Co-Morbidity

Posted on July 27, 2014 by Jackie Lea Sommers

Do you know the term?

Co-morbidity is the presence of one or more other disorders co-occuring along with the primary one. For those of us with OCD, our OCD is often co-morbid with depression. The depression seems to usually be a result of the OCD (as opposed to the other way around).

On their website, the Stanford School of Medicine writes:

Patients with OCD are at high risk of having comorbid (co-existing) major depression and other anxiety disorders. In a series of 100 OCD patients who were evaluated by means of a structured psychiatric interview, the most common concurrent disorders were: major depression (31%), social phobia (11%), eating disorder (8%), simple phobia (7%), panic disorder (6%), and Tourette’s syndrome (5%).

They also say:

In Koran et al.’s 1998 Kaiser Health Plan study, 26% of patients had no comorbid psychiatric condition diagnosed during the one year study period — 37% had one and 38% had two or more comorbid conditions. These proportions did not differ substantially between men and women. The most commonly diagnosed comorbid conditions were major depression, which affected more than one-half, other anxiety disorders, affecting one-quarter, and personality disorders, diagnosed in a little more than 10%.

OCD is enough of a beast on its own, but the truth of the matter is that many who struggle with OCD are fighting other demons too.

In my experience, OCD and depression teamed up against me, though, as I wrote before, the depression was secondary to the OCD (in that it was caused by the OCD). Some days I would be full of intense, manic fear caused by OCD, and other days all my sharp edges would be dulled by depression and a feeling that nothing in the world sounded exciting or worthwhile.

I’m so grateful that when ERP helped me steal power away from OCD, the upshot was that depression was defeated too.

For (lots!) more about OCD and ERP, go to jackieleasommers.com/OCD.

Image credit: Gerald Gabernig

Not a Therapist, Just a Resource

Posted on July 20, 2014 by Jackie Lea Sommers

It’s true: I know a fair amount about OCD. I experienced it for 20 years, I successfully went through ERP therapy, I wrote an (unpublished) novel about a character who struggled from it, I am part of the leadership team for OCD Twin Cities, and I blog about it regularly.

But I’m not a therapist.

I’m only a resource. I can tell others what I know, what I’ve experienced, what to look for in an ERP therapist, what books might be helpful, etc. But I cannot walk them, hand-in-hand, through exposure therapy. I have to remind others AND MYSELF of this. Often.

To those of you who blog about OCD and ERP, do you have this same problem? How do you handle it?

For (lots!) more about OCD and ERP, go to jackieleasommers.com/OCD.

Image credit: Unsplash

Jackie’s Team

Posted on July 10, 2014 by Jackie Lea Sommers

Back in January, I met for life and writing advice with my college writing instructor, the brilliant and beautiful Judy Hougen. Although I didn’t blog about it at the time, one of the things she encouraged me to do was to pull together a team of people who would support and encourage me during the crazy rollercoaster publishing journey.

I did that.

I have a hidden group on Facebook with carefully selected members, and they are absolutely my team. These people (who span five states and two countries) hear my prayer requests, calm my extreme panic, celebrate my victories, help me process decisions, dialogue with me when I get stumped while writing. They do it all.

I can’t tell you how much my team means to me and to my sanity. Yes, of course, I had/have each of them individually, but to cull them all together into one secret platform where I can vent and complain and cry and fear and rejoice has been unbelievable. They have allowed me to be completely unmasked and vulnerable with them so that I can maintain my composure in front of the rest of the world.

This post goes out to the members of my team. Thank you, all of you, for everything.

Image credit: Dawn (Willis) Manser

Black Dot: My Narrative Therapy

Posted on July 6, 2014 by Jackie Lea Sommers

Today I’ll share with you one of the tools in my toolbox; some (most?) of you will probably think it’s bizarre, but it works for me. Maybe it could work for you too!

I picture my OCD as something completely separate from me. I think of it as a black dot about the size of my fist. It is not a part of me; it is only in my vicinity, and when it is, it has a horrible influence.

But I have learned that I am stronger than the black dot. I am in charge of it, not the other way around. My OCD/black dot takes itself very seriously, and so it absolutely hates to be belittled. It is also masculine, somehow, someway.

So, when my thoughts start to go to ugly places (these days, this usually only happens at night before I fall asleep), I recognize that my OCD/black dot is in the room with me, and I make it put on a tutu or something else that makes it feel ashamed, and then I give it specific instructions for where it needs to go. I mean this literally. Most nights, I banish my OCD/black dot to the balcony outside my apartment.

It has to listen. (Which still amazes me sometimes.) (P.S. It’s ERP that helped me realize my immense power.)

In fact, sometimes it’s so ashamed of the tutu I force it into, or of any number of strange and childish dot-sized outfits I make it wear, that it doesn’t even want to be on my balcony where others could see it, so it crawls down the block to hide in the nearest doghouse.

Weird. I know. Believe me, I know.

But it works for me.

Do you have any weird methods to keep OCD beneath your heel?

For (lots!) more about OCD and ERP, click here.

Image credit: Josh Rokman

Sweet Freedom

Posted on June 8, 2014 by Jackie Lea Sommers

Alison Dotson, president of OCD Twin Cities, and I were emailing recently about how sometimes we feel as if we say the same thing post after post, article after article, especially since they usually involve our own stories with OCD, and history doesn’t change.

But I reminded her that even if we’ve heard our stories over and over, someone else might be hearing it for the first time. Not to mention that sometimes those of us with OCD need to hear the truth multiple times before it is finally able to sink into our heads and hearts.

So here it is again:

I was in bondage to obsessive-compulsive disorder for twenty hellish years. I was plagued by ugly, intrusive thoughts that caused me intense anxiety and even terror. Many days I felt completely out of control of my own thoughts, and I hated the ugliness that polluted my mind. I was sad, lonely, depressed, lost, engaged in an ongoing war where the battlefield was my own brain.

And then an amazing psychiatrist named Dr. Suck Won Kim gave me not only a prescription but also the phone number to a cognitive-behavioral therapist in the area, along with the warning that ERP therapy “will be hell” and the encouragement that I had to do it anyway.

And I did. For twelve grueling weeks, I practiced the exposure therapy assignments set out by Dr. Christopher Donahue, and after twelve weeks of hell … I was free. Free for the first time since I was seven years old. I could barely even remember what freedom felt like, what it felt like to be master of my own thoughts, to rule over my OCD instead of having it rule me, and so it was actually a little scary at first.

But let me tell you: you get used to freedom, joy, and light pretty darn fast.

The last five years have been magnificent.

Please, please ask me questions if you have them.

For (lots!) more about OCD and ERP, go to jackieleasommers.com/OCD

Image credit: Jesus Solana

THINGS WILL NEVER BE OKAY AGAIN [& other lies I sometimes still believe]

Posted on June 1, 2014 by Jackie Lea Sommers

It’s been about five years now since I underwent the Exposure and Response Prevention therapy that changed my whole life, and those five years have been amazing: I have so much freedom, so much joy.

But 20 years in slavery to OCD does leave behind some residue, and I’m only now beginning to recognize those areas of my life where that’s true.

One thing that I’m sure most OCD sufferers will understand is the obsessive thought that things will never be okay again, which sometimes has a tail of until I do X on it, so often resulting in a compulsion. It’s actually kind of hard to explain this feeling to someone who doesn’t have OCD because it’s difficult to express how in that moment, you can sometimes see no way out. The fear is crippling, the anxiety so intense that we shatter beneath it and either cave in to a compulsion to temporarily alleviate the ugliness of that moment or else fall into a stupor of depression.

Things will always be like this.
I will never feel comfortable again.
I’m going to always think of X now when Y happens.

It’s such a black and white way to look at things– and so terribly short-sighted! If we can learn to push through the discomfort without performing a compulsion, we are legitimately shocked on the other side when that “truth” we so adamantly believed 24 hours ago is no longer true.

Even though OCD is no longer my master, there is fallout from years stacked upon years of thinking this way.

Just the other week when I was writing in Duluth, I saw myself play through this entire scenario. I got frustrated with a scene I was trying to re-write, and I decided, I absolutely cannot do this; I will never be able to do this right. Then I succumbed to compulsive behavior (all without realizing it!) by emailing my editor and asking for more details. The next morning, I had an email from her: “Let’s talk this morning. We can find a solution. You should be comfortable and happy with what you write.”

And so we sent back and forth a few emails, and things were better. You know, those same things that would never be better. Yeah, those ones.

All this panic that I have been experiencing is because I feel like control is being taken away from me. What does a person with OCD hate the most? Uncertainty.

So, while in some ways this anxiety that I’ve been experiencing is quite different from my OCD (in fact, I would go so far as to say that it is not OCD; it does feel different), I guess I’d have to classify it as a repercussion or consequence of years of obsessive-compulsive thinking and behavior.

Now that I have recognized that, I am hopeful that I will be more mindful of that thinking. I want to be able to say to myself that my reaction is programmed behavior from years of reacting thus, and that– just like so many things connected to OCD– it too is a lie.

For (lots!) more about OCD and ERP, go to jackieleasommers.com/OCD.

Image credit: unknown

Thoughts from Places: Duluth

Posted on May 22, 2014 by Jackie Lea Sommers

Silver Sea #narnia

Sigh. It’s Thursday evening, and I have to go home tomorrow. In some ways, I’m glad: I’ve gone a little loopy and have hit a wall. On the other hand, if I had all day tomorrow to write, I think I could still hammer out a lot of work.

I didn’t get as much done as I wanted, but I did get a lot accomplished. I feel simultaneously proud of my work and also terrified of just how much more effort needs to go into this manuscript before it’s ready to show the world.

Space. It’s so nice. I don’t only mean physical space, but also head and heart space– it’s just that physical space can sure lend to that, eh?

Being alone with a manuscript can make you go crazy. Back in December of 2012, I spent a week in a small town working on (believe it or not) this same novel, and here is what I had to say about it:

When it’s just you and your manuscript in a tiny house for a week, both truth and lies are going to ricochet like crazy off those old walls and you know some barbs are going to get stuck in you. You’ll go from imagining your impending wild success to realizing that you’re a complete fraud. The only reassurances you can find are electronic—Facebook, texts. You drink them like water, but even then, you think what do these people know anyway?

This has been happening a lot lately, you think. This up and down, this rollercoaster. You’ve tried to tell yourself it’s just the writing life, the way things are. And to some extent, this really has to be true.

Here I am, 18 months later, and that book is being published, and I still lived on that rollercoaster all week. I wonder if– for me– writing will always be a rollercoaster of emotions. Yesterday I hit a low low where I couldn’t fathom how Truest would matter to anyone. Yet, by that evening, I was re-writing a scene that I could not stop laughing over. I was honestly losing it laughing in my condo over things my characters did and said.

Tonight I feel stress creeping back in as I face returning to civilization tomorrow. (Honestly, it’s been so nice this week: no make-up, pajamas all day, I don’t even leave my condo.) I feel time biting back down on me; I feel the pressure of my contract all over again. I wish I could stay another week. I wish I could somehow have more space.

Interesting thing about this resort where I’m staying: I started writing my second draft of Truest at this place, two whole years ago. And now (please, Lord) I am writing my second-to-last draft (I hope I hope I hope). I have learned about a million things about fiction and the writing life and young adult literature and about the industry since then, and my book– my gosh, my book!— has grown and changed so tremendously that it’s nearly unrecognizable (in a good way!). But I am still the insecure writer who is trying to fake it till she makes it.

Some people would say I have made it. It doesn’t feel that way to me.

Time for more revisions. I really hope you’ll love my book.

A War in the Mind

Posted on May 11, 2014 by Jackie Lea Sommers

I remember the Sunday mornings in church when my mind was a war zone.

An intrusive thought would show itself, and with my Pure-O compulsions, I’d mentally bat it down (usually with repetitive prayer). I was a ninja with my compulsion moves, but OCD was just as fast and furious. Back and forth, back and forth, like a relentless game of Whac-a-Mole.

And no one knew.

All these happy people around me, worshiping God, taking in the sermon, happy and safe in their suburban church sanctuary– and, for me, it was a battle field.

Pure-O: so invisible, so dark, so exhausting.

I praise God that those days are a part of my past. If you want to learn how I survived (and WON) this war, click here. Your mind doesn’t have to be a scary place.

For (lots!) more about OCD and ERP, go to jackieleasommers.com/OCD.

Image credit: unknown.

Fairy Tales & Tears

Posted on May 5, 2014 by Jackie Lea Sommers

Once upon a time, there was a young girl named Jackie Lea who loved to tell and write stories. She made a short list of her life’s goals, and one of the items on the list was to publish a book.

Jackie Lea worked tirelessly toward this goal: she wrote all through high school and college. She wrote after college too, and she created a writing group, and she spent her precious money on workshops and conferences and readings to help her become a better writer.

She was very, very tired. But still very determined.

“If I can just get a book deal, I’ll have met my goal, and then just think how happy I’ll be! I’ll be a professional. I’ll be thrilled. I’ll be validated,” she told herself.

Then one lovely November day, she got incredible news: an editor loved her story and was going to publish her! Jackie Lea had worked hard, and all her dreams had finally come true.

II.

Except that the book deal added so much stress to Jackie Lea’s life that she felt overwhelmed and panicked, jealous of other writers, nervous about her revisions, terrified to give up control, and generally quite fearful.

And she would cry about it.

And that felt wrong too, because who cries in a fairy tale when her dream is coming true?

Image credit: Gabriela Camerotti

JACKIE LEA SOMMERS

Author & Advocate

Category Archives: anxiety