OCD

I think that in one of my first posts I mentioned that my OCD and anxiety were acting up. Generally I am able to keep my OCD under control. I am aware of what my major habits are and keep an eye out for myself doing them. When I hit a rough patch, which happens anywhere from every couple months to every couple of years, I have a lot of habits that I generally don't. Plus, the normal ones are intensified.

I've pretty much always had OCD. When I was 11 years old I was officially diagnosed with it. At the time I had no eye lashes, eye brows, and had started pulling out the hair on my arm. I did all of that without knowledge I was doing it at the time. Well, 11 year old kids can be pretty mean sometimes so I decided it was time to go find out what I could do about it. My doctor referred me to a counselor and I went. He made me talk about stuff, and cry (which I didn't like), and told me that he could put me on medication to help control my habits. The thing was that the medicine was personality changing. Personally, I like my personality (at least most days). I decided to find a way to control the habits on my own.

My first step was to make myself aware of my habits and when I was doing them. That is actually harder than it may seem because if someone else pointed them out it didn't seem to matter. Then I had to find out what I could do to make myself stop. I tried a lot including snapping a rubber band on my wrist. Ended up though, as long as I had something in my hand when I was stressed (what triggers my OCD the most) then I would not pull out my hair. Nine years later, I have my eye brows back and the hair on my arms are fine. I still have issues with my eye lashes. Obviously they aren't going to grow back overnight and often grow back just in certain spots (I was told they wouldn't grow back at all). So, I pull them out. I have tried on multiple occasions to stop, to let them grow back. If they looked bad when a lot were in, I would pull them out then. I fail every time though.

So back to the fact that my OCD is acting up now. Recently I have caught myself pulling at my eye brows and my arm hairs again. No, I'm not at all proud of myself. I'm 20 years old and still can't control myself. I have to start dinner everyday at 5:30, even though it's always done well before anyone gets home. If I don't start it on time, I freak out and don't want to make it at all. I can't have any dirt under my finger nails, I can't wear nail polish on my finger nails either. As soon as it has one chip in it I have to take it off then, even if that means picking and peeling it off. My habits are weird, they aren't like a lot of other people's who have OCD. I'm not an obsessive cleaner, I don't have to retrace my steps if I step weird, and things being out of place don't bother me. Change does bother me though. It bothers me really bad, especially recently. I have to check doors after I lock them, sometimes more than once. I have habits in the way I say stuff. Every night I say "Love you... Mwah... Night" to Jeff. When I don't say those and don't get them said back I freak out. I'm an expert at turning little ant hills into mountains. My thoughts control me completely some days. There can be no actual sign of something but I'll find a way to make something completely different connect to it. Then I focus on that and nothing else. I'll cry over these, what essentially are, hypothetical situations. Is that normal? Well, no. It is fore me though.

Sometimes it's harder for people (basically everyone but my parents) who haven't been around me before when I'm having a bad spell, to understand what all is going on. Sometimes it's hard for me to get what's going on because it seems as if there is always something different. For example, the last 2-3 weeks, I've felt depressed. Like I'm in a rut that I can't get out of. It still doesn't make me want to get on medication though. The last bad spell I had was in November and it only lasted a week, before that it was January/February of my senior year of high school.

So, do you have OCD? Just some habits? What do you do about them?

Until next time.