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Tag: OCD

  • …the final chapter!

    My husband and I disagree on the turning point of my OCD journey but what we do agree on is that things took a sharp left around the end of the summer of 2024.  As I discussed with my NOCD therapist, the start of the school year brought new fears and concerns.  I wanted to maintain the progress I had made in my sessions with NOCD earlier in the year and we came up with a set of guidelines in order for us to do that.  

    As I’m sure others in the teaching profession can attest to, there are 2 very different personalities of a teacher.  One that exists during the school year and the other that appears during school breaks!  During the summer, while I was in “maintenance” from NOCD, I was able to maintain a nice, neat and orderly household.  We meal-planned every two weeks, laundry was completed as necessary, kitchen stayed clean, dishwasher loaded/unloaded regularly and meals were had at home.  I felt like I was living my best life and wanted to ride this wave of success into the new school year.

    I knew it was going to be impossible to keep up with everything and also go to work every day.  We came up with what I thought was a pretty good compromise at keeping up with housework and schoolwork and all of our extracurricular activities.  School started and by week 2 the “plan” was out the window!  All of a sudden, I felt myself “surviving” until the next school break.  Fall Break we reevaluated the “plan”, made some adjustments and tried again.  Again, at Christmas break we saw very little success and had yet another discussion about how things should be in order to stay “sane”.  I was living for the next school break as most teachers do!

    The entire semester my mood was worsening and my grip on things I could control was tightening.  I was more irritable at home and in the classroom, less tolerant of things that weren’t in our shared calendar or events that didn’t go exactly as planned, taking on more roles at work to stay busy and demanding perfection at home.  I’m sure it was impossible to live with me and really difficult to work with me.  In addition to the outward signs, the internal struggle had increased exponentially.  The internal monologue felt like paranoia 24/7.  My brain was on a loop of intrusive thoughts that increased to approximately 13-14 hours a day by the time Spring Break rolled around.  Thoughts like:

    • They’re not responding to my text message because they’re mad at me.
    • They’re gathered outside my door talking about me.
    • I can’t request what I need to do my job because what if they question why I need it.
    • I’ll be ok; it’ll be fine. (It didn’t matter what “it” I was referring to.)
    • I’ve been excluded because I said/did something inappropriate.
    • Nobody has time for me.
    • Nothing I do is good enough.

    The week before Spring Break, I experienced an anxiety attack Monday morning and had to take a “mental health” day.  I came back to work the rest of the week but wasn’t the same, ruling my already strict classroom with an iron fist.  Wednesday night, I experienced a second anxiety attack in the pew at church.  This was the worst anxiety attack I’ve ever experienced, having to sit with EMS and security to try to gain control of my breathing and racing thoughts.  One of the EMS crew planted the thought that something more might be going on; something more than just a run-of-the-mill anxiety attack.

    After confirming that what I was experiencing was a “classic” anxiety attack, my husband and sister staged an informal “intervention” and suggested that I reach out to a place in Nashville that specialized in OCD/Anxiety treatment.  Rogers Behavioral Health is a nationwide organization that specializes in several areas of mental health, one being OCD/Anxiety.  They engage in Exposure Response Prevention (ERP) which is the same treatment I experienced with success at NOCD.  At Rogers, there are 3 levels of treatment: Partial Hospitalization, Intensive Outpatient and Residential.  

    I submitted the online questionnaire to Rogers on a Thursday afternoon and received a call from them that same evening at 8:45 PM.  After going through everything I was experiencing they recommended I take part in their partial hospitalization program.  Because they are located in Nashville, I would drive to their facilities each day from 8:30 to 3:00 and participate in treatment.  Their recommended treatment program takes between 6 and 10 weeks depending on severity of symptoms and progress.  Patients have a team of clinical experts including a nurse practitioner and behavior specialist that manage treatment and medication to ensure the best results.  This team meets on a weekly basis to adjust program dates as necessary.

    As you can imagine, asking someone with OCD to drop everything for treatment did not elicit the best reaction.  This was the option I decided against the previous spring because I didn’t feel like I could walk away from the classroom.  This time around, I felt I had very little choice.  I felt like those in my inner circle were able to see clearly what I couldn’t.  If I continued down the path I was on, trying to manage and survive until the next “break”, I would end up losing everything in my life that I deemed valuable: family, career, reputation and witness.  So, on March 18, I walked away and began the Partial Hospitalization Program at Rogers.

    There are no adequate words to describe my time at Rogers.  The relationships I developed, the education I gained, the work I completed and the person I became would alter the trajectory of my life for the better.  Because of my time at Rogers, I am a better wife, mother, sister, teacher and friend.  For the hundreds, maybe even thousands, that are living with OCD and anxiety and have the thought “this is as good as it gets”, I can assure you that it CAN be better.

    I will live with OCD/Anxiety the rest of my life but because of the information I gained at Rogers it will not be driving the bus any longer.  I left Rogers with a renewed sense of self and a burden for those living with OCD/Anxiety who have very little HOPE of getting “better”.  Through this blog, I am committed to sharing the information I learned along the way (chock full of personal anecdotes) with the hope that someone stumbles upon it and alters the course of their life, too.

  • …no more talk therapy…

    NOCD is an organization that provides online treatment for people with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.  They assign you to a therapist and begin working through fears and obsessions that are severely limiting your ability to live life to the fullest.  You work through these fears and obsessions by engaging in Exposure Response Prevention treatment.  With the help of a licensed professional, you are “exposed” to an anxiety-inducing situation or fear and must prevent yourself from doing the compulsion that has significantly reduced your anxiety surrounding this situation or fear, the “response prevention”.  

    The idea is that the more times you expose yourself to this situation or fear intentionally and the longer you “sit with” the anxiety it produces the more your body learns to tolerate a certain level of anxiety.  After a while (which is defined differently for each person, each situation, each fear) you no longer feel the need to engage in the behavior that made the anxiety “go away” to begin with.  Your body learns that anxiety is not something to “flee” from and instead learns to just let it be.  

    When I started with NOCD, my therapist and I identified core fears that were causing me to hold tightly to the control I thought I had and others that were causing me to completely avoid things that I should have been taking care of on a regular basis.

    • Fear of doing things imperfectly.
      • Avoid doing household chores
    • Fear of missing an event related to the girls
      • Excessively checking the shared calendar
    • Fear of financial insecurity
      • Excessively checking our account
    • Fear of being incapacitated while the girls are with me
      • Rehearsing turns and routes while driving
    • Fear of physical security
      • Excessively checking locks/security system

    We began to work down this list, one fear at a time, generating small instances that would generate anxiety so I could learn to sit and tolerate the feelings.  Over the course of 2 months, I leaned into the process and was able to successfully complete a number of exposures and reduce my compulsions to relieve anxiety.  I felt like I had my life back!

    Over the course of the next 3 months, I decluttered our entire house, implemented a meal plan that allowed for us to eat at home more often, kept up with regular household chores (dishes and laundry) and participated in the lives of my husband and children.  I was no longer an innocent bystander watching the procession go by wishing I could just jump right in.  My friends and family called me “Mama 2.0” and I felt like a new and improved version of myself.  My husband would comment that this is the way I had been before children and I felt good about that.

    Exposure Response Prevention (ERP) treatment via TeleHealth is hard.  In order to effectively get results from ERP you have to perform the exposures regularly.  I wasn’t very good at making and keeping appointments with my NOCD therapist for 2 reasons: 1 – she was booked solid most of the time and 2 – I tried to “fit her in” to my life and busy schedule.  I worked on exposures in between sessions and even pushed myself beyond what we had initially set.  I feel like this dedication to see “results” led to my success during this time at NOCD.

    In June 2024, I entered the “maintenance” phase of treatment.  During this phase, I backed off the appointments with my therapists in order to learn how to maintain the progress we had made on my own.  I knew that going back to school in August was going to be a tough transition and we agreed to meet again during that time and work through some new fears and exposures if necessary.  One of the last, and most important, things my therapist said to me during this month was “OCD never goes away; it just changes directions.”

    I found this to be true towards the end of the summer of 2024 and leads me to Part 3 of my journey to successfully living with OCD.  Stay tuned…

  • From the beginning…

    On March 18, I walked away from the classroom and began an intensive partial hospitalization program for OCD and Anxiety.  The program was 100% voluntary but I felt like it was anything but that for me.  Deep down I knew that if I didn’t take the opportunity afforded to me that I stood the chance of losing everything I deemed important: family, career, reputation and witness.  

    This first post is going to be a bit longer than ones that will probably follow as I outline my struggles with OCD/Anxiety that have been present for approximately 30 years or longer.  My disclaimer: I don’t have a degree in clinical psychology, so any diagnoses have come with the help of medical professionals, clinical therapists and multiple “self help” books.  Through self reflection, I have been able to identify areas of my life where struggles began and events that led to certain symptoms.  I encourage you to read the same resources and establish your own conclusions about your childhood through self reflection; it truly is liberating!

    In 2004, my family experienced the death of my father due to Stage IV brain cancer.  He was diagnosed in July 2003 and passed away April 28, 2004.  It was a relatively quick battle and one that was devastating to me personally.  When he was diagnosed, I was a college student living 4 hours away.  The spring 2004 semester was one of the hardest for me and I ended up moving home about halfway through to help my family care for my dad.  After he passed, I moved back in with my roommate 4 hours away and returned to life as “normal”.  After a couple months passed, she sat me down and gave me 2 options: get help or move out!  When I visited our campus mental health office, through much discussion and evaluation it was determined that I had OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) and the most damaging words that therapist left me with was “it will be manageable until you have kids”.

    My only education surrounding OCD was that it meant you liked “order”.  Everything had a place and everything had to be IN its place.  As long as I lived by myself, I could control my environment.  At the time of my OCD diagnosis, I was also diagnosed with Depression; we treated that with medication.  Over the years, medication and talk therapy have been my “go to”…but not consistently!  When life’s stressors build up, I would schedule an appointment; when things were “fine”, I would be able to manage.  This back and forth continued for 6 years; until I met my now-husband in 2010.  

    When we got married and lived together, our entire relationship was built around accommodating my OCD (although at the time I had no idea that’s what we were doing).  I would beg him to help around the house and he would do his best to do the dishes (load/unload the dishwasher) or laundry (wash/dry/fold clothes) but I always found myself angry that it wasn’t done “right”.  I remember thinking “doesn’t he see that the glasses go on this shelf?” and “can’t he tell I don’t fold my shirts that way”.  Soon the thoughts became words and our relationship became a battlefield.  So much so that he just stopped trying to “help” and developed the mindset that he couldn’t do anything “right” so why even try.  I was unloading and reloading the dishes anyway and unfolding and refolding laundry, so why not just let me do it “right” to begin with.

    (I will add that during this time I’m also doing “talk therapy” but I’m approaching it as if there is something wrong with HIM; he’s not doing things the way I need them done, he’s not helping me with what I need help with, he’s not supporting, etc.  Never did I consider that I might be the issue.)

    Our relationship continued in this way until our first daughter was born in October 2015.  (Remember the therapist who gave me my initial diagnosis?  She said I would be able to manage the OCD until I had kids…)  In June 2016, when our daughter began to be mobile and I was unable to keep up with the laundry, dishes, general household mess, work and raising an infant, I “checked out”.  Mentally, I was overwhelmed.  I had developed ideas on how things SHOULD be done and I just couldn’t keep up.  Since I couldn’t do EVERYTHING well, I did NOTHING.  

    I went to work, came home and planted myself in my recliner every day.  I was unable to physically do anything around the house.  Just the thought of unloading/loading the dishwasher was overwhelming.  Laundry – forget it!  We lived out of baskets 99% of the time.  There was clutter everywhere!  I am so grateful that during this time, my husband was able to stay on top of cleanliness but the disorganization and chaos were too much for me to even think about.  In 2017, we introduced a second daughter into the mix and the chaos went from bad to worse.

    To handle the chaos, I overcorrected.  The pendulum swung so far in the other direction, I was controlling every aspect of our lives.  I did the finances, meal planning, grocery shopping, calendar, extracurricular activities, etc.  We stayed busy constantly; our summers were planned by mid-May and every single day full of activities.  We were never home.  Both girls played soccer from the moment they were old enough; basketball, karate, art class, cheer, summer camps, church camps, VBS.  You name it, we’ve done it.  From time to time my husband would comment that we were TOO busy…and I would justify our hectic schedule by saying “they are all activities the girls WANT to do”.  In reality, I never really asked them; I just signed them up.

    (Up until this point in my life, a very important theme can be identified.  Almost every sentence where I describe our life begins with the word “I”.  I have been a Christian since I was 7 years old and accept Christ as my savior and He has always been present in my heart.  Until this point in my life, he’s been like a passenger that drives the vehicle on family vacation when I need a break.  At this point of my story, He takes center stage and becomes the one driving force behind every action I take.  I attribute every step from here on out to the One who guides my steps and goes before me to prepare the way.)

    Around late April/early May 2024, the Holy Spirit stirred my heart and I had the very distinct thought that I was DONE living like this.  I was done being a bystander in my life.  I was done letting my OCD/Anxiety/Depression control every aspect of my life.  I made the appointment with my psychiatrist who presented me with 2 options: telehealth OCD-specific treatment or a partial hospitalization program in person that would require time away from my job.  You can probably guess the option I chose!  I reached out to NOCD, was connected with a therapist and began Exposure Response Prevention treatment to help ease the anxiety surrounding OCD.

    (Stay tuned for Part 2…)