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.
Friday, March 7, 2014
Thursday, March 6, 2014
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
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
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
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.
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.
If you are dealing with OCD, I wish you peace of mind and freedom.
Saturday, March 1, 2014
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.
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.
Saturday, September 21, 2013
Non attachement, OCD, gratitude and letting go.
It finally clicked. From being a student of the Bible for years to studying Buddhism, it took Steve Godin's Linchpin to get me to understand the importance of non-attachement.
When I lived overseas, I had no expectations. Life was a constant adventure. I was starting over. I had no choice but to accept whatever came up. I was flexible and I rolled with the punches. I felt as if I had lost everything which precipitated my move to the Netherlands, that I had nothing to lose and I wanted to trust in...God, the Lord, Life Force, Spirit, call it what you want.
Acceptance
Enjoyment
Enthusiasm
When I returned home, life was so good here, that I see now how I became attached to my home, my surroundings, the people who populated my life (usually a very good thing) , my work, my job location (just a few yards from the house).
If and when something threatened to upset the life I had created for myself here, I became stressed and inflexible. I focused all of my attention on safeguarding the status quo instead of accepting that life happens and that sometimes circumstances change. Somewhere along the way OCD kicked in.
So what can I learn from all of this?
I know that I don't want to live this decade (my fifties) like I lived the last one.
Now, when I feel that I'm about to go in circles checking things, I tell myself that I'd rather be doing my art than OCDing. It helps me shift out of brainlock sooner.
Keeping a gratitude list is also helpful, but only if you take away the focus from being attached to the things for which you are grateful. Life can turn on a dime. All I can do is prepare as best as I can without going overboard, keep on cultivating a spirit of trust and gratitude in all circumstances.
Relearn to accept
Give thanks
Enjoy
Be flexible
Be enthusiastic
Give praise and love
When I lived overseas, I had no expectations. Life was a constant adventure. I was starting over. I had no choice but to accept whatever came up. I was flexible and I rolled with the punches. I felt as if I had lost everything which precipitated my move to the Netherlands, that I had nothing to lose and I wanted to trust in...God, the Lord, Life Force, Spirit, call it what you want.
Acceptance
Enjoyment
Enthusiasm
When I returned home, life was so good here, that I see now how I became attached to my home, my surroundings, the people who populated my life (usually a very good thing) , my work, my job location (just a few yards from the house).
If and when something threatened to upset the life I had created for myself here, I became stressed and inflexible. I focused all of my attention on safeguarding the status quo instead of accepting that life happens and that sometimes circumstances change. Somewhere along the way OCD kicked in.
So what can I learn from all of this?
I know that I don't want to live this decade (my fifties) like I lived the last one.
Now, when I feel that I'm about to go in circles checking things, I tell myself that I'd rather be doing my art than OCDing. It helps me shift out of brainlock sooner.
Keeping a gratitude list is also helpful, but only if you take away the focus from being attached to the things for which you are grateful. Life can turn on a dime. All I can do is prepare as best as I can without going overboard, keep on cultivating a spirit of trust and gratitude in all circumstances.
Relearn to accept
Give thanks
Enjoy
Be flexible
Be enthusiastic
Give praise and love
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Coming along fine...
I'm relearning to accept fear and uncertainty as part of life again. I'm so much calmer. Sure, I still go around checking stuff in the house and in my classroom before locking and leaving, but I don't feel the same awful anxiety that I used to in the past few years. I know that I am a very responsible person and that something happening because of my own negligence is highly unlikely.
I'm going for a walk to do some errands in the village and I have the intention of leaving the computer plugged in and the Ipad in sleep mode. I know that no amount of checking, especially repetitive checking, will change the outcome.
As Gabrielle Berstein writes in May Cause Miracles, choose love over fear.
Physically, I've cut out meat in the last six months. I've been polite and eaten meat that friends or relatives have prepared and I've prepared meat dishes when having carnivores over for dinner or lunch, but I haven't bought meat in months.
I never much liked eating meat, so it hasn't been difficult to cut it out of my meals. It seems effortless for me to create meals mostly out of fruits and veggies, legumes and grains. Second nature really. I only eat what I prepare myself and can pronounce. Whole foods. I've been headed that way for a few years now. I only use milk for coffee (which I haven't cut out...yet) and for baking. I add non-fat greek yogourt to fresh fruit smoothies. I drink soya and almond milk. I eat eggs once or twice a week.
I swim 3 to 4 times a week. I aim for 50 laps but sometimes I swim without counting or paddle along friends who use flotation devices.
I don't remember ever feeling as good and I'm 50. Sure, every once in awhile I'll be aware of a hip, a knee, a finger joint, but as far as general health, I feel great.
The biggest encouragement I got this week was that the change was immediately noticeable to my g.p. during my annual physical. I'd revealed to him about 3 years ago that I suffered from OCD. It doesn't seem to have the hold on me that it did for a few years. I can feel it dissolve. I wish that it was like a wart and that I could put some duct tape on it, forget about it and it would just disappear.
Breathing and being present also helps. Being here and now. Just walking away...after checking a couple of times. Maybe someday soon, I'll be able to check normal stuff once and leave.
Soon.
I'm going for a walk to do some errands in the village and I have the intention of leaving the computer plugged in and the Ipad in sleep mode. I know that no amount of checking, especially repetitive checking, will change the outcome.
As Gabrielle Berstein writes in May Cause Miracles, choose love over fear.
Physically, I've cut out meat in the last six months. I've been polite and eaten meat that friends or relatives have prepared and I've prepared meat dishes when having carnivores over for dinner or lunch, but I haven't bought meat in months.
I never much liked eating meat, so it hasn't been difficult to cut it out of my meals. It seems effortless for me to create meals mostly out of fruits and veggies, legumes and grains. Second nature really. I only eat what I prepare myself and can pronounce. Whole foods. I've been headed that way for a few years now. I only use milk for coffee (which I haven't cut out...yet) and for baking. I add non-fat greek yogourt to fresh fruit smoothies. I drink soya and almond milk. I eat eggs once or twice a week.
I swim 3 to 4 times a week. I aim for 50 laps but sometimes I swim without counting or paddle along friends who use flotation devices.
I don't remember ever feeling as good and I'm 50. Sure, every once in awhile I'll be aware of a hip, a knee, a finger joint, but as far as general health, I feel great.
The biggest encouragement I got this week was that the change was immediately noticeable to my g.p. during my annual physical. I'd revealed to him about 3 years ago that I suffered from OCD. It doesn't seem to have the hold on me that it did for a few years. I can feel it dissolve. I wish that it was like a wart and that I could put some duct tape on it, forget about it and it would just disappear.
Breathing and being present also helps. Being here and now. Just walking away...after checking a couple of times. Maybe someday soon, I'll be able to check normal stuff once and leave.
Soon.
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