But What If it Works Out?

     As I've previously mentioned, I've had a lot of changes in my life so far in 2021. As a person with OCD, those changes have caused me a lot of anxiety, even though I wanted the changes and even though the changes are good things. Since I graduated with my certificate, I've been filled with anxiety. 

    All these worries kept piling on. What if this certificate course was a waste of money that we didn't have to waste? What if this certificate course didn't teach me enough to be prepared for the job I wanted to do? What if nobody wanted to hire me because I had "just a certificate" instead of the more acceptable associates degree or even a bachelor's degree in this new field? What if I did get hired, but then it turned out I actually had no idea what I was doing? What if I made too many mistakes and got fired? What if I got hired, but then it turned out that the job was so stressful that I started regularly having panic attacks again? What if getting this certificate and the job I wanted wasn't the step in the right direction that I thought it was? I was spiraling, my friends. 

    My brain kept taking me to the worst case scenario automatically, and then I would unpack and live there. At one point during my first week on the job, I was so anxious that I cried in the car. I just knew I was going to screw up so badly that my boss would fire me before I had the chance to even correct my mistakes. (That didn't actually happen. My boss is nice and understanding.)

    Again and again I brought these worries to my bi-weekly phone sessions with my therapist. Again and again, she would ask me for evidence that I had to support my worries that I wouldn't do well in my new job. I never had any evidence. In fact, I only ever had evidence to the contrary. So she would always say something like, "Stop that anxiety-inducing thought before it gets too far. Stop it and say: But what if this bad thing doesn't happen? What if it works out?"

    WHAT IF IT WORKS OUT?! What if it WORKS OUT? Asking that question felt like I was daring the universe to make it not work out just because for a moment, I'd had the audacity to think it possibly could work out. Asking that question felt like I was too confident, and too much confidence is never a good thing, is it? So, of course I said to her, "But, it might not work out." To which she replied, "But what if it does?"

    So, for the past few weeks, I've basically had to train myself to stop when I feel the anxiety rising because I'm living in the land of the worst case scenario and ask "But...what if this works out?" My anxiety doesn't really know what to do with that question, it doesn't know what to do with the little bit of confidence that question brings. After I ask that question, I feel my anxiety leveling off as the worst case scenario is replaced by images of things going well, or at least not going terribly wrong. That little breakdown in the spiral gives me the minute I need to be able to get to a calmer place so I can logically realize that everything isn't as drastic as I originally felt like it was. 

    I'll end with this: It's so easy to spiral into the land of the worst case scenario. It easy to get so lost there that we can't possibly see how our worst case scenario isn't the only option for how something will go. All it takes is a second to challenge that thought. Surprisingly, simply asking, "But what if this works out?" has been a thing pulls me back out of the worst case scenario to a more realistic place. 

The Medication Misconception

    People tend to feel one of two ways about medications for mental illness. (1) They hate them and think they turn people into "zombies" or addicts. Or, (2) They think they're magical, fast-acting, simple cures for mental illness. In a recent conversation, I encountered the latter. Someone recently said to me, "There has to be a medication for that," in a tone that suggested I should just take whatever medication is offered up to treat my OCD and panic disorder and be finished with the whole unpleasant ordeal of having mental illness. The person seemed genuinely surprised that getting the right medication to "fix" my mental health conditions wasn't as simple and easy as they originally thought. (And no, your family doctor really shouldn't be prescribing you psychotropic medications. They should actually be referring you to a psychiatrist for that prescription.)

    Yes, there is medication to treat my OCD. It didn't work with my brain chemistry. Technically, there is another medication I could have tried, but, since it's one of the older medications, my therapist warned that it was hard for people to tolerate because of the side effects. I had also been warned previously that, once I go off the medication, the symptoms might come back for a bit, meaning I could relapse, once the medication that was chemically re-wiring my brain was taken away. So, to me, the risks outweighed the benefits at the time, and the risks still currently outweigh the benefits. 

    A lot of people think about psychotropic medications (AKA medications that help a person achieve the right levels of brain chemicals so that illnesses like depression and anxiety are less severe) the same way this person did. Many people view psychotropic medications as these magical cures for mental health conditions. Many people think that, as long as a person is taking the medications, then they no longer really have to manage or even deal with the symptoms of their mental illness, and that the medication is the only treatment the person needs. That actually isn't how these medications work.

    Even when a person is prescribed medications for their mental health condition, that person is still a person living with a mental illness. The mental health condition isn't going to go away, but the whole point of the medication is to get to the point that the mental illness is no longer debilitating all the time. Symptoms and bad days will still occur even with the medication. That's why medication is prescribed (usually) as part of a treatment plan that still requires a person to attend sessions with a therapist and have regular evaluations by a psychiatrist. Therapy and medication work together to make the most effective treatment plan for the person.

    These kinds of medications also don't work for everyone. If two people have the same exact mental health condition, with the same exact symptoms, the medication commonly used to treat that condition might not help both people. Each person's brain chemistry is different and reacts differently to medications. Some people can even have medication-resistant types of mental health conditions. 

    Another thing that people don't tend to understand about these medications is that you can't just pop a pill and feel better that same day, unless you're prescribed something like Ativan or Xanax, which are addictive and not prescribed as often by mental health professionals as they were in the past. Most psychotropic medications need to build up in a person's system to become effective, and this can take at least two weeks. Then dosage and time of medication get tweaked until a person finds the dose and the time each day to take the medication that is most helpful. Then if medications need to be switched or if a combination of medications is needed, the process of finding relief is longer.

    When treating mental illness, there is no magical finger snap moment that suddenly makes everything better. Treatment, even with medication, is a slow, and sometimes painful process. There also is no medication (to my knowledge) that can permanently "cure" a mental health condition. 

    I'll end with this: A lot of people, especially if they haven't experienced mental illness themselves, view the medications that treat mental illness as a quick and easy cure for those illnesses that is easily obtained and effective for everyone. There isn't a cure for most mental health conditions, there is only treatment and then management over a person's lifetime. Psychotropic medications are treatments, not miracle drugs. The point of these medications isn't even to "cure" a mental illness, but to treat the mental illness so that it is no longer debilitating.

But Everybody Does That

    I'm sure all of us that live with mental illness have been in the situation in which we mention our mental health condition and some of the symptoms, and someone tells us, "You don't have a mental illness, everybody does that." I was in this situation recently, and I have to tell you, it took me a minute to try to figure out the best way to respond. As you can imagine, one of the emotions I experienced in the few seconds of silence I had to take was anger. How could somebody tell me that I didn't have mental illness when I was the one that had been clinically diagnosed and had been in treatment for nearly six years after silently suffering with that mental illness for the better part of a decade to the point that sometimes I wasn't sure I was strong enough to keep fighting? 

    Yes everybody will, at some point, experience something that is a symptom of a mental illness. Everybody in the world will have a panic attack at least once in their lifetime. That doesn't mean that everybody who has a panic attack has panic disorder, but it also doesn't mean that panic disorder isn't an actual mental health condition. Everybody, at some point, will have a period of high anxiety or a low period that they classify as depression. That doesn't mean that everybody who experiences that brief period of anxiety or depression has clinical anxiety or depression, but it also doesn't mean that anxiety disorders, depressive disorders, and mood disorders aren't actual mental health conditions. Everybody in the world has intrusive thoughts (for people without OCD and certain other anxiety disorders like GAD the brain does a better job at filtering them out so the person doesn't pay too much attention to them). That doesn't mean that everybody that has intrusive thoughts has OCD, but it also doesn't mean that OCD isn't an actual mental health condition.

    So, what's the difference between the thing that everybody has experienced or will experience and actual mental illness?

    For those that experience the thing without having mental illness, the symptom, like the panic attack, anxiety, or depressive episode is often tied to an external event that can be (mostly) clearly pinpointed, and the symptom occurs in relation to that external event. Also, the panic attacks, anxiety, or depressed feelings are short-term, and they often go away on their own as we overcome whatever external situation that triggered them is resolved. Most often, in this situation, the symptoms don't tend to come back again and again, and they don't really interfere long-term with a person's ability to function at their usual level of functioning. 

    For those of us that experience the "thing that everybody does" as part of an actual mental health condition, the panic attack, anxiety, or depressive episode might not always have an external trigger that we can figure out. A lot of the time, we can be having THE BEST time and then BAM...oh, hello, symptoms of my mental illness. For those of us that live with mental illness, the symptoms aren't short-term. We had them over a period of time, probably six months to a year consistently, which got us a clinical diagnosis by a licensed mental health professional, and the symptoms are on repeat, not an isolated occurrence. These symptoms don't go away on their own. In fact, without proper treatment, symptoms associated with an actual mental illness will get worse over time, each time they come back, and they will significantly interfere with a person's level of functioning and overall quality of life. 

    Basically, you can think of the difference like this: it's like somebody taking a vacation to a place versus somebody living full-time in that same place. One person, the one that's just taking a short trip, can return home after the trip. This is what thing that everybody will experience is, a vacation, albeit an unpleasant one from which they can return home, to normalcy and comfort. The other person, however, lives in the place that the other person just took a trip to. That is their home, the place they're in every day, and they don't have the resources needed to leave that place for good (although they can take a short vacation to a more pleasant place from time to time). That's what the actual mental illness is. 

    I'll end with this: Yes, everybody in the world, at some point, during their lifetime will experience a panic attack, period of anxiety, or a depressive episode. That doesn't mean that actual mental illnesses characterized by those same symptoms do not exist. The difference is simple, the thing that has happened or will happen to everyone is a short-term experience that isn't likely to become a regular occurrence that significantly interferes with someone's quality of life. Actual mental illness, however, is a long-term cycle of symptoms on repeat that DOES significantly interfere with the quality of someone's life. Let me also just say that, if you find yourself in the situation in which you keep experiencing anxiety, panic, or depressed feelings that aren't really going away or that keep going away and coming back, don't talk yourself out of making an appointment with your doctor or a community mental health agency to get checked out because you think, "everybody does that". Everybody doesn't do that, actually, and you deserve a better quality of life than living in the land of untreated mental illness. 

Different Versions

     As many of you already know, I decided to go back to school in 2021. This was a decision that came out of a moment of clarity in which I thought, "This isn't how I want my life to be, so what can I change?" And then, a few months later, I was given the opportunity to go back to school so I could actually make the career change I'd been thinking about. (Thanks, Mum!) Now, I've just finished the first half of an accelerated certificate course in an area that I've always felt drawn to.

    I have to tell you, friends, even though I really wanted to go back to school and even though I've always done well in academic settings, I was scared. As some of you might recall from my earlier blog posts, I was secretly and terrifyingly mentally unwell during the years that I was working toward my BA in applied psychology and my sociology minor. During that time, I hated myself, and so I felt like I didn't deserve friends or even the opportunity to go to such a good college. During that time, I also had an unhealthy relationship with school, I guess you could say. I used it as a distraction from my mental health, and so every semester I practically ran myself into the ground trying to avoid dealing with the mental illnesses I didn't know I had. There was also speculation that the stress of going from a high school senior to a university freshman was the straw that broke camel's back, so to speak, and contributed to the sudden onset of my OCD symptoms in the second semester of my senior year.

    So, yes, of course, given that past experience, I was scared of what would happen to me if I took the leap and actually went back to school. Would the past repeat itself? Would the stress be too much so that it would exacerbate my symptoms? Would the similarity of the situation trigger new symptoms or a new mental health condition that would also need treatment? Would I be able to have a healthy relationship with school instead of relapsing back into the old pattern in which I used school to avoid dealing with my mental health conditions? I had so many concerns that were all related to the way I had been before. The fear was almost enough to make me back out before I even tried.

    Then I remembered something that Allison Raskin (YouTuber and fellow cool human that also lives with OCD like me) said in her Just Between Us podcast. (It's on YouTube. Check it out.) She was talking about how therapy changes us, and she said something like, "This version of me has never been in X situation." She said it weeks and weeks ago, but I still think about it. I was especially thinking about it as I got myself ready to embark on a new educational adventure.

    Allison Raskin was right. People don't stay the same. We grow, and we change all the time. We create different versions of ourselves as we heal from traumas. I know I'm a different version of myself than I was even three years ago as I was just starting to heal. I also know that I'm a completely different version of myself than I was while I was in college the first time.

    This current version of myself (from a mental health perspective) has never functioned in an academic setting. It's like a whole new experience with a new person. I don't need to worry about this new version of myself drifting back to the way I had been while I was in college the first time because this newest version of myself hasn't experienced that self-hatred, that same level of fear, and that sensation of drowning in darkness that the older version of me lived in as a constant state of existence. This current new version of myself has never been through a spiral without the tools and information to handle that spiral. This new version of me recognizes the importance of caring for my mental health. That meant this new educational opportunity could happen with a clean slate, so to speak, from a new perspective, with a healthier brain.

    I'll end with this: It's normal to worry about how we'll react when we're putting ourselves in situations that previously had an unpleasant thing or trauma associated with them or that we previously didn't handle in the healthiest of ways. If you've made progress in healing from that trauma, it's normal to be concerned about how the situation might affect your progress. But, remember, people don't stay the same. We change and grow and create new, healthier versions of ourselves as we learn and heal from our trauma. This version of you (probably) hasn't been in whatever situation you're worried about, and, so, it's more like a clean slate than repeating the past.

On Deserving

     When you live with a mental illness, a lot of times, that mental illness can make you feel like you don't deserve things. Your mental health condition can often make you feel like you don't deserve good opportunities in school or at your job, your friends, the love freely given by your loved ones, or even happiness in general. Maybe you think you don't deserve them because you feel like you're not good enough or maybe you feel like you're a terrible person (like I did) who doesn't deserve anything good at all.

    I lived my life for the better part of a decade under the assumption, that because of my OCD, specifically the content of my intrusive thoughts, I didn't deserve anything good in life because I was a terrible person. I didn't deserve the friends that I so desperately wanted. I didn't deserve it when people were nice to me. I didn't deserve to have romantic relationships. In fact, I didn't deserve to be happy at all. So, when something nice happened, anything from someone wanting to be my friend to something as simple as somebody giving me a compliment, I felt guilty because I felt like I didn't actually deserve even the most basic kindness from anyone. My inner dialogue was always, "If you only knew how terrible I really was, you wouldn't do this/say this/think this about me. I'm deceiving you by allowing you to think I deserve this."

    When I told my therapist about this, she asked something like, "You don't want or like or intentionally have these intrusive thoughts, right?" I answered that, of course, I didn't want or like or intentionally think such terrifying, awful things. She nodded and said something like, "Well, these thoughts aren't your fault. You don't like them. You don't want to have them. So, why does this thing outside of your control mean that you're a terrible person who doesn't deserve kindness and things that make you happy?" I didn't have an answer. 

    I still think about what my therapist said that day. Why would experiencing symptoms of a mental health condition or having a mental health condition at all mean that someone didn't deserve good things? It doesn't, no matter what the mental health condition is or its symptoms are. That's just another lie that can be filed under "garbage thoughts your funky brain generated for no reason". I mean, you wouldn't say someone with asthma didn't deserve good things. That thought wouldn't even cross your mind. And mental health conditions are like asthma in that they are chronic health conditions outside of a person's control, right?

    I'll end with this: Having a mental illness is not a default in your character. It doesn't say anything about who you are as a person, even if your symptoms are weird, gross, terrifying, vile intrusive thoughts. Having a mental illness isn't a thing that can define what you deserve. Living with a mental health condition doesn't mean you don't deserve happiness or to have the same opportunities in life as those without mental illness. Don't listen to your funky brain when it tells you that you're not good enough for someone or something or when it tells you that you're a completely terrible person. You are good enough, and you're definitely not a terrible person just because you have a mental health condition.

I'm Still Here

    I remember when I first started my weekly sessions with my current therapist. I remember how terrified I was, how hard life felt, and how hard it felt like I was fighting just to be functional ALL THE TIME. I would go to my appointment some days and cry through the entire session. I would tell her how weak I thought I was, how I wished I could be stronger, and express my worries about whether or not I'd be able to survive my OCD. Her response was always the same, "You've done a great job surviving so far. You're still here. So, that tells me that you can survive this time, too."

    At the time, I always felt like my therapist had more faith in me than I had in myself. I was so sure that she thought I was stronger than I actually was. I didn't understand how she could be so sure of my survival when I couldn't be sure. She was also so sure that I could get back to a higher level of functioning and be "better", even when I doubted that I'd ever get there. (That didn't mean I wouldn't work really hard. It just meant that I had my doubts, but that I'd do my best anyway in the hope that she was right.)

    A realization hit me the other night as I was trying to fall asleep. I'm still here, and my therapist was right. Another year is coming to an end, and I'm still here. Right now, I'm in the place in my life that my therapist repeatedly assured me that I could get to. I've made it to the place in my life that I doubted I'd ever see, the place I hoped for. I remember the times I prayed to reach this point, the point where I was no longer fighting so hard all the time just to be functional, the point where I no longer questioned my ability to survive against my own mind, where I felt like myself again. I'm there, right now. Realizing that feels weird in a good way. (Sure, I still have rough patches, but I no longer doubt my ability to survive them.) I just...needed to take a moment to acknowledge that progress and the hard work that went into it. 

    I'm not even just surviving anymore. I feel like I'm thriving more often than not. I feel like an actual person instead of a pit of darkness, anxiety, and despair clothed in human skin. I have sessions with my therapist every two weeks now instead of every week, and I feel good with that. (As in I don't feel like I NEED to talk to her every week to be okay.) I have friends, and I actually feel like I deserve them. I also don't feel like I need to keep people at a distance anymore to protect them, which is nice. (It's nice to let people in sometimes.) I got to experience having my dream job. I've reached "okay", and then I moseyed on past it to something more than just being okay. I feel...grateful to have made it this far, especially when I doubted that I could make it this far in the first place.

    I'll end with this: It's so easy when we live with mental illness to feel like we'll never get better, never be okay, and that we'll never feel like ourselves again. It's so easy to listen to our mental illness and start to believe that we're actually too weak and afraid to "win" against our own minds. It's easy to just want to give up. I've been there. Before anything could improve, I had to find the right therapist with the right therapeutic approach, and then I had to give it time to work. I had to trust my therapist. As much as I hate clichés, it actually does get better, I promise. You just have to still be here to give it a chance to get better. You're stronger than you think you are, I promise.

The Monster in My Head

     Most of my life has been controlled by my mental health conditions. Before my diagnosis, my OCD made me believe that only certain things were safe and okay. After my diagnosis, I found myself walking on eggshells most of the time because I didn't want to upset the delicate balance I had achieved with my mental health conditions. I was overly cautious to the point of being avoidant because I was afraid that something, anything or everything might cause a panic attack or an OCD spiral, even when something hadn't been a trigger for either of my conditions before. In other words, I treated my mental health conditions like the big, scary monsters under the bed that might jump out and grab me at any time if I stepped even one toe out of my carefully defined safety area.

    Until about 3 years ago, I was afraid to think about my mental health conditions. I was afraid to talk about my mental health conditions a lot. I was even afraid to read past journal entries in which I wrote about my mental health struggles. I was terrified that doing any of those things would bring forth my symptoms. I had worked (and was still working) so hard to be "okay" that I didn't want to do anything that might be considered angering the beast, so to speak.

    Checking in with your mental health, making sure that you're aware of how things are affecting your mental health, and being mindful of your triggers are all great things to do. Those things are crucial to having a good co-existence with your mental health condition(s) and having a self-care routine that actually helps. 

    However, being so cautious that you become avoidant because you're AFRAID of your mental health condition and its symptoms, like I was, is not checking in and being mindful. Tiptoeing around your mental health condition because you're afraid of causing symptoms to occur is actually a thing that creates MORE space in your mind for your mental health condition to run amuck, because in tiptoeing around it, you spend a lot more time thinking and worrying about it than you would if you weren't being so careful of it. So, the more time you spend fearfully thinking about it and worrying about it, the more space you create in your mind for the things you're afraid of to happen. By being afraid of my OCD and panic disorder I was actually making them worse.

   Instead of greeting my symptoms with fear and trying to fight them off like a wild animal fighting to escape a predator, I had to learn to just say, "Okay, this is happening. I don't like that it's happening, but I'm still going to be okay. I know how this is going to go, and I don't need to be afraid." (I worked on this as part of regular cognitive-behavioral therapy practice and with ERP. Yes, it was unpleasant, but it was so worth it.) Over time, the fear I associated with my mental health conditions and what they were "going to do to me" lessened until I noticed I was no longer actually living in fear of my own mind. When I stopped being afraid of my mental health conditions, that's when I could fully engage in the self-care and healing part of my wellness journey.

     It's impossible to make peace with something and to non-judgmentally allow it to be present when you're afraid of it. I had to stop viewing my mental health conditions as the terrifying monsters that lived in my head, and I had to learn to view them for what they actually were: chronic health conditions. Since there isn't a cure (in the truest sense of the word) for mental health conditions, I'll be living with mine as peacefully as possible or as miserably as possible for the rest of my life, depending on the way I interact with them.

    I'll end with this: Having a mental health condition and experiencing symptoms is scary, but that doesn't mean that tiptoeing around it and being afraid to "anger the beast" inside your mind is the answer. That also doesn't mean that your mental illness is a monster that lives in your brain that you have to pretend isn't there to keep it from jumping out at you. You'll never have peace that way. I had to learn, with the help of my therapist, to stop fearing my symptoms and to view them non-judgmentally as a thing that happens when I live life with a chronic health condition before I could make peace with my funky brain.