'd ever known. Nine months later my father died. He had a major heart attack while playing catch with my little brother in the backyard. Our neighbor had CPR instructions on a card and tried to do compressions. I'd had first aid two year previously and I did mouth-to-mouth. He died anyway.

Five years later, just before my mom remarried, to a guy I disliked from the first, my little brother, my treasure, committed suicide five days before my 22nd birthday.

The rest is fairly basic, and then there is Mom from last year. When things start going well, something horrible or simply bad happens. I have very little trust, for good reason, even in myself.  So it's an uphill battle in sand.

Now you know more. Ah, so much work to do, it can be daunting. It tires me out. And that's all I can manage to write tonight.

Wow. I used to be able to do this like it was a news report. Apparently no longer. My stomach hurts now and I'm feeling very emotional. Such a major change for me, and I think this is supposed to be a good one. Wish it felt good.

Alphabet soup

OCD. PTSD. ADD/ADHD. MOUSE. Some days I think my own name ought to be something like THX 1138. (Geeks will get it.)

OCD: Basically, I feel obsessed about certain things, or compelled toward certain actions, or both. For me, it's tidiness and organization. So why is my apartment chaos incarnate? Just look at my mind and my heart: I'm a total mess, paralyzed with pain and anxiety and depression. The worse the untidiness and disorganization, the more it pains me and makes things worse. When I make even one small area clean and tidy, I feel the very muscles in my body relax noticeably. 

I also have an compulsion toward collecting things. That one I've been controlling, until now. I have so many catalogs and magazines I haven't even read yet. Oh, and I collect notebooks and blank journals. When I go through my storage, I will find a large box of them. Mom hated my collection of them, but I stood my ground and would let her make me get rid of the better ones. Collections make me feel stable and rooted and protected.