Double-Edged Sword

     Some months ago a good friend of mine added me to a couple of those Facebook OCD support groups and discussion pages. I left the groups as soon as I was added to them. Then I sort of felt like a snobby jerk for not wanting to be part of a group whose main purpose is to provide a support network for people just like me who live with OCD.
      I also avoid those online OCD discussion forums, unless I just want to check and make sure that someone else is dealing with the same weird new obsession that I may have developed, which isn't often these days. (I do that because if someone else is experiencing the same types of intrusive thoughts, that means it's more likely to be treatable than just a fluke that no one is going to know how to deal with.) After I find a post like that, I immediately leave the group, and I don't go back. I also avoid those sections of Tumblr and all the other social websites out there. (I have, in the past, browsed the stigma tags on Tumblr to find information for a couple of blog posts, but that is the only reason I checked the mental health side of Tumblr.)
     I'm not avoiding the online support groups and discussion forums because I'm a snobby jerk or because I'm a loner who doesn't think she needs a support system. I avoid online support groups and discussion forums because my only observable compulsions are confession and reassurance seeking. (I have stopped confessing and seeking reassurance, but I still have to put quite a bit of effort into it every time I'm troubled by intrusive thoughts.)
     In theory, I like online support groups and discussion forums. In theory, online support groups are a good place to share experiences and recovery stories or even tips and techniques you may have learned from therapy or self help books that other people might also find helpful. In practice, however, online support pages and discussion forums for mental health conditions like OCD can be a double-edged sword. Yes, the groups and discussion forums help people feel less alone and provide a distant support network. Those groups and forums also feed the OCD loop by providing some people with a way to confess and a pretty constant stream of reassurance that people often feel compelled to seek out. (I could so easily slip into being one of those people in an online support group or discussion forum.)
     Online support groups and online discussion forums can so quickly become a thing that feeds a person's reassurance seeking compulsion as well as the confession compulsion. I browsed a couple when I first got diagnosed with OCD, and pretty much all I saw were people pleading with the entire support group or discussion forum to reassure them that they weren't actually going to do whatever obsessive thing they were worried about or that their thoughts were only thoughts. No one likes to see their fellow humans suffer, so the people of the Internet would rush in with reassurance to make them feel better. The reassurance seeker might be fine for a few hours or a few days, but then they would come back asking for the same reassurances the group or forum provided before, which just feeds the OCD loop and made it worse.
      The people in the forums and the groups have no idea they're feeding someone's OCD loop when they provide reassurance, even if they have OCD themselves. They just want to help, like any decent human being that sees someone else suffering. So, I find it best to avoid those things altogether in order to maintain and continue my wellness.
    I used to do the same reassurance seeking with my mom (and anyone else I could get to talk to me whenever I was in the throes of OCD). When I figured out that the reassurance seeking was a compulsion I had to remind my mom over and over again not to give me any reassurance, and it was really hard for both of us because she didn't want to see me suffer like that. I had to just sit and deal with it, even if I had a panic attack. Eventually I was able to stop, but every time my intrusive thoughts get loud enough to bother me, I have to really work to not give in and call my mom at work to confess my intrusive thoughts and then get reassurance that I'm not an awful person.
      The problem with the online groups and discussion pages is that everyone on the Internet can just come in and make a post. You can't tell the whole Internet to stop giving you reassurance when you ask for it. Somebody is ALWAYS going to be online to feed that confession and reassurance compulsion, so the OCD loop is just going to keep circling and getting more and more severe as the OCD brain finds ways to out-logic the reassurances somebody just received from the group.
     I definitely don't want to discourage anyone from finding support in an online support group page or through an online discussion forum. I just want people to be wary of tumbling into a reassurance compulsion or of providing reassurance online and feeding someone else's OCD feedback loop. I know everyone (the OCD suffered and the reassurance provider) thinks that providing reassurance helps, but it honestly doesn't. It can make OCD  more severe in the long run.
     I'll end with this: Doing whatever you need to do to maintain and continue wellness isn't rude or snobby, and if that means avoiding certain people or websites/online chats that is okay. In theory online support groups and discussion forums are a great part of your support network, but in practice, we should all be more careful with how we use and sometimes abuse them. If you're one of those people that goes into the support pages/discussion forums seeking reassurance, I can agree with you that not getting the reassurance feels like the end of the world and it makes life hell for a while, but I can tell you that you can eventually get to a point where you can stop seeking reassurance if you work really hard at it over time. (Although, you might want to enlist the help of an OCD self help book, therapist, or a person you trust if you want to try that.)

Common Ground

     As many of us know, explaining a mental health condition to someone that doesn't have any experience dealing with a mental health condition can be difficult, and sometimes downright weird, especially if we don't know the person we're trying to explain something to very well. I encounter this problem when I have to explain my OCD to people that I'm not related to or that aren't my Facebook friend. Sometimes they get confused. Sometimes I get confused. Sometimes I make it sound way worse or way more "crazy" that it actually is, and then I end up backtracking and saying, "It's not as bad as I just made it sound, I swear."
     I can't refer everyone to my blog so they can read the way I have explained my mental health condition in writing. (I always write better than I speak.) I generally use lots of examples when I try to explain something, but with mental health conditions the examples can make it seem worse than it is or the examples can make people uncomfortable, if I deviate from the contamination OCD examples they see in the media (which I always do).
     I was discussing this issue with my therapist in my weekly session this week, and she suggested that I try to find common ground to make people understand my mental health condition when they ask. By that she meant, that I should make them think about some time they might have been preoccupied with thinking of an issue and unable to get it off their mind (maybe like a college student around the time of finals or someone worrying about a medical test result). Then explain to them how the obsessive part of my disorder is similar to that, but magnified to the extent that it can be debilitating. Then maybe they could understand without horrific examples that make them uncomfortable, and I wouldn't end up making it seem worse than I intended.
     I think the idea of trying to find common ground can also be applied if you're dealing with someone with a mental health condition when you don't have a mental health condition yourself. It gets rough. You don't understand what's happening. The other person can't find the words to explain what's happening. Look for common ground, and then try to empathize with the struggling person. You don't have to fix it, because a lot of the time, you can't fix it, but you can find common ground and empathize with them and then ask how you can help. The other person might appreciate the effort.
     I'll end with this: Explaining your mental health condition to someone is never easy. It also isn't easy to understand when someone tries to explain something like that to you when you don't have personal experience with a mental health condition. Find common ground with them instead of getting frustrated or angry because someone can't adequately explain or understand. Draw a similarity between a common human experience (whatever human experience is similar to life with your mental health condition) and go from there, so that you are meeting each other sort of at a ground zero of shared human experience.

Focusing on Love and Acceptance

     Since starting ERP again last week, my therapist and I have talked about the root of some of my religious obsessions, and a lot of the root of my problem seems to stem from the fact that my early religious training and religious dialogue were fear and guilt driven. My therapist has remarked time and time again that I carry around a lot of guilt for someone who is objectively considered to be a good person by most people. My other therapist called it the Catholic guilt, from my time in the Catholic Church. I don't care how you label it. All I care about is the fact that this guilt is heavy and that it plays a HUGE roll in the compulsive part of my disorder. I will do anything that I think might get that guilt off my chest so I can breathe. Hence, the compulsive praying for forgiveness and the reassurance seeking.
     My grandmother's main idea about her Baptist faith was that everything and pretty much everyone was bad on some level. Hellfire and brimstone everywhere all the time, throughout my formative years. Example: I was told I was going to send my soul to Hell around the age of 8 or so because an aunt had me repeat a curse word (to say that someone was pissing someone off), even though I was only doing as I was told by an older adult, even though I didn't mean the words. I was also told that certain sins were absolutely not forgivable. (My intrusive thoughts fell into that absolutely unforgivable category when I started to have intrusive thoughts.)
     In other words, my grandparents weren't big on the unconditional love idea and the idea that God accepts us as we are, in all our brokenness and darkness because God knows we are human and humans are far from perfect. As a result of that teaching, for years, I have carried around guilt about the idea that my OCD made me unacceptable and most definitely undeserving of unconditional love from God. I finally started to feel the guilt lessen when I started receiving treatment and I realized that I had a mental health condition that wasn't my fault, which also meant that the intrusive thoughts weren't my fault.
     Starting ERP has brought all those feelings back up. I knew that was a possibility, but I'm still surprised that it happened. I know that logically I am acceptable to God, but emotionally, I'm still in a place that is guilt-riddled, a place that still makes me feel unacceptable and undeserving. My therapist is actually having me work on that this week by visualizing that I am acceptable, and its more difficult than it sounds. I'm working it in to my meditation practice. I know my emotional brain will eventually catch up to the logical parts brain. I just have to redirect to focus on love and acceptance until that becomes the new pathway routed through my brain.
     I'll end with this: I never realized how much things from my early years could impact my mental health later in life. My early years planted the seeds for what would later turn out to be my first OCD obsession, so please, be mindful of the things you are saying to your children. I also didn't realize until today that I was still carrying around, buried somewhere, the feeling that my intrusive thoughts meant that I was probably the only person on the planet to which God's unconditional love and unfailing acceptance did not apply. I said it in my first post, and I'll say it again. If you're like me and you're worried that God doesn't love you because of something you've done, said, or thought, and you feel guilty, ashamed, and undeserving, please don't hold onto that. God's love is unconditional. God accepts us for who we are imperfect, broken, and all.