Tag Archives: OCD

black and white … and gray

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Today, one of my staff members was really pushing me to set some boundaries/define some things around a particular part of his job.  I pushed back on it, simply because I needed some room to breathe, room to change my mind, room to be a manager.

And then it suddenly occurred to me how strange this was– that I, Jackie Lea Sommers, wanted a little gray working room instead of a black-and-white prison.  Me– the girl who, at one time, wanted a ten-step manual for every minute task of life, who had to ask permission for the silliest of things, who NEEDED boundaries drawn around her just so that she could lessen the daily guilt by a smidgeon.

Watch out, world!!  This obsessive-compulsive’s shackles are off!!

OCD101

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Know what bugs me?  When quirky people say, “I’m a little OCD.”

A little OCD?  Are you aware that OCD ruins people’s lives?

OCD is NOT simply:

* being a neatfreak

* being super organized

* being particular

* being quirky

OCD is when a person has unwanted, disturbing thoughts or concerns– ones that usually disgust or terrify– and then that person performs some kind of ritual to temporarily relieve the worry or panic.  OCD, by definition, causes a major disruption in a person’s life.  Obsessions and compulsions are often over-the-top: the OC doesn’t just feel guilty for the normal things but instead feels RIDDLED by guilt about the tiniest things … and is DRIVEN to confession.  The OC doesn’t just like things tidy but instead feels that some terrible thing will happen or a terrible sensation will last if things are not organized right … and is DRIVEN to ordering.  The OC doesn’t just want to stay healthy and contaminant-free but instead is TERRIFIED of contamination … and is DRIVEN to washing his hands, sometimes with bleach and Brillo pads.

I sound crabby in this post, I just realized, but I’m actually not– I’m just trying to make this nebulous disorder a little better defined.

I’m not sure it helped though.  Did it?

The Last Battle

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On this first night of 2012, I am thinking about my favorite book, The Last Battle, written by C.S. (Jack) Lewis.  If you haven’t read The Chronicles of Narnia yet, then 2012 is your year!  These books have been so important in my life that I find myself reading the entire series about 6-8 times a year.  They are well worth the time invested.

In The Last Battle, there is incredible confusion in Narnia– there is an imposter pretending to be Aslan, the great Lion, who is making terrible commandments.  There is one bit of dialogue I’d like to share with you:

You will go to your death, then,” said Jewel.

“Do you think I care if Aslan doomes me to death?” said the King. “That would  be nothing,  nothing at all. Would it not be better to be dead than to have this  horrible fear that Aslan  has come and is not like the Aslan we have believed in  and longed for? It is as if the  sun  rose one day and were a black sun.”

“I know,” said Jewel. “Or if you drank water and it were dry water. You are in the  right,  Sire. This is the end of all things.”

During my darkest OCD moments, this is how I felt– and actually some of my issues I refered to as “black sun obsessions”– obsessions where the ground was taken from beneath my feet, where I felt as if my entire worldview was being dismantled.  Those nights, my soul felt as if there were no place to land.  I was in free-fall.

But, later in the book, the King and Jewel discover the Truth— that an ape is behind this entire masquerade.

But now, as Tirian looked round on the miserable faces of the Narnians, and thought how they would all believe that Aslan and Tash were one and the same, he could bear it no longer.
“Ape,” he cried, “You lie. You lie damnably. You lie like a Calormene. You lie like an Ape.”

What I am trying to say is this: there are no black suns if you love Jesus Christ– only things that appear to be black suns.  He is bigger than our obsessions, and He is the solid ground beneath our feet.  It may feel as though Christianity could crack down the middle like a split log, but God is our gravity.  I was never in free-fall; I was lying in the great palm of my God.

same secrets

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“I have come to believe that by and large the human family all has the same secrets, which are both very telling and very important to tell.  They are telling in the sense that they tell what is perhaps the central paradox of our condition—that what we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else.” Frederick Buechner

While I think this quote is universally true, right now I’m thinking specifically in the context of obsessive-compulsives.

Alone, we imagine that no one else could think the horrible things we do.

But when we are in community, we realize that our secrets are pretty much all the same.  I know that’s it’s not necessarily an abracadabra moment, but when you start realizing that other people share your secrets, you feel less like a monster and more like the victim of an ugly disorder.  In other words, you start seeing the TRUTH.

The TRUTH is…

You are not the only one who imagines harming a child.

You are not the only one with excessive concerns about contamination.

You are not the only one who fears you’ve done or thought something blasphemous.

You are not the only one who fears you might be homosexual.

You are not the only one who needs symmetry.

You are not the only one with counting compulsions, who makes lists excessively, who feels a NEED to confess, who is driven to accumulate useless things, who counts, who has unwanted sexual thoughts, who needs to check “one last time” a hundred times.

You’re not a freak– you’re just a textbook case of OCD.  One amongst an entire community of people whose lives have been affected by this thief.  I love the online OCD blogging community– I love that people are sharing their secrets and learning that all our secrets are pretty much the same.

 

I boast in the cross.

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I give the credit for my rescue from OCD to Jesus Christ alone, and I believe that CBT and medicine and doctors were the tools He used.

Tonight I listened to a sermon online given by John Piper of Bethlehem Baptist Church, right here in Minneapolis.  He was talking about something that won’t make sense to some:

“[F]or redeemed sinners, every good thing–[and] indeed every bad thing that God turns for good–was obtained for us by the cross of Christ. Apart from the death of Christ, sinners get nothing but judgment. Apart from the cross of Christ, there is only condemnation. Therefore, everything that you enjoy in Christ–everything you boast in, everything you exult in–is owing to the death of Christ. And all your exultation in other things is to be an exultation in the cross where all your blessings were purchased for you at the cost of Christ’s life.”

Essentially, if I follow the path of blessings back to its source, there I will find the cross–the death–of Jesus Christ.  Because the death of Christ was an act of grace, an act of rescue.

I am grateful and blessed and pleased to be free from the clutches of obsessive-compulsive disorder.  In doing so, I am exulting in the cross of Jesus.

As Piper said, “[Being dead to the world] means that every legitimate pleasure in the world becomes a blood-bought evidence of Christ’s Calvary love and an occasion of boasting in the cross.”

how CBT helps me to see clearly

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OCD-related blogs I have been reading:

http://www.pureocanuck.blogspot.com/
http://www.lollyshope.com/
http://ocdtalk.wordpress.com/

The other day, there was a post on Lolly’s Hope that seriously could have been written by me, only a couple years ago.  It told how she was nervous that she’d been rude to the secretary at the doctor’s office and was wondering if she should call back and apologize.  OCD induces such confessions and apologies that are not necessary, simply because the obsession causes such PANIC, and the confession/apology temporarily alleviates that panic.  Your heart will be racing, as well as your mind, believing that things must be solved NOW and that you are going to feel this terrible panicky sensation UNTIL things are solved.  That’s why most of us give in right away.  Heck, I’m the girl who emailed Caribou corporate because my barista gave me a 10-cent discount and I felt guilty as all get-out.  Ridiculous, right?

Yes.

I’ve been reading things from people at all different stages– people who have never heard of CBT/ERP (cognitive-behavioral therapy/exposure and response prevention), people who are undergoing it now, and people like myself– who have gone through that hell, survived it, and are HAPPY on the other side!

I can see clearly now that I’ve undergone CBT.  I am a huge proponent of it as THE BEST TREATMENT THERE IS FOR OCD.  Yes, it is one of the most difficult things I have ever done, but God has given me my life back through it.  It was all worth it.  And the eyesight of my head and heart is 20/20 again!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image credit: See Clearly

“reasonable doubt”

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I read an interesting article today called “Casey Anthony, Reasonable Doubt, and OCD” by Stacy Kuhl-Wochner at the OCD Center of Los Angeles — you can read the entire article here.

Just wanted to quote a little bit of it for all you blog readers to consider, especially after having an interesting phone conversation along these same lines with my college roomie Megs.

Being a therapist who specializes in treating those with OCD, I can only imagine what an especially difficult task quantifying reasonable doubt would be for many of my clients.  People with OCD and related OC Spectrum Disorders such as Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), Hypochondria (Health Anxiety), and Social Anxietyare on a constant quest for answers to unanswerable questions.  They seek to quantify that which cannot be quantified, to gain certainty when it is only possible to be “pretty sure.”  These are questions that most people who do not have OCD can accept despite their inevitable doubts.  But for many people who experience OCD or a related spectrum condition, “reasonable” doubt often feels unbearable.

Doubt is such an intrinsic part of OCD that the condition has often been referred to as “the doubting disease. Some common doubts seen in OCD and related OC Spectrum Disorders include:

  • Are my hands clean enough to ensure that I won’t accidentally make someone sick through casual contact?
  • Am I straight enough to to be certain that I am not actually gay?
  • How do I know if I really love my spouse?
  • What level of pain is a enough that I should visit a doctor to see if I have a serious medical condition?
  • What is the right amount of eye contact to avoid being seen as socially inappropriate?
  • How do I know whether I am a good person or a bad person?
  • If I become angry at my child, does this mean that I do not love them enough, and that I am close to mentally snapping and harming them?

The only realistic answer to these and similar questions is to accept that nobody has 100% certainty on these issues*, and to stop the mental checking.  The goal is to make decisions based on what is “most likely”, given all the evidence.  For people with OCD, it may feel terrifying** to make that leap and take that chance because their brain is telling them that absolute certainty is required.

*JLS adds: That is why the point of cognitive-behavioral therapy is not to remove uncertainty but to make one okay with uncertainty.

**”Terrifying” doesn’t even touch it.

Thoughts?  What’s the most basic thing you know that you have doubted before?  (I have sometimes wondered if all of life that I’ve “experienced” so far is only a dream.)

I’m a Christian and I take MEDS!!!

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After I wrote an article for the college newspaper, one of my former professors asked me if next year I would speak to his biblical counseling class.  Apparently, the day after the paper came out, the class had had a whole discussion on whether believers should use medications.  This professor said that in general the class seemed to think that therapy should be “enough.”

And it may be.  For some people.

I’m not going to preach, but I will do a little copy-and-paste job here and share an old story:

A man who couldn’t swim very well was stranded in the middle of the lake. He prayed to God, asking Him to save him from drowning. Shortly after, a man on a boat came by.

“Do you need some help?” He asked, slowing his boat to a stop next to the man.

“No thank you,” The man replied. “God will save me.” The man with the boat shrugged his shoulders and kept going.

Next, a man with a canoe paddled next to him, slowing to a stop and asking, “Do you need some help?”

“No thank you. God will save me.” The man replied, smiling. The man on the canoe shrugged, and paddled on.

Next, a man in a tiny paddle boat came by, stopping next to the man and asking, “Do you need some help?”

The drowning man replied, “No thank you, God will save me.” The man in the paddle boat shrugged, and paddled away.

The drowning man did indeed drown, and when he reached heaven, he asked God “Why didn’t you save me?”

God replied “I gave you three boats. What more did you want?”

lately

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I was on the phone with my mom yesterday; she called because she read my last blog post about re-taking the MMPI, so we were discussing that.  I’ve been stressed lately, and struggling with some different things, but the truth of the matter is, I feel lots of freedom and very healthy.  I think it’s because I can compare everything to OCD.

I said to my mom, “Compared to the hell I went through in the throes of OCD, I don’t believe that anything could be worse than hell itself.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That surprised her.  She said, “You always seemed to be so well put together, seemed to cope so well.”

It made me laugh.  Facades can be so strong.  I was an absolute, total, complete wreck during that time.  I said to her, “I think what happens is that, with OCD, feeling awful just becomes the new norm, so it appears that way.”  Sad but so true.

Hillsong was in the Twin Cities, and Erica and I went to their concert/worship experience last evening.  The last time I went to a concert at Grace Church was in college … Audio Adrenaline and MercyMe … and last night we sat near where I sat all those years ago (would have been 2003).  I can remember that night, eight and a half years ago, and how I felt I was on such shaky ground with God.  Last night, I felt redeemed and free and grateful and healthy.

It just gives me so much hope for others who are in a bad place.  Please, Jesus, free those who are held captive by their own minds.  Work mightily through the means of Your choosing– miracles, medicines, therapies– to restore Your incredible freedom to obsessive-compulsives, and please draw all these rescued people’s eyes to You, to clearly see that You are, even now in 2011, in the business of redemption.

today

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… was a hard/stressful day and I agreed to see a therapist (but this time NOT for OCD– wow!).

BUT today was also really good in a couple of ways:

1) I re-took the MMPI last week (read here for my past blog about this test), and I went over the results at the doctor’s office today, and they were saying how HEALTHY my results were. I teared up there in his office and said, “You don’t know. I was a MESS. Praise God.” He said, “Good for you for working so hard and coming so far,” which showed me he completely missed my point. It wasn’t me. That’s for sure.

2) My writing group has a write-up on the NWC English department’s blog. Check it out!

One thing that would really be meaningful for me would be for you to post a comment saying that you read my blog.  I can see the analytics, and I know people are stopping by, but it all feels so anonymous, and I need some names and faces please.  I wish I could sit down and have hot cocoa with you blog readers.  With marshmallows.  Lots of them.