Tag Archives: OCD

A Few Questions

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I was asked some general wonderings, too, when I asked what people wanted to know. I guess that these are things I can’t quite cover in the book, so I’ll answer them here. Anything else I might not cover, just ask on my page or here, or message me. 🙂 I try to answer as best as I can.

These come from Kimberly:

 

“What happened to Nathan? “

 

We were friends until I was around 27. I still see him on Facebook, but we don’t talk that much really. He doesn’t live far away. As far as I can see, he is happy. We drifted apart because as my mental health got worse, I started to cancel things and eventually, he stopped asking. I miss him a lot, though.

“Are you still friends with anyone from college? “

 

No, aside from Facebook, I don’t see them anymore.

“Do you still live in the same area? “
I don’t live that far away from where I grew up. Probably just a 15-minute drive.
“How are you doing without being in therapy?”
I found therapy useless to be honest. I do better alone. My last one, last year, was pretty bad. He wouldn’t let me talk about anything. He’d say, What does it matter? It’s in the past. And had me down as having low self-esteem issues, which I don’t.

I did have CBT for my OCD at one point, but it didn’t cure it, just helped me to calm it a little. I needed that back then. I was living in a bubble.

I went to one therapist about my PTSD and the badman. He pretty much accused me of having an overactive imagination and said we’re all afraid of the dark when we’re on our own.

So, without therapy, I cope as best as I can.
“Do your children know anything about your abuse?”

 

They don’t have a clue. They know little things, like me not having a bed until I was 9, but no, they have no idea really, and I am glad about that.

 

“I’m also curious why your brother hates your dad so much. Was he aware of the things going on maybe, and just didn’t say? Was he abused in some way? Do you have a relationship with either of your brothers?”

 

I don’t exactly know why my brother hates my dad so much. I think it’s just a bad relationship and that our father is selfish, and he sees that. They fell out really when my brother asked me lots of questions, like whether my Nan used to beat me, like our parents had claimed. He realised it had all been lies and that made him angry. I don’t think he was abused, but he has issues from living in that house. Maybe he saw things. He was in the same bed as my father and I. He doesn’t live too far away. He comes and goes, but we talk. My older brother lives abroad now; we talk on Facebook. I have other siblings from later in life. My youngest sister is 12. I don’t really have contact with them, though.

 

 

Time Limit on Mental Health Recovery

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Why does mental health recovery have a time limit? It’s one of the things that bugs me the most. Many people put into therapy get 4-6 weeks of therapy and then they are cast out into the world again. Some people get 12 weeks if they are lucky, but that seems to be the maximum. Why is it that mental illness comes with such a limit?

Would we treat a cancer patient and say well you’ve got so many weeks of chemo, but after that you’re on your own? Or tell someone who is recovering from something like a stroke that they have 12 weeks to rehabilitate and then off they go to do it themselves? I don’t think so. Why is it okay with mental health? It’s just as debilitating as any other illness. The difference is, is that it can’t be seen.

The reason from my rant today comes from my own experience. When I had taken an over dose those few weeks ago and gone to my doctor after the hospital had discharged me and for the first time I said to someone that I think my thoughts are wrong. I need some help, did I get some and felt relieved.

I was assigned a therapist. I have had therapists before and for various reasons either I didn’t stick or my time was up. This time I tried to give everything I had. I tried to be honest about how I was feeling. I even showed him my many self-harm episodes across my skin. tumblr_mjvm92IrOr1s8qsclo1_500

It was heart-breaking to hear at my last sessions that I only have three left. His manager said I could have 14 sessions. I’ve done 11 so far, because I needed so much, but that’s it for me. I feel let down again. I feel lost again. I keep hearing those words in my head and it makes me upset.

I am not a stupid person, but I am an ill person. I don’t understand how the doctors can say to someone who –

Who is suicidal and has tried many times before.

Who self-harms almost daily (although at the moment it’s been 8 days)

Who has flashbacks, sometimes so bad he has to leave the house.

Who suffers disassociation and often doesn’t know if he is a real person.

Who has BPD and breaks down and wants the world to end at something as simple as a cancelled lunch date.

Who suffers DDNOS and flits between different parts of himself at different ages because he is fragmented.

How can someone with so much to recover from be told they have 14 weeks and then they’re on their own again.

No wonder people don’t tend to get better. You can’t put a time limit on recovery from anything. That includes mental health.

 

Numb

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You’ll have to excuse me, it’s a little random.

It’s been a rather weird week, or ten days. I don’t really know, I lose track, things are so hectic. It was my mother’s birthday a few days ago. She would have been sixty. It’s a strange thought. In my mind she is still in her 30’s, that’s where she got frozen.

The weather has been horrendous, a lot of the weather sounds are very triggering for me, lying by the window when I was a child, afraid it was going to blow in, so of course when I lost half the roof to my house a couple of days ago, things like that went through my mind and I felt a little out of it as the parts inside me tried to comprehend things that were going on. numb

It seems like something every day this week. And there have been days I just wished it was over. The power went out for us too, because of the weather, not just my house but an entire two mile radius. I have never seen the streets so dark or my house and there was nothing I could really do about it. I don’t like the dark. I hoped that when I went to sleep, the lights didn’t go out again.

I hope as new storms begin, that my house doesn’t receive any more damage and that we are not plunged into darkness again.

My dad called me yesterday, while the power was out. I am not sure he was talking to me so much, he seemed to not be registering anything I was saying and he was crying. I hate when he cries, it makes me feel such guilt for the way I made the world see him with my books. I feel like I did something wrong. I look in the mirror and wonder how I could have told the world all of those secrets. What is wrong with me to do that to my father?

He was crying because his cancer has spread, he’s been told he probably won’t make the year. I’m not sure how I feel about this, I know many readers will think good, but he is my father still. I write this and all I want to do is cut, because I don’t know how to deal with whatever it is I am feeling. I don’t even know what that is.

All I can think is that he is going to die and he is never going to tell me that it wasn’t my fault. I need him to say it. I need to know it wasn’t me. Not from my readers, or friends, from him. I need to know for real that it wasn’t me who made him that way. I don’t think I will ever get that, though.

His stepmother died a couple of weeks ago and was buried. She’d been his stepmother, my step grandmother from before I was even born. He didn’t tell me she had died. He didn’t invite me to the funeral, even though everyone else went.

When he found out about the roof of my house being blown off, his answer was oops. Not once did he call to make sure we were okay, if anyone was hurt, were the children afraid?

All the evidence is there for me to see that I am nothing to my father, yet I don’t know how to let go.

My older brother contacted me a week ago, the one who was adopted out because my mother hurt him. I haven’t talked to him in years. We talked for an entire afternoon like we had only seen each other yesterday; he has been diagnosed with all the same things as me. He was able to sit and put blame for things in all the right places. I wish I could. I wish I could make the same break he did.

My hands are bleeding as if I have run them along a cheese grater, sometimes I cant move them they are so sore, this is my OCD. The parts inside me are switching so often that some days I don’t even know who it is that stares back at me in the mirror. I woke up this morning and self-harmed because just breathing and getting to the next moment seemed impossible.

Yet with all this. I feel numb.

#TimetoTalk

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Today is #TimetoTalk day for mental health, which I agree, it should be talked about, but not just that, if anything, I wish people who suffered, be it the person themselves or a relative, were able to talk freely about mental illness. Even in this day and age, there is stigma, it’s sad that there is.

Anyone who follows my page, has read my books, or friended me on facebook will know that I have mental illnesses, and yes, that is plural, yes I have more than one. Many people do. I didn’t ask for them, but even I am not immune to feeling shame that I have them. It’s funny really, I hate when people get afraid to say, you wouldn’t if you were diabetic or asthmatic. So many with a mental illness think that they should just get over it, or that’s what society sees and it isn’t true. If it were easy to get over, it wouldn’t exist.

PTSD

This is one I have, many people think it is for veterans, but it is for anyone who has had something traumatic happen. For me it means I haven’t slept in a bed for three years because I just couldn’t stand the terror at night. It means I don’t go upstairs at night unless I have to, because I have terrible flashbacks, even though it is a different house.

It means like today, when I am alone in my house, I sit on the floor in the hallway by my front door so that I can feel safe, everywhere else feels like the stuff from my childhood will come back.

Sometimes I used to sleep outside I would get so afraid.

OCD

This is probably my biggest monster. Especially at the moment while I am dealing with a terrible episode of it, my hands are so sore from washing. I’m struggling to eat because everything feels wrong. It’s like that feeling when you forget something, but can’t quite remember what it is, that’s how the obsession feels, for whatever strange compulsion I have that day. Everything from I can’t wear certain clothes and if I try, something bad will happen, to clicking and sounding my words and counting.

It’s probably my most debilitating illness. It steals everything from me. Most recently my love of Starbucks. It has to be a really good day for me to feel brave enough, that somehow my coffee isn’t going to get contaminated, and that contamination won’t bring back the bad man, for me being bad, or make me sick, so I am stuck upstairs, see my PTSD.

It’s like trying to live in a world where I don’t touch anything and nothing ever touches me. It’s impossible. My brain feels like it invents new ideas and problems every day. Only yesterday I stood by my car, scratched my keys into my hand to check of the things I had done, like turn off the lights, put it into gear, and pulled up the handbrake. The scratches stopped me coming back a ton of times and being late for university.

This one has stolen many friends when I have had to cancel plans because going out just doesn’t feel right and I can’t tell them. When I have cancelled too many times, they give up.

Borderline personality Disorder.

This one is the hardest one I think. It is so tarnished by a bad reputation. I saw on amazon the other day, how to stop walking on egg shells and get your life back. It was a very cruel self-help book for people who are friends with a BPD sufferer. It told them to walk away pretty much. Don’t give into the episode the borderline is displaying. I hope that anyone who is in my life never reads it.

BPD should be renamed I survived a narcissist. That’s what it is really. Sufferers tend to be abuse survivors. They tend to have suffered abandonment and feeling so worthless to those who are meant to love them, that now, as adults, they look for every possible sign that this is still true.

For me it means, when someone has to cancel plans on me, or do something that is away from me, I feel like they have just told me they are going to die. It’s a gut wrenching pain inside, it’s so devastating to feel. I can’t control the reaction I have and if the other person leaves, in that moment, that is where the self-harm comes in. It’s how I cope, it’s all I can do to take away the agony I am feeling.

It’s like being 7 years old once again and crying by the road, begging my mum to take me with her.

It’s why I don’t really have friends. It why I am quite. Its why sometimes I stare in the mirror and wish to die. Sometimes I drive my car and think, it’s just a quick flick of the wheel, then it’s all over. The other day, I stood at the train station; I wondered what it would feel like to step forward when the next train came along. Would it hurt? Would it be over very fast? I support button reduced

This illness tells me I am worthless. That people lie to get away from me. That they go away to do things and are glad I am not there. This is the one that says, they won’t come back. They’ll sneak away because I am nothing. This is the one, that if any of you have me on facebook, you may realise, it is rare for me to message first. It is rare that I will say hi first. The reason for that, if people don’t answer, it’s because they want me to go away.

This is the one that makes me cut and starve myself because it’s what I deserve.

DDNOS and Derealisation.

DDNOS is dissociative disorder not otherwise specified. Probably the hardest one to describe, or at least to describe without sounding like I have completely lost the plot. I dissociate a lot. Sometimes I am not sure I am real. Sometimes I am not sure anything is real. It can feel like I am dreaming, as if my words are just an echo in my head. It’s very hard to come back when I float away in my head.

 The other part of this, is that I have many parts. Frozen bits of myself that got stuck at specific ages. Sometimes I do not recognise the face in the mirror, sometimes it is not me at the helm in my mind, but a broken child who is distressed. Some days I am quite, some I am sad and alone, some I am angry.

My therapist told me that what happens when a child suffers abuse, that part of them gets frozen because it never got to process what was happening and so the frozen part breaks off and stays there, suffering, in the agony which it was created.  It used to be an aspect of multiple personality disorder. Sometimes I do not know when I have switched, but I learnt from a friend, I do it often without realising.

This illness is the reason that the Dear Teddy books are out there. My therapist wanted me to give the boy a voice. She said he was obviously trying to talk and I needed to listen.

 

I was in my class at university yesterday, we learnt about counselling and we learnt something that clicked for me.

You are who you are right now, not tomorrow, not when you lose weight, or get better, but right now. That’s who you are and it isn’t wrong.

So this is me right now, quite broken and suffering, someone with these conditions. Someone who fights daily. This is me, it is who I am. It is not wrong.

 

 

1 day cut free

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I made it one day without self harming. I know that isn’t much, but it’s good for me, recently at least. I also went out to dinner with friends yesterday. I didn’t want to. I was afraid. It was the 4th and I hate that number, still it bothers me, I know it’s stupid, but I went and it was okay.

Back to uni tomorrow, I’m nervous about that. But maybe it will be okay.

All these challenges seem so easy to everyone else, yet I feel like I’m holding my breath.

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Happy New Year

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happy-new-year-2014

Happy New Year to you all. I hope you all saw the new year in with friends and family. I saw the new year in alone this time, it’s been a while since I have done that, but it was okay.

It’s been a while since I have posted here. It’s been a while since I’ve really bothered talking to many people. I’m not really sure why that is, I think about doing it, saying hi, nudging, inquiring how people are, but then I always come back to what is the point? I’m better off quiet I think. I thought very hard about shutting this site down and my facebook pages too, but then I know that those who support me need somewhere, and so I don’t do it. Perhaps there would be some way to fade into the shadows and not be seen, to just be there and observe, so that people could forget me.

I realise how depressing this post might sound, I’m not really depressed. Just fighting and tired from it. Fighting to eat or not eat. I can’t make my mind up which I want to do. Today is a not eat day. I ate so much over Christmas. I fight to keep my OCD down, from it’s torturous voice. That one is winning at the moment. I’m back at university on Monday and I’m afraid. The voice of my BPD confirms to me when I look in the mirror, why no one is around. Self-harm is winning. Three days of the new year, three days of self harm. At least my PTSD has been a little more under control recently. So many things to fight.

I wonder if when I see the next new year in, my father will be here. I’ll be surprised if he is. His cancer has progressed, although that doesn’t seem to stop him in his ways. My own stupidity on Christmas day saw that I turned my back on him, I didn’t think, it allowed him to grab my head and ram it down twice into the roof of the kiddies play house. Then he tried to kick me, but I moved and his foot only just brushed passed me. Some lessons I really need to learn.

I wish all my friends peace and happiness this year.

Take Care.

 

Haha, you’re mentally ill.

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Today I asked a deaf man to listen to this great song and then I laughed when he couldn’t hear it, I also asked all my friends on my facebook to laugh too. Then I put something too high up and asked a crippled man to reach it down, it was so damn funny when he couldn’t (please note I didn’t really). Sounds horrendous doesn’t it? Yet this is how I feel when I see such stupid things as the picture I have posted at the side. I hope it creates a good laugh, and then I hope those who laugh realise how cruel that is. This illness is an illness, it is serious and debilitating and certainly not a joke. It makes me sad when I see such ignorance. 1379856_10200784363384001_904517282_n

Perhaps you want to tell me to lighten up, it’s just a joke. Have a laugh. Take it easy?

I saw on an Asperger’s awareness site a post saying put OCD on your profile for a laugh. I was disgusted, not just at that, but for something that raises awareness for an illness, can belittle another one in such a way.

Today I reach day eight of not eating. This is due to my OCD, maybe it’s funny. Maybe I should be laughing.  For me it’s a nightmare. For me I am living with a crazy person inside my head who is so afraid to eat.

I bought a coffee this morning, pretty simple thing, but for me, I try not to watch the person serving, because I know if I do, I find a reason not to drink it and to pour, probably a perfectly good coffee away. I nearly did that today when I saw the young girl pig up my cup from the top. What if her hands were dirty? That’s what my mind started at, and then onwards it went to the many disastrous things that could happen if I drank that coffee.

Sometimes I am rebellious, it is like my OCD is a separate person to me, I havre to do things to annoy it. Like put my cup to my mouth and take a sip and then laugh at my OCD as it clutched its evil little head, because now it was too late, any form of harm or germ in that cup was in my mouth, so I might as well drink it all.

I saw this also today in a group, Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics. What an awful name. Perhaps they will instruct as that poster said, Nike, to make running shoes for the paraplegic.

OCD I hate you

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OCD I hate you. I do today. I’m tired of it. Tired of thinking about every little detail of everything I do in order to keep myself safe.

My OCD is going downhill these last few weeks, months really, I guess I get the odd days reprieve, when I feel strong and yeah, I can take my OCD on and beat it, but for the rest of the time, I’m running up hill, through muddy water.

I went to the supermarket today, nothing odd about that of course. They have mince pies for sale, my favourite thing. Its like someone bringing me Christmas early. I stared at them and stared at them and a million things went thought my head because they didn’t feel ‘right’ to buy. Not right as in its too early, but right for me, the one with OCD, where everything is controlled by what feels right and what doesn’t. So I left them. Went off into the supermarket to get what I wanted, but those damn mince pies played on my mind because I really wanted them. They really, really are one of my favourite things. I could taste them. I could imagine them. And god the thought just made me want to eat one in that moment, but then I thought, I can do this.

So I walked back to the front of the supermarket where they are and thought, it’s just my OCD talking. There’s no real danger. It’s just this thing I have. I can get them and I can eat them and I will be fine.

I Look at them, pick them up, imagine eating them and then it starts again, that stupid voice that’s plagued me all week long. What if it’s this packet. What if it’s this box. What if they make you sick. You don’t know who’s touched them, you didn’t see them get made. What if you’re sick at university tomorrow and you can’t get away?

I put the mince pies down and walked away. I wish this illness would go away. I wish I could just be like other people and buy something and eat it and not think what if.

It’s been a week like this. In a way I guess its good I can go a while without eating and it doesn’t bother me so much, because while I am at university at the moment, I can’t eat. I find my old fears coming up. Fears of a child, what if I get sick? What if I am sick in the wrong place?

I know my mother isn’t here and no one is going to beat me for getting ill on the rare chance it did happen, but still, when I go to take food, I am, just too afraid.

A Waste of Time

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I’m sorry for the swearing and any typos in this. I don’t have it in me right now to go over it and correct them.

A waste of time.

That’s what I am. that’s what I feel. I had an friend just recently tell me that our friendship for almost for the last few years had been a waste of time. A waste of her time. For years she used to tell me i was worth something and that i meant something to her. She encouraged me and helped me, but in the end, it was a waste she said. I guess it’s true. I look back at our friendship, then i look back at my parents too and everyone that has followed them. I was a waste of their time too. I seem to be a waste of everyone’s time. They knew, right from the start. They saw it. They knew I wasn’t worth loving. They knew all along, they were right. I should have listened to them. Parents are always right.

I keep asking myself why i am still here. I don’t want to be and it is clear throughout my life, that aside from my children, it would probably be better if I wasn’t. People try to be my friend, but i hide away. I don’t want them to see the badness that is there. Its always been there. People who read my books just don’t want to see it, they see an innocent child. But its a lie. He’s a lie. I’d hand him over to all those people again myself if i could go back in time. He deserved it. He deserved everything.

I hear his cries in my head and i want to scream at him to shut the fuck up. This is what he deserves. It all is. Because, as people say or prove. He is just a waste of time and so am I.

Originally i was going to blog about something that felt like a victory to me this weekend. I had bought fresh chicken, touched it and cooked it. Having OCD, that was a huge challenge for me. But today I think why. What kind of idiot cant even buy a chicken without standing for 10 minutes in the supermarket and trying to hide the upset and turmoil inside about which one feels right. Which is the one that wont cause something bad to happen. And i look at myself and wonder why people don’t see how pathetic i am. I see it.

This morning at 4am, i woke up from a bad dream and the first thing i see is the bad man from my childhood, stood opposite me, on the other side of the room. Of course he wasn’t there, i was just having a flashback. I closed my eyes, unable to move, told myself i was safe. That he isn’t there anymore. He isn’t real. Isn’t that stupid? I’m a grown up. An adult, and still i get afraid of the monsters in the dark. Why cant I just be normal? Instead of this god damn stupid freak that i am, who is a waste of time. To everyone.

I gave in and self-harmed this morning. Isn’t that as pathetic as everything else? It didn’t even help. I can’t do it properly, like I need to. I wish I could cut through my own skin. I wish i could cut so damn deep that i wouldn’t be able to feel anything else. I wish i could do it until i was totally gone and then i wouldn’t need to waste any time for anyone else.

I wish i could go away. I wish that child had of died.

 

Smile and Pretend to be Normal

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Sometimes I feel like I’m always fighting something, like there’s no peace in my head. I’m sure often I give people the idea that maybe I am never happy, which I am of course, just like anyone else. I can find joy in the little things like walking my granddaughter along the stream not far from us, through all the trees and things she has yet to discover and name. It’s so wonderful to watch her sometimes with the innocence she has of a two year old.

 She points to the water and looks up at me with that face, she smiles and says “wet” and I nod and say yes it is wet. Then she points to her feet and says “shoes” and I know she wants to go paddling, so I take her hand and we do. These are the little things I can find my peace in.

 Inside though, it’s different. My mind is panicking about everything. When did I last eat? Is it going to come back out, every mouthful I take has the potential to make me sick, and as I’m eating I remember, what if this time? So I put my food down, throw it away and try to decide if the rumble in my stomach is hunger or illness. The more I think about it the worse I feel. What if I get sick?

 I’ve washed my hands so much thy feel sore and dry, the skin on them feels tight. I stand trying to think, are they clean enough? Did I touch something bad? Did I wash them properly? As I stand I don’t even notice I’m clawing at my scalp or my arms and I don’t realise that I’m bleeding, scratch marks run down my arms, my scalp feels like it burns from where I’ve grazed the top of the skin off in my absent minded scratching frenzy. funny-quote-pretend-to-be-normal

 I try to hide the noises I make in my throat, feeling each sound and when I can’t I do it again, making me sound like I’m clicking. Numbers fight with symmetry and I’m breathing through my nose just to feel the scratch.

 1 – time, it’s not enough.

2 – it’s a division of four

3 – Yes I like three, that’s my number, but it’s not even.

4 – I can’t even think about resting there. Four is bad. Four is terrible. Something bad will happen if I leave it at four. Four makes him come. Bu he can’t and I’m big. He’s gone.

5 – No, not right, like three it’s not even.

6 – Six is good. No link to four, divided by three and it’s even. But Six is divided by three  to get two, two is part of four.

Stop it!!! I try to tell myself.

 Stop it.

Stop it.

Breathe.

 I look down at the water and try to focus on my granddaughter, but I see my reflection. My reflection. No it isn’t, it’s someone vaguely familiar, not my face, just something the same. I see the badness there. There reasons for the bad things.

 No wonder people do bad things to you, I say in my head. You’re pathetic and stupid. How can anyone care? Look at you, look how stupid you are.

 I wish you would die. I wish I could kill you. I wish I could die. Just to make the madness go away. I hate how I feel.

 I look away, back at my granddaughter. She smiles at me and stamps her feet making splashes. She reminds me why I can’t end it.

 I smile at her. Smile and pretend that I’m normal.