With the new year just around the corner, I've been reflecting a lot lately and thinking about how I want to live and the things I want to focus on in 2018. I always talk about managing symptoms and coping and self care because those things are super important. I realized that I don't really talk about another important piece of the wellness puzzle: healing.
I remember when I first got diagnosed with OCD, I made an appointment to talk to my priest at the suggestion of my therapist. I explained everything to my priest, and I even took some printouts explaining everything. One of the first things my priest said to me was, "You need healing." He said it matter-of-factly, like it wasn't a big deal, like it didn't even occur to him that I might deserve all the suffering I had been putting myself through. He said it like he believed healing was a real possibility. I was practically floored by the idea.
That statement and the idea of healing has stuck with me over the last couple of years as I've muddled my way through coping and self care to try to figure out exactly what healing looked like for me. I had only ever thought of surviving, not legitimately healing and overcoming. But there the idea was.
I didn't really understand what my priest was talking about when he said I needed healing. It took me a while to realize that healing was different from just managing symptoms and getting back to my pre-OCD life, but I couldn't figure out what healing would look like for me or even if I would ever be able to get to a point that could be considered as "healing" from the trauma I caused myself through for all those years. I didn't even know if I would recognize the true, deep soul-healing process that I knew I needed and desperately wanted.
Then I was writing the other night, and as I read over my writing, I realized that I was no longer thinking of my OCD as a cage that trapped me or a demon that I had to fight against to make my way out of the darkness that had become my mind. I no longer thought of myself as somebody who wasn't really worth saving. I had, at some point over the past year, started to think of myself as someone worth saving, and I thought of my OCD as just as piece of myself that I had finally accepted and made friends with, if you will, so I could let the good things back into my life again. I no longer thought of my soul as broken, and that meant that I was able to believe that I wasn't broken. I looked back at some of my other writings, and sure enough, among the darker pieces of the past year, some writings about recovery and redemption were mixed in as well.
It was then that I finally realized, after two years, what healing looked like for me. Healing looked like grace, redemption, and love that I deserved in my own eyes after all that time of believing that I didn't. To heal, I had to find grace and redemption in my own eyes because, at that moment, that was the most important thing..to change the way I saw myself. It doesn't really matter how positively the world sees you if all you can see is negative, so I had to finally start seeing myself in a positive way before healing could begin. Healing looked like honestly believing that I deserved good things because humans are basically good and that means they deserve a good life with happiness and love and friends. So, for 2018, I want to try to focus on the healing piece of my wellness and hoping for good things in my life.
I'll end with this: Healing is so important to wellness, and healing looks different for everyone. To me, it seems like healing begins when you change the way you see yourself from negative to positive. Don't give up just because you think you won't ever reach that point or that you can't ever change the way you see yourself. We can all get there. We all deserve healing and love and happiness.
Wednesday, December 27, 2017
Wednesday, December 13, 2017
Defining Success
I've mentioned before that I started doing desensitization exercises with my therapist. I do them as often as I can (meaning I do them when I don't have other things to cope with or that my anxiety is low enough to do them safely). Currently, my exercises are to listen to some Christian music, usually church hymns, that I heard as a child in church or as an adult in college chapel services. This past week, I chose a song that I began desensitization exercises with (what feels like) a long time ago, and things did not go as I expected.
I had been doing well with the exercises for the past few months. No tears. No panic. No shaking as I tried to force myself to hang in there until the end of the song. Sometimes, I didn't even feel like I was forcing myself to hang in there at all. I was so proud of myself and my improvement. Then I went back to the song that I began my exposure exercises with because I wanted to go back to that song and prove that I had improved, I guess, and for a nice change from the Alan Jackson renditions of traditional hymns. I only made it about halfway through the song before I had to turn it off.
I got this rush of anxiety. Then came a couple of intrusive thoughts. Then came the guilt. Tears threatened to spill over. So, I made the decision to turn off the song and take a moment in my mind library (the safe place I created specifically for exposure exercises in case my anxiety got too high). I felt like I was right back there in my pew during a college chapel service, terrified to the point of shivering that the intrusive thoughts were going to come and that some well-deserved by still terrible divine punishment was going to rain down upon my head.
Because of this recurrence of old feelings and fears and the fact that I had to stop the song, I felt like I had failed. I chalked this exercise up to a failure that I needed to work on. I was pretty upset about the setback after so many months of doing so well.
My therapist did not agree with me. On the contrary, she thought my decision to stop the song and take a moment was a success. I didn't understand that, and so she explained it to me. I made the decision to stop the song, and I gave myself a moment to regroup and manage the anxiety. By allowing myself to stop the song and take a moment, I had taken control of the situation instead of just helplessly subjecting myself to torture because I felt like I had no other option as I had done for the past eight years of living with OCD. For the first time ever, I basically said, "I don't have to prove how good I am by subjecting myself to this. I can choose to turn this off, and that doesn't say anything about who I am as a person." For the first time, I was in control, and my actions weren't motivated by my OCD.
I used to be the person that would sit in church or chapel services and shake uncontrollably, and I'd swear to myself that I'd stay there even if it killed me. I used to be the person that would listen to Christian music wherever I had to, and I'd swear I'd hide my anxiety even if it killed me. I'd also purposefully hold my rosary or my cross necklace that had been a confirmation gift blessed by a priest, just to see if anything bad happened to me while I held them just to prove to myself over and over and over again that I wasn't evil or possessed. Looking back on those things and my desire to prove to everyone, and most of all myself, that I was good, the decision to stop the song was a success. For the first time in eight years, I had decided that I didn't have to prove anything to myself.
I've been thinking about that for a few days now. That exercise has changed the way that I think of successfully dealing with my mental health condition. I realized that success doesn't mean sitting through song after song and hoping that it doesn't bother me so that my anxiety doesn't spiral out of control. Success isn't counting the number of days that are free of symptoms. Success is being in control of my OCD enough to say, "This is affecting me, but I don't have to prove to the OCD that I'm a good person by enduring this mental anguish until it's over." Success is realizing that I don't have to suffer just to prove something.
I'll end with this: Success with a mental health condition isn't defined by the number of exercises you complete or the number of days you don't have any symptoms. Success is realizing that you don't have to believe everything your funky brain tells you. Success is admitting that something is affecting you and your willingness to take the necessary steps to lessen the negative effect, even if those steps aren't the ones you wanted to take. Success is sometimes picking your battles instead of constantly fighting a war with your mental health condition because a small victory is better than no victory at all.
I had been doing well with the exercises for the past few months. No tears. No panic. No shaking as I tried to force myself to hang in there until the end of the song. Sometimes, I didn't even feel like I was forcing myself to hang in there at all. I was so proud of myself and my improvement. Then I went back to the song that I began my exposure exercises with because I wanted to go back to that song and prove that I had improved, I guess, and for a nice change from the Alan Jackson renditions of traditional hymns. I only made it about halfway through the song before I had to turn it off.
I got this rush of anxiety. Then came a couple of intrusive thoughts. Then came the guilt. Tears threatened to spill over. So, I made the decision to turn off the song and take a moment in my mind library (the safe place I created specifically for exposure exercises in case my anxiety got too high). I felt like I was right back there in my pew during a college chapel service, terrified to the point of shivering that the intrusive thoughts were going to come and that some well-deserved by still terrible divine punishment was going to rain down upon my head.
Because of this recurrence of old feelings and fears and the fact that I had to stop the song, I felt like I had failed. I chalked this exercise up to a failure that I needed to work on. I was pretty upset about the setback after so many months of doing so well.
My therapist did not agree with me. On the contrary, she thought my decision to stop the song and take a moment was a success. I didn't understand that, and so she explained it to me. I made the decision to stop the song, and I gave myself a moment to regroup and manage the anxiety. By allowing myself to stop the song and take a moment, I had taken control of the situation instead of just helplessly subjecting myself to torture because I felt like I had no other option as I had done for the past eight years of living with OCD. For the first time ever, I basically said, "I don't have to prove how good I am by subjecting myself to this. I can choose to turn this off, and that doesn't say anything about who I am as a person." For the first time, I was in control, and my actions weren't motivated by my OCD.
I used to be the person that would sit in church or chapel services and shake uncontrollably, and I'd swear to myself that I'd stay there even if it killed me. I used to be the person that would listen to Christian music wherever I had to, and I'd swear I'd hide my anxiety even if it killed me. I'd also purposefully hold my rosary or my cross necklace that had been a confirmation gift blessed by a priest, just to see if anything bad happened to me while I held them just to prove to myself over and over and over again that I wasn't evil or possessed. Looking back on those things and my desire to prove to everyone, and most of all myself, that I was good, the decision to stop the song was a success. For the first time in eight years, I had decided that I didn't have to prove anything to myself.
I've been thinking about that for a few days now. That exercise has changed the way that I think of successfully dealing with my mental health condition. I realized that success doesn't mean sitting through song after song and hoping that it doesn't bother me so that my anxiety doesn't spiral out of control. Success isn't counting the number of days that are free of symptoms. Success is being in control of my OCD enough to say, "This is affecting me, but I don't have to prove to the OCD that I'm a good person by enduring this mental anguish until it's over." Success is realizing that I don't have to suffer just to prove something.
I'll end with this: Success with a mental health condition isn't defined by the number of exercises you complete or the number of days you don't have any symptoms. Success is realizing that you don't have to believe everything your funky brain tells you. Success is admitting that something is affecting you and your willingness to take the necessary steps to lessen the negative effect, even if those steps aren't the ones you wanted to take. Success is sometimes picking your battles instead of constantly fighting a war with your mental health condition because a small victory is better than no victory at all.
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