Perfectionist, you say?

I felt as if I had it altogether a couple of weeks ago. Then, I started to slip into doubt again. Did I really check that? Did I really turn this off? Better check again! Ugh!

I was doing so well. I'm not back to checking a dozen times or more or really getting my brain stuck like an old record needle skipping and playing the same 3 notes over and over and over again. Now, I can usually kickstart myself out of a checking funk after 1 or 2 goes. That's still too much for me. I'm getting impatient with myself and my progress because I see now that I could live a life with more freedom, confidence and free time. I'm so close and yet...

My restless mind believes that I should be down to checking only 3 essential things before leaving:

1. Is the cat inside?
2. Is the front door locked?
3. Casually, glance around the kitchen before heading out the back door.

Simple, huh? You would think so.

I'm still checking the upstairs electrical outlets and nightlight but I kid myself into believeing that I'm not really checking them because I no longer do it with my coat on and my keys in my hand just before leaving. I'm doing it as I brush my teeth upstairs after breakfast. I could brush my teeth in the downstairs bathroom, but I don't. Maybe, I need to change that habit this week.

I no longer empty out the dryer lint except for when I'm actually using the dryer. But, somehow, in the mornings before leaving, I find myself in the laundry room gazing at the blasted dryer when I get my coat out of the closet. I should move my coat to another closet far away from the laundry room.

I no longer empty the inch of water left in the bathtub because the cat prefers drinking there than from her bowl in the kitchen. I'm pretty convinced that she can't drown herself in there, but I do walk by the bathroom door telling myself that I no longer allow myself to check it. Rituals, anyone?

I no longer unplug my laptop in my home office, but I still turn off the power bar. Do you see any logic in that?

So, that's where I'm at this week and have been for the last couple of weeks.

I need to look at what might have made me anxious lately.

I have a student teacher in my classroom. She's fine, but I realize that it does change things. I enjoy sharing my experience, but this also means that my days are much longer because of all of the sharing which takes place after the kids have left and I still need to do my day to day preparations and such. I've been getting home much later and not eating as well as usual.

For example, Thursday, I arrived home around 5:50 but corrected and did planning until almost 9pm. I had nothing much left to eat by the end of the week and ended up eating Quaker Harvest Crunch powdery crumbs from the bottom of the box with Soya milk before lugging myself up to bed. I usually have a lot of homemade healthy meals made ahead of time. I just need to be better prepared this week.

I usually see someone on Mondays about this letting go and going with the flow journey, but she's away until April 7th. I'm wondering if I'm somehow slacking off  because I don't have to be held accountible for my behaviour except to myself. I need to respect myself more.


This week, I will not doubt myself because even if I forgot to check something, chances are that everything would be okay just the same. Logically, I know that the chances of something bad happening are incredibly slim and I also know that I can't really control anything or save my world by staring down electrical outlets and dealing with dryer fuzz.

So what if something bad  did happen? What then? I'd have no choice but to deal with it. I can still choose to be happy no matter what.

I don't know a thing about surfing or sailing, but I used to do a bit of white water kayaking. You learn to read the river with its currents and rocks. Most of the time, you can see a safe way down. You can  get into rough water, but you can't fight its force. You have to learn to use it to your advantage and learn to go with the flow. Often in kayaking, you have to do what is opposite to human nature. For example, if your boat gets stuck up against an inanimate object like a rock, instead of leaning away from it to get away, you "hug" the obstacle. Leaning into the problem, causes your boat's underside to be exposed and catch the water and you're eventually carried away to safety.

Sometimes in life, we have to lean into events even when they are not what we wished for, in order for life to carry us through. Otherwise we end up stuck. I must have tried to lean away from difficult situations instead of accepting them, feeling the accompanying emotions and letting them flow through me.

If you find yourself upside down strapped into your kayak, human nature would have you stick your head out first A.S.A.P.. Wrong! If you do that, you will roll back under water,  tire yourself out by trying the same thing over and over again. That would be bad news.

You need to  roll your center of gravity (your belly-button) towards the sky in order to get your kayak to roll upright...then you can bring your head up and gasp for air. In the last decade, I forgot to roll my boat and belly-button up before coming up for air. Consequently, I've spent the last few years upside down in and thrashing around in panic mode.

I think that when my Dad died suddenly and my partner was deathly ill for the better part of the same and following year, I must have leaned away from those experiences (non-acceptance) and that caused my boat (perspective) to flip over.

 Being a bit of a perfectionist, I must have wanted to perform normally right away. Consequently, I just kept flipping over. I think that trying to control things by checking was a behaviour which became a habit and thing surreptitiously. I never set out to convince myself that by checking things over and over a zillion times that I could actually control fate. It just happened.

Finally, there are times when it's safest to portage. I hate portaging! It's like having to ask for help. I'm so lousy at portaging (picture weak ankles on slippery rocks) that I always have to ask my friends to help me carry my gear and kayak. Portaging and asking for help can be tough on the old ego. So be it!
When was the last time ego ever did something for me instead of itself?

I really need to let go.

Revisualizing how I see myself

View chez moi et ailleurs in a larger map

Part of learning to let go is learning to let go of my attachment to home, partner and perceived safety and certainty. I decided to make some handy copies of pictures of myself of when I used to travel without a care in the world. I never worried if anything would happen to friends or loved ones while I was working overseas and traveling regularly. So, why have I been so consumed with fear about leaving home for the past decade?

Yeah, I was younger. I didn't own a home. I didn't have a life partner. I did have a cat. I still had my original hair colour. Was I oblivious? No, I just think that curiosity and living around adventurous people helped quite a bit. I'm going to carry around some photos of those careless days in the hopes of remaking my self-image.

Update on this week's homework

I managed to accomplish all of my homework.
I lit a candle every day, let it burn out and resisted any urges to put it outside afterwards.
I resisted checking the water in the bathtub before leaving the house.
I resisted unplugging the nightlight when leaving the house.
I only glanced around the kitchen before leaving.

Writing about those urges almost feels foreign after a week and my list of things to check has gone down. I find that I trust myself more. For example, I ironed 6 shirts today. I don't like ironing and don't do it often. Maybe, just maybe, I avoid ironing because then I have to deal with wondering whether the iron is shut off and unplugged. Today, I let it cool and put it away before meeting friends for a walk and that was that. I didn't go back to check it before leaving and I didn't obsess about it or anything else before leaving or while out.

I feel good about that. I go back to work tomorrow. I have to stay disciplined and keep it up.
 

Bird in a cage

This image shows how I feel these days. I'm still in my cage but the door is open. I feel as if I now have the keys to freedom. All I need to do is find the courage to fly. I flutter my wings without leaving the cage, but I can feel it coming. I'll just fly onto a nearby branch within easy distance of the cage. Someday, I might try flying to a different tree in the forest. Wouldn't that be grand?

Almost perfect

I almost made through the day going in and out without checking until I left the house for the evening. I hadn't checked a thing knowing full well that there was nothing "dangerous" left on. I didn't even make it a block when I turned back to check on a power bar that I had left on earlier in the day to charge a laptop. It was off alright. I felt bad about giving in, but I tried not to beat myself too badly.

I guess that there will be ups and downs as I get better. How I wished that it would just go away, but it took awhile to get a hold of me so I guess that I should be patient in healing my broken brain. Sometimes broken bones need to be reset. I guess broken brains deserve a few chances to get rewired in their thought processes.

One day without checking!!

I did it. I went all of yesterday without checking a thing. I went out twice and left without looping around the house to check whether the cat was in, the dryer was off, the stove was off, the oven was cool, the computers were off and unplugged, etc.

How incredibly liberating!!

I'm going to try to do it again today.

today's challenge

I have nothing much on my plate today. I might go out to the store and then go for a ski. I'm going to challenge myself not to check a darn thing

.

books for learning to let go

Here are a list of books that have helped me on my journey.

Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer

Daring greatly by Brené Brown

The gift of imperfection by Brené Brown

An astronaut's guide to life by Chris Hadfield

A return to love by Marianne Williamson


I also enjoy reading Zen Habits by Leo Babauta

Ocd letting go: my homework

This week, I am NOT checking the bathroom or bathtub and only glancing briefly around the kitchen before leaving. I also must leave the nightlight plugged in and burn 1 candle per day and leave the candle in the holder to cool.

My partner leaves a wee bit of water in the bathtub because our fat cat likes jumping into the mostly empty tub and drink water as if it were a puddle after the rain. I developed a fear of her drowning. 

I used to make sure the bathtub was empty and that no candles were burning in the dowstairs bathroom before leaving. I no longer leave any candles in the downstairs bathroom. I would put outside on the veranda. No logic. There is never any logic with OCD.  Never mind the fact that I have a huge decorative lantern in the upstairs bathroom with a candle in it. For some reason, I have never feared that one causing a fire. Maybe because I hardly ever light it.

Until very recently, I used to touch the burners on the stove and the element in the stove several times. I also used to touch the electrical sockets to "make sure" that the kettle and coffee machine were Okay.

Before modifying my behaviour, we had to get my brain to start modifying its thought process which is the cognitive part of the therapy. I had to analyze and rate my thoughts and emotions for frequecy and for intensity on a scale of 1 to 100 over a few weeks.

Over the last few years my brain had slipped into the following cognitive errors or distorsions:
Intolerance of uncertainty
Oerestimation of threat
Overestimation of responsibility
Intolerance of anxiety
Emotional reasoning ( you assume that danger is imminent based simply on the fact that you are feeling anxious)
Significance of thoughts (likelyood of thought action fusion)

There are other cognitive errors tormenting other poor souls out there, but those were which I recognized in my thought patterns.

For each of my obsessions, I had to answer the following 7 questions:

1. What am I basing my assumptions upon?
2. What evidence contradicts my thoughts (obsessions)?
3. Are my sources trustworthy?
4. What's my hypothesis? (Either, the thing is off/unplugged or it's not.)
5. What would I tell someone who was acting like me?
6. What if IT happened? What would I do in the worst case scenario?
7. If someone is holding a gun to my head, that would rate 100 on the danger scale. From 1 to 100, how would I rate the thing that I'm obsessing about?

I haven't eliminated everything yet, but I am making progress.

Some things don't bother me anymore. For example, I really don't think my huge cat could drown if for some reason there was water left in the bathtub. She has never jumped up onto the side of the tub when it's been full. And I no longer think that leaving a nightlight plugged will necessarily start a house fire.

I am learning to trust my senses more. I am no longer touching things to make sure that they are off or unplugged.

I read The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg last week. Not all of it was helpful or pertinent to getting over OCD, but I was able to make a few links between my process and how habits work.

There is always a cue. For me, the cue is leaving. Leaving home, work or even parking the car.

The cue is followed by a routine or what we do (a certain behaviour). For me, it was checking things repeatedly with rising anxiety.

The routine is followed by a reward. In OCD, we hope that certainty will be attained if we do the compulsion just one more time, but it never does. We just feel more and more anxious.

I've had to relearn that all of life is uncertain. That's just the way it is. Reading Chris Hadfield's autobiography, An Astronaut's Guide to Life, taught me that his kind prepares repeatedly for the worst case scenario, but hope for the best.

So, I re-analyzed my reward. A few years ago, I managed to get the checking down to a certain number of times. I had set goals (number of times I was allowed to check before leaving the house) and I would reward myself with gifts like a new guitar or an mp3 player. This past week, I realized that tangible rewards meant little to me.

I'm really sick of living with OCD and how I've allow it to limit my life in recent years. With the small changes that I've been able to make, I feel like I'm finally getting the combination right and that the door to my cage is opening. I feel like a caged bird getting ready to fly towards freedom. And as I drew this image in my journal, I wrote down that my reward will be confidence, time and freedom.

So now, my cue is still leaving.
My routine is changing. I am eliminating checking certain things altogether and other things, I am only checking once. I remind myself to be very present, being mindful of my actions.

(There are still some things that I check repeatedly, but  I find that my list is getting shorter.) Once, I'm ready to walk out and lock the backdoor, I say a little prayer to boost my confidence and start listening to music. In the last week, when I needed to just leave and walk briskly somewhere, I found Annie Lennox's Ghosts in my Machine to be just right.

And my reward is more and more confidence, time and freedom.

If you are dealing with OCD, I wish you peace of mind and freedom.

Finally starting to accept uncertainty on a daily basis

I've been working hard over the last few months. I'm participating in a study on overcoming OCD and I've been assigned to cognitive therapy. We spent several weeks analyzing my thoughts and putting things into a hierarchy and now, finally, I'm working on eliminating checking certain things.

I'm no longer "allowed" to check the bathtub to make sure that there is water in it which could cause the kitty to drown should she be so inclined as to jump into a bathtub filled with water.

I'm no longer allowed to touch the stove, the oven nor the outlets for the kettle or the coffee maker. I'm only to glance around the kitchen before leaving the house.

At work, I have to lock up  and leave. No double or triple or quadruple checking of cupboard locks, etc.

I've tried in the past to let go and just leave without checking but I couldn't the anxiety would set in. I realized that checking for me might be a bottle of Scotch or cigarettes to someone else. I have to replace checking when I get anxious with another behaviour. I've decided to recite a Bible verse and turn on my music when I walk out the door.

For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love and self-discipline. 2 Timothy 1:7

There is a lot to be said for being here now, being very present while doing things. Being deliberate in one's actions.

Accepting uncertainty is like accepting to grow up. I was fine with uncertainty for most of my life and then when a few too many things happened, it took awhile, but OCD surfaced in a kind of post-traumatic stress way. The checking habit had already ingrained itself so solidly into my routines and psyche that it was too late by the time I realized that it was affecting my life. Suddenly, I realized that I'd unconsciously built a cage around my world in trying to create the illusion of security.

At 51 and almost a half, with some help, a dose of courage, and a lot of self-discipline, I feel as if I've found the combination for the lock on my cage and I'm very close to flinging it open for the first time in years.