bullying my bully, part two

Posted on October 2, 2011 by Jackie Lea Sommers

Such an interesting post on this same topic on ocdtalk’s blog!

In my story, Neely discovers this concept through a brochure in her psychiatrist’s office, but in my own life, it came out of NOWHERE. (God??) All I’d ever heard of it before was from a friend with an eating disorder who called it “Ed” and talked about it as something separate from herself. So I randomly started to do something similar, imaginging my OCD as a black dot.

In real life, people stumble into things, but most of the time in fiction, characters have to be forced. That’s why I altered my story a little bit as I told Neely’s story. I mean, how crazy is it to just one day start imagining a little black dot riding in the car’s passenger seat?!

Here’s another scene:

“My OCD wants me to think that thought,” I’d spell out in my head as I continued through the neighborhood, realizing that autumn’s chill had definitely hit Minnesota at full force. “It’s not actually my thought. I’m just the messenger.”

It was an awkward dance, one where I sidled up to the thought and tried to hold its hand. One foot in front of the other, a stealthy warrior on a tiptoed journey toward freedom.

“Oh, you’re along?” I said to the black dot that was jogging to keep up with my longer strides. “Well, keep up, won’t ya?” I “dressed” it in a child’s train conductor costume and laughed under my breath as it seethed in humiliation. “Chugga-chugga-choo-chooooo!” I said, pulling a fake train whistle above my head. “Aren’t you a cute little conductor?” It glared at me.

Another day, another walk, this time my little black dot in a Scottish kilt and a tiny tam beret. The day after, a doll-sized sailor suit and white sailor hat. It had toddled behind me, trying to keep a low profile, which was just fine by me. By the end of the week I’d landed on an outfit for keeps—a pink tutu with tights and ballet slippers, which my OCD hated worse than all the rest. I was bullying my bully, and it felt powerful. Whenever my mind started to race, I said to my OCD in its ballerina getup, “You there! Start twirling!” And so it would, even as it boiled with rage. “Keep on twirling!” I said with a smile. “I’ll tell you when you can stop … little one.”

I felt an odd sense of control that I’d never had before, not completely free of OCD, but like someone separate from it. I didn’t need to get my toes wet; I could stand on the dry bank, command my orders, and get back to work.

Isn’t it interesting that something that seems so crazy is actually what’s keeping an obsessive-compulsive from craziness? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this concept. Leave a comment!

what it feels like

Posted on September 25, 2011 by Jackie Lea Sommers

I just had an OCD dream. Is that even possible?

In it, my mom was talking about Halloween and beseeching me to guard myself against dark powers on that day (my mom is not generally a nut about these kinds of things, but she was very passionate in my dream), and I was telling her that I was protected because I have Christ … when I began to doubt my salvation. In my dream.

Weird. Never have done that before.

And I woke up to those same old feelings of terror that dominated me for so long.

I was reading OCDTalk blog and read a post about what OCD felt like (the link will take you there). She wrote:

* You have that feeling you get after swerving to avoid a potentially fatal car accident.

* You have that feeling you get when you take your eyes off of your child in a store for one minute, and then he/she is gone.

With the above examples, your physical and mental distress dissipates once the blackboard scratching stops, you avoid the accident, or you’ve located your child. But try to imagine having those feelings of intense anxiety repeatedly, perhaps hundreds of times a day. That is what some sufferers say life with severe OCD feels like.

Those were the two examples that resonated most with me– I wrote a couple things over the past three years trying to describe what OCD felt like. Here’s a poem that reminds me of how I just woke up from my dream– the feeling that I’m trying to let drain out of me right now as I blog:

TERROR

I remember in junior high when for Christmas I received
an old-fashioned alarm clock, two bells like golden mushrooms
and the tiny hammer that trilled between them.
The alarm was like crashing through four levels of reality
in mere seconds, like being doused with water from the Atlantic,
like defibrillator plates on my chest, shocking me into the morning,
like frozen hands slapping my brain. These days,
it is as though the golden clock of my childhood has taken up residence
inside my chest, where it is continuously ringing, jolting me back to the
Issue at Hand whenever I forget, for a moment, to be scared.

Here’s another line from my book:

I worked myself into hysterics by that evening, an amusement park ride spinning out of control. Terror licked at my heart and felt permanent: I just knew that nothing would ever be right again.

And here’s one last one. I hope it helps you to understand.

It reminded me of my later years of high school, when Charlotte’s and my friend Terri started to go to parties in our classmates’ cornfields, where she would steal cigarettes from boys’ mouths to take her own drag. Jeremy Mason’s back forty was the preferred party spot for our small class, although from time to time, the melee would move over to Madison Prewett’s pasture pond. And sometimes, as if they were begging to be stereotyped, the group would convene for indiscretion at the railroad trestle just outside of the Collins Falls city limits.

At the time, I was stuck in my own paradoxical world—worrying that God wasn’t real, and that because I thought so, He would send me to hell—and so had no time for petty crimes like underaged drinking, which would only muddy my already-soiled “record.”

The one time I made it out to the trestle was on a Sunday afternoon, the day after a party where half of my class had gotten minors. Terri had shirked the police but dropped her cell phone while fleeing the scene, so the next day, she asked me and Charlotte to help her look. Charlotte, who had just gotten both her license and the Voyager, drove us to the scene in a reckless fashion she’d never outgrow.

The site had an abandoned, makeshift fire pit and empty cans of Coors Light scattered all around like eggs at an Easter hunt. The fire pit had a few hay bales around it that someone or another had brought out in his pickup truck, and all this was at the base of the western hill. From the top of that hill, the trestle bridge ran out straight to the eastern bank, at least 120 feet high in the center of
the bridge and about a quarter of a mile from one end to the other. It looked rickety and ominous, like the oldest rollercoaster at the amusement park.

“Call my number,” demanded Terri, as we started to climb the western hill. “I ran this way, trying to get into the trees.”

We were nearly at the top when we heard the old Nokia ring. Terri located it and wiped it off on her jeans. “Good as new,” she pronounced.

The three of us turned around and looked down the hill, then across the long stretch of tracks with the support frames branching out beneath them like Tim Burton’s grotesque version of gothic
giraffe legs or the Imperial walkers on planet Hoth. “Let’s go across it,” said Terri, her eyes shining.

“Oh gosh,” said Charlotte. “Really?”

“I’ve done it before,” said Terri. “It’s really not that big of a deal.”

“What if a train comes?” I asked.

“That’s the point,” said Terri. “It’s scary because you don’t know if a train could be coming just around the corner. I mean, it probably won’t, but you don’t know that. If a train comes, then you
have to run for it.”

“Okay,” I said, and the words shocked me as they left my mouth. I felt as if someone had bumped into me and I’d accidentally burped them out.

“Really?” asked Terri.

“Yeah, really?” asked Charlotte.

Now my stomach was reeling as I looked down the side of the hill we’d come up. It was a long way down. I moved over to the tracks and stood in the middle of them, facing the bridge. It was so far across, and so terribly narrow. I wondered briefly if we could somehow climb down the support beams if the worst came to the worst. “Let’s just do it,” I said. “Let’s get going. It’s going to be fine.”

And so we walked across the trestle then, a quarter mile from safety to safety, and the whole time we marched across those wooden slats, none of us spoke but Terri, who said, “Whoa,” in the
middle of the bridge, when she looked over the edge. She said, “It’s actually worse in daylight,” and then we continued on, a silent march, ears tuned for any shrieking whistle just around the bend. I felt bent over with tension, as if my shoulders were knotting up the way water boils in a pot. My stomach felt hollow and greasy.

It’s nothing, I told myself. Nothing is coming. But it didn’t calm me. My heart beat like a steady roll on a snare. It was one of the most terrible and memorable experiences of my young life, and my mind was ravaged with images of three bodies lying still in the rushes below. Every step felt like sheer panic flowing up from my toes to my chest, rattling my heart then moving like a laser beam to my head, where I manufactured nightmares.

And now, all these years later, this memory was like putting a finger on the pulse of that evening: absolute terror, only this time, there was no safety in sight. Just the feel of walking on an endless, narrow railroad trestle, listening, straining for the sound of destruction on its way to meet me.

CBT prep …

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Jackie Lea Sommers

I looked at the back cover of Freedom for Today’s Obsessive-Compulsive. Apparently Steve Jewett and James Nash were some big names in the OCD world. “Open this book,” the back cover read, “and unlock the doors of your mind’s prison. What lies ahead of you is freedom.” The goal was appealing, and I liked the confident wording. Just straight to the point: “What lies ahead of you is freedom.” Well, okay.

I opened to a random page and read, If I were to say to you, ‘Don’t think about a red unicorn,’ what would happen next? Why, immediately, you’d begin to think of a red unicorn! In fact, I’m sure that’s what’s in your mind’s eye right now as you continue to read this page. That is what we’re dealing with as we fight OCD. An obsessive-compulsive experiences an intrusive, unwanted thought, and because it is intrusive, he feels disgusted by it, wants to stop thinking that particular thought. But just as my telling you, ‘Don’t think about a red unicorn’ results in your immediately doing so, the obsessive-compulsive’s panic and desire to stop thinking the intrusive thought actually drive him to continue thinking about that very thing.”

Well, that was certainly true enough. When my worst thoughts arose in my mind and I tried to stamp them out, it was a battle of escalation. The harder I fought, the harder I needed to fight.

“In cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT),” the book continued, “we encourage the obsessive-compulsive to give in to those intrusive thoughts, to stop fighting them. Time and time again, CBT experts have found that it is when an obsessive-compulsive stops fighting the intrusive thoughts and actually embraces them that he finds freedom from them.”

Oh gosh. I set the book down, my heart beginning to race. It wasn’t new information to me—Ruth’s brochure had given me the basics of behavior therapy—but the way it was worded gave me a chill. “Give in to those intrusive thoughts.”

“So I’m reading this book for Dr. Foster, right?” I said a couple nights later at Rosie’s Place to Stella before she opened her laptop. “It’s like reading my own biography.”

“Yeah?” she asked, taking a sip of something foamy. “What do you mean?”

“Well,” I said, “you know how all my ‘issues’ seem so bizarre? Some of them are not bizarre at all, I mean in the world of OCD. I’m textbook. It’s crazy really.”

“Like?” Stella began to sort through the tangled mess of beads she was wearing—black, red, maroon, picasso jasper. These, in addition to a floral chambray shirt and hiking shorts.

“Okay,” I said, “so there are all these made-up scenarios, and the book circles back to revisit these same examples. One of them is a dad who’s sure he’s going to kill his baby girl, so he won’t even hold her. He gets all these images in his head of suffocating her, stabbing her in her little chest, shaking her, drowning her.”

“Ew,” she said, still fussing with her beads.

“Yeah, but these thought make him completely sick,” I explained. “It’s clear to everyone else, including his wife and therapist, that he would never ever hurt his daughter. I mean, they’re not freaking out. He’s the one avoiding alone time with his daughter.

“And there’s this lady who thinks she might be a lesbian even though she isn’t attracted to women. Every woman she walks by, she thinks, ‘Am I attracted to her? Do I want to kiss her?’ then she imagines herself kissing that woman. She’s just sick over it, but instead of thinking, ‘Oh, I guess not. That’s not a pleasing image to me,’ she thinks, ‘I must be gay. Why else would I be thinking so much about kissing women?’ This is called HOCD—homosexual OCD.

“But then get this. One of the example scenarios is about this girl who has these blasphemous images attack her mind. She … she pictures herself having sex with Jesus.” Stella looked bemused, but I continued. “She doesn’t want to think about that, but there are all these triggers in her normal day—when she sees someone praying, or a cross around someone’s neck, or a kissing scene in a movie or on TV. And whenever there’s nothing else to think about, that’s where her thoughts go. She believes that her thoughts are blasphemous, so she believes that she will go to hell. She thinks about hell all the time. The book even said that she confessed to her priest, and even he said she was fine, but she couldn’t believe it. Whenever the image of having sex with Christ came into her head, she said a Hail Mary to alleviate her guilt and drive the image away. Eventually she had to quit her job because she was too distracted saying her Hail Marys to get work done.”

Stella’s eyebrows furrowed. “Gosh, that does sound like you!” She abandoned the necklaces she’d been working on and clasped her hands together on the table between us, leaning forward as she listened.

“I know! I mean, elements are different, for sure, but the basic idea is the same.”

Stella sighed. “I used to think that OCD meant that people were super clean.” She chewed on the inside of her cheek. I knew what she was thinking, even though she didn’t say it aloud: It’s so much worse than that.

“Yeah,” I said, agreeing both with what was said and unsaid. “Even the people who are really clean, or who wash their hands all the time—they’re driven to it. They think something horrible is going to happen if they don’t do it. It’s so much bigger than just being a neat freak. It kinda drives me nuts when people with quirks say, ‘I’m a little OCD myself.’”

Stella nodded violently. “Remember that receptionist job I took at that plastic surgeon’s? One day this nose-job lady came in, right? She sat beside a burn survivor, pointed at his dressings, then at her own protective shell covering the bridge of her nose, and said, ‘I know how you feel. Hang in there.’”

“I don’t believe you,” I said, jaw dropped. “You’re joking.”

“I’m not,” she said. “I’ve never been so pissed at a job site before. I’d take the call center perverts over those rich bastards any day.” She shook her head in disbelief. “So … therapy?”

“Therapy,” I said. “I guess it’s like a pyramid, and you climb to the top, step by step—if you don’t reach the pinnacle event, CBT probably won’t work. In the book examples, the dad had to write down all the ways he was going to murder his daughter—graphically!—and then record himself reading it, and he had to listen to it over and over.”

Stella looked disgusted.

“The HOCD person had to rate women’s butts and record everything in a notebook, and she had to read a couple LGBT novels. And the one with religious obsessions had to write a story about having sex with Jesus Christ and then read it over and over again without saying any Hail Mary prayers.”

Stella made a face but nodded slowly. “So what will you have to do?”

I shrugged. “All I know is that it will be terrible.”

And for once, I appreciated it when Stella didn’t reassure me. There was more strength in knowing she agreed. “I don’t know what to do,” I confessed.

“Write about it,” she said. So I did.

OCD

There he is, that scarlet beast,
black horn like a railway spike.
I check myself against the blood-red giant,
close my eyes, cover my ears,
two-thirds of the famous monkey trio
where I sit cross-legged between cloven hooves.
Do not think of a red unicorn. Do not do it.
But I can feel his wet, warm breaths like humid whispers
as he lowers his nostrils to my neck, crimson ears at salute
like a maddening accusation.

thought for today

Quote

Posted on September 16, 2011 by Jackie Lea Sommers

A writer — and, I believe, generally all persons — must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art. -Jorge Luis Borges, writer (1899-1986)

Thank You, Lord, for my OCD. Thank You, Potter, for making this vessel exactly as is.

PANDAS

Posted on September 16, 2011 by Jackie Lea Sommers

The PANDAS that I’m talking about has nothing to do with these guys …

… and everything to do with childhood strep throat.

PANDAS = Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal infections

Say what???

PANDAS describes a set of children in whom an ordinary bacterial strep infection can turn into a neuropsychiatric disorder. The strep seems to cause the body’s immune system to build up antibodies that – who knows why – turn traitor and attack the basal ganglia in the brain.

In other words, a simple case of strep throat gone to hell.

Sometimes a child gets strep throat, and the body gets confused– instead of fighting off the bacteria, it attacks the basal ganglia … which leads to obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The first time I had an intake with a psychiatrist, she asked about my past medical issues. “Ummm … I broke my elbow twice,” I said, thinking how a broken bone had nothing to do with my head issues. I reached: “And I’ve had strep throat like a million times.” I felt a little stupid and way too thorough. Keep it to related issues, I thought to myself. Duh.

But my psychiatrist perked up. “Did you know there’s a strong connection between strep throat and OCD?” the doctor asked me.

Apparently, this is a little controversial, and some doctors aren’t convinced. But come on– how many cases of strep-followed-by-rapid-onset-of-OCD do you have to see before you raise an eyebrow at the connection?

My doctor– Dr. Suck-Won Kim, the absolutely brilliant OCD expert at the University of Minnesota– believes there is a strong correlation, and I’m in his court.

A scene cut from my book:

“You have heard of PANDAS?” he asked.

“I have,” I said, although I couldn’t remember at the moment what it stood for. “It’s when kids get strep throat and then OCD. Or something like that.” I realized that I probably sounded stupid, explaining PANDAS to an OCD expert.

“So many PANDAS studies … it has to be solved because far more OCD cases are strep-linked than people know.”

“Yes, I had strep a lot as a kid.”

“YOU DID? YOU SEE?!” Dr. Lee became animated as if a moment ago I’d said no such link between strep and OCD existed but now he was proving me wrong.

“The first time I met with a psychiatrist, she asked about my medical history. I didn’t have a lot to share, but I happened to throw it out there that I’d had strep throat a lot, and she said it was probably connected.”

“She knew that?” asked Dr. Lee, impressed. “That is uncommon. Most doctors have no clue.”

For more information on PANDAS, feel free to check out

NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) website
An article about it written by Dr. Kim (and others) (not light reading!)
About.com

I think I had strep throat nine times as a child. Can anyone beat that? Leave a comment!

exhausted

Posted on September 10, 2011 by Jackie Lea Sommers

I remember feeling SO tired … but not in a I-didn’t-get-enough-sleep way. Just in a deep, heavy-hearted, there-are-too-many-things-to-manage kind of way … including all your thoughts, which are vomitting all over your mind.

There is rest available. I wish I could get you to believe that.

“Yes, keep it up,” repeated Dr. Lee, “and you will beat this still. There is rest for you ahead.” He narrowed his eyes at me as if he were imagining my successful future. “But not yet. For now, more work.”

MMPI

Posted on September 8, 2011 by Jackie Lea Sommers

That is, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.

It’s 567 true-or-false questions, and I had to take it when I started meeting with my first therapist (whom I disliked and called “Shrinkie” behind her back).

567 questions takes a long time.

567 questions for an obsessive-compulsive takes even longer.

I kept running into statements and BEATING THEM TO DEATH WITH MY BRAIN.

For example, I believe one of the questions was similar to the following:
I believe God hears me when I pray to Him.

Thought process:
I am a Christian– I should put yes. But then again, I have committed the unforgivable sin, so He probably doesn’t hear my prayers. But do I really believe I’ve committed that sin? Maybe. Maybe not. Probably. I should just put yes. They want me to put yes because it will help the test to identify my beliefs. But what if that is inconsistent with my beliefs? On the other hand, maybe I should put no, because then it will identify that as an issue for me. It’s definitely an issue for me. But could I really, honestly say that I don’t believe God hears me when I pray? I’m just being silly when I think that, right? As a Christian, I should put yes. I believe yes. But then again, maybe I’m not a Christian. If I’ve committed the unforgivable sin, then how can I still call myself a Christian? I should just put my gut reaction. Which is yes. But why put a gut reaction down instead of a thought-out answer? If I really think it through, then I don’t believe it. Well, I think I do actually believe it– TODAY– but it could very well be a concern for me tomorrow or every day next week. Should I put down how I feel right now in this moment, or should I put down how I usually feel, which is no? I guess that’s not how I usually feel– maybe one-third of the time. But most so-called “Christians” would think that one-third of the time is huge, in which case, it’s a bigger deal, and I should put down no. Really– one-third? Seems like a lot more. If I think about it again, it’s probably more than one-third. It’s maybe one-third of the time really BOLD– time when I’m terrified. But even those other two-thirds I’m still doubtful of my salvation. It’s just quieter. So how do I interpret that? One-third TERROR, two-thirds doubt. Compared to the normal, which is little to no questioning of one’s salvation, that is a LOT. So I should put no, so that the test correctly interprets that I have major issues with this particular scenario.

Right?

I’ll come back to it later.

You get the point. 🙂

my OCD heroes

Posted on August 28, 2011 by Jackie Lea Sommers

Jesus Christ* Dr. SW Kim Dr. C. Donahue

*not to be confused with Jim Caviezel 🙂

I was diagnosed with OCD at age 22, approximately 15 years into the struggle. It took another 4-5 to go through about 11 failed prescription meds, 2 psychiatrists, 1 physician’s assistant, 2 talk therapists (one amazing, one horrendous), and myriad debilitating obsessions before I was connected to Dr. Suck Won Kim, a nationally recognized genius in the realm of OCD medication– and working right at the University of Minnesota!

Dr. Kim speedily got me onto the right medicine (the perfect combination of Prozac, Effexor, and Risperdol) and encouraged me to call Dr. Christopher Donahue, a cognitive-behavioral therapist whose practice was located in Edina.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy is somewhat a paradox. To me, it was hell and rescue, both at the same time. CBT is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done but also one of the best. The premise behind CBT, and more specifically ERP (exposure and response prevention), is to face your obsessions head on and be restricted from performing a compulsion to alleviate the stress. Can you imagine it? (To be honest, unless you struggle with OCD, you probably can’t. But trust me, it’s horrible– in a later post, I’ll detail what my therapy looked like.)

Twelve weeks. In twelve weeks, CBT works or it doesn’t.

And mine worked.

Think about it. Fifteen years of torment (including a three-year period where a junior higher cried herself to sleep every night) till it was named. Five years of running in place. And then … twelve weeks of hell and freedom.

I am a recruiter for Northwestern College, but sometimes I wish that I could be a fulltime recruiter for cognitive-behavioral therapy, the tool Christ used to set me free.

For those of you out there who are living the impossible life right now, saddled down burdens you cannot bear, terror trilling in your heart from morning till evening, there are steps that you can take. CBT is the number one way to treat OCD, and while it seems impossible, the alternative is living the impossible every day.

As I wrote this post, I realized that some readers will not even understand the basics of how OCD works– how obsessions and compulsions “complement” one another. In tomorrow’s post, I’ll try my best to give an OCD101 session!

a memory

Posted on August 27, 2011 by Jackie Lea Sommers

Highlight of today: watching several adults (including one senior citizen) ballroom dancing to “Tik Tok” by Ke$ha at the state fair. Wow. Just wow.

Desiree and I spent a few hours working at the great Minnesota get-together this afternoon, manning the Northwestern College booth. You really get the whole range of folks at the state fair. My favorite visitor to our booth was a five-year-old girl genius (she could read and write at two!), with whom I discussed the American Girls and Little House on the Prairie books. Gosh, I hope I have a brilliant baby someday.

A memory came to me while I was sitting in the education building. Years ago, I wore my “Aslan is on the move” t-shirt (yes, I KNOW it’s nerdy … I can’t help it) to a coffeeshop. The barista was a gorgeous boy who said, “Nice shirt.” IT WAS NOT CONDESCENDING OR MEAN IN ANY WAY, and yet, when this hottie commented on it, I realized I was the biggest nerd in the room. I was wearing a NARNIA shirt, for goodness sakes! I was worse than a Trekkie.

And afterward I sat down at my table in Caribou with my drink, thinking, “If you are embarrassed to be wearing this shirt, then you are ashamed of it. And if you’re ashamed of it, then you’re ashamed of Aslan. And if you’re ashamed of Aslan, then you’re really ashamed of Jesus.” Of course it became an obsession. It was just the natural chain of events for about twenty years of my life.

But not anymore. And tomorrow I am going to post about that. Stay tuned!

JACKIE LEA SOMMERS

Author & Advocate

Tag Archives: real life