I'm Not Going to Tell You That

     I'm willing to share a lot of things about my mental health journey. I talk about OCD. I talk about Pure O. I talk about medication. I talk about therapy. I talk about coping and lifestyle changes. I'm not shy about having a conversation about mental health with anyone and everyone if I think it might help someone or at least make someone think about mental health as sort of a normal topic to think about and discuss.
     Some people even share their own mental health stories with me. Others are simply curious, and they ask me lots of questions, which is great. However, there is one question that I never answer. People ask, "What are your intrusive thoughts?"
     Once someone knows that I have Pure O, and that intrusive thoughts are a huge part of that condition, they always want to know exactly what my intrusive thoughts are. I'm never sure if it's a genuine need to understand or a morbid curiosity about how weird and depraved I am that drives the question. Either way, I always find myself unwilling to disclose that information. Sometimes, I've even had to bluntly say, "I'm not going to tell you that," because people keep asking and asking. I'm not offended by the question, just unwilling to answer it.
     I will tell them about intrusive thoughts in general. I'll talk about the categories that intrusive thoughts can fall into. I'll even provide examples. I just intentionally leave any personal information out of that topic. Yet, people still want to know what scary thoughts are blaring through my mind stereo, even after I explain that intrusive thoughts come from a person's worst fears. All I can ever bring myself to share is this: my intrusive thoughts all come from the fear that I am a bad person. Some people still ask, "But what are they?"
     Logically, I know that thoughts are just thoughts. Logically, I know the thoughts that play through my mind like a broken record don't say anything at all about me as a person. Logically, I know that thoughts mean nothing. Yet, emotionally, I'm not in a place in my recovery to disclose such traumatic information with someone that isn't my mother or my therapist. There is still some guilt, shame, and anxiety associated with my intrusive thoughts. I may never be willing to share my exact intrusive thoughts with someone else because they are so personal and traumatic. That's my choice.
     I sort of felt bad for not sharing my intrusive thoughts. What if someone else in the room was having the exact same problem, with the exact same thoughts, and by sharing mine, I could help them? Then I realized that I don't have to share every single thing about my life with OCD to help someone. I don't have to feel bad for deeming something about my mental health condition too personal to share with someone else.
     I'll end with this: You decide what, as well as when or even if you share about your mental health condition with other people. Don't let anyone pressure you into sharing more than you feel comfortable with. Just because you can't or won't talk about something doesn't mean that you aren't still slowly healing from it. You can be in a different healing place logically and emotionally, and that's okay.

Coping Over Time

     Before I knew what Pure O was, and even for a little while after I received a diagnoses of OCD and Panic Disorder, every time I had intrusive thoughts (which was constantly), I wanted to flee the "tainted" environment where the thoughts happened. If I was at home, I tried to cope by leaving my house to go anywhere that wasn't my tainted home environment. If my intrusive thoughts happened out in public, that environment was also tainted, and I avoided that place like my life depended on it. I used the public places and people as a distraction. If I was out and about, whatever was happening there had my attention so that I had a few moments of peace from the OCD and the panic. Then that stopped working, and going out while I was suffering through particularly high anxiety made the anxiety worse.
     These days, I find that if my anxiety spikes or my intrusive thoughts are particularly hard to deal with, my preferred coping method is to take a few minutes by myself. I'll do some deep breathing or meditation alone to cope instead of using people and public places as a distraction. If it's particularly rough, I'll even try some yoga for anxiety. (My favorites are Child's Pose and the legs-up-the-wall pose.) I also find that feeling useful helps my anxiety, so I might clean or cook or play with my cats, Lola and Clementine.
     Over the years, how I cope with my mental health condition has changed. Things that worked in the beginning stopped working. Some things work only once in a particular situation. Some coping methods work sometimes, but not all the time. Then some coping methods work pretty consistently.
     Changing up my coping methods isn't a negative thing. Sure, I get frustrated when something that worked last week doesn't work this time, but the fact that it doesn't work isn't a bad thing. It doesn't mean that my funky brain is onto all my tricks. It simply means that my needs have changed. A person's needs change all the time, so of course, my coping strategies have to change to help me meet my needs in any given situation.
     I'll end with this: Coping with a mental health condition in a healthy way isn't always easy. Just because a coping strategy worked yesterday doesn't mean it'll work today, and that's okay. You just pull something else out of your bag of tricks. Just because something didn't work last week doesn't mean it won't work this week. It's okay to try the same things again in a different situation. Just don't give up because you haven't figured out what works to help you feel better.

Just a Pile of Extra Work

      We have probably all experienced the mental health stigma that told us that mental health conditions are scary monsters that live in our brains from which we can never recover. This, of course, makes us expect people to run when we mention our mental health condition. Why should people be expected to put up with a scary monster when it has no chance of being "fixed" or at the very least, less broken? So, we're made to believe that having a mental health condition makes us something tragic, hopeless, and scary, which is just too much to expect someone else to reasonably and continuously deal with.
     Since I've been struggling through the worst of my anxiety for the past couple of years, I've noticed this recurring fear. This fear likes to pop up usually when I've had a particularly rough time with my anxiety, usually in the middle of hysterical sobbing or when I can't bring myself to be alone, when I'm at my most vulnerable. The fear: What if my OCD is too much for anyone else to deal with, and they just leave? What if everyone I love decides they can't deal with me anymore and they just...leave?
     I never worried about this sort of thing before the OCD had me in its grip at the age of nineteen, but now it's a regular thing that's on my mind. I worry that my friends will get tired of my anxiety-riddled, rambling messages. I worry that my mom is going to get tired of the tearful phone calls and the meltdowns and the being careful of triggers. In the middle of a sobbing, hysterical meltdown, I've asked her time and again if she's going to make me move out of the house because she's tired of my anxiety. (She would never do that.)
     Logically, I'm sure these things won't happen. It's just the anxiety. Anxiety picks up on your worst fear, and then anxiety beats you over the head with your worst fear until you can barely function. The fear is that a mental health condition can make me unlovable. Anxiety shoves you right over the edge from average-person worry into catastrophe. (The average person worries that their loved ones may just up and no longer love/like/care for them. Then the anxiety distorts that into thinking that I am unlovable.) I can use logic with anxiety all I want, but that doesn't erase the fear. Sometimes, I feel like my anxiety is too much for me to deal with, let alone for some other person outside myself to deal with. It's just so much work, which means I am so much work, and what other person wants to have all that extra work when they don't have to? My anxiety answers: No one.
     I know an unwell brain thrives on isolation, so of course my mental health condition pushes and pushes me to be isolated. If I am isolated with no support system, then the unwell brain can rage and wreak havoc with no one to point out anything that might stop it. Yet, knowing that doesn't stop me from getting lost down the rabbit hole and thinking I'm too much work and people don't want to put up with me.
     Here's what I want us all to realize and hold on to: Just because your mental health condition feels like too much for you to handle some days does not mean that you, as a human, are too much to handle. Even though a mental health condition is work to live with does not mean that you, as a human, are too much work. The people around you that truly love and care about you do not think that you are too much work. They just see a family member or friend that they want to be there for, that they want to help. You are more than just a pile of extra work in the form of crazy. No one sees you as tragically broken and hopeless. You have intrinsic value and good qualities that people love about you that are not diminished by the fact that you also have a mental health condition.
     I'll end with this: Yes, having a mental health condition requires work to function. Yes, some days require more effort than other days. Just because you have a mental health condition does not mean that you, as a human, are more work than you're worth. You are a human being, with intrinsic value, a unique personality, and good qualities, and the people that truly care about you see that. They don't see you as a pile of extra work they wish they could discard. The people that truly care about you will not leave you because you have a mental health condition.

Is this Rational?

     I've always been a worrier. As far back as I can remember into my childhood, I always had something that could worry me to the point of tears. When my mom cleaned the carpets with one of those foam cleaners, I'd worry if I stepped in a damp spot that the chemicals in the cleaner would get absorbed into my body through my feet and I'd die. (I was around age 5.) Then once I started school, I worried that as soon as my mom dropped me off, something terrible would happen to her (like that she might die in a car crash) until I got distracted with classwork. I didn't like riding the rides at the fair because I worried that they weren't safe. In high school, I worried that we'd have a school shooting or a bomb threat. (We had one bomb threat my entire four years, and I didn't even go to school that day.) In college, every time I crossed the street, I worried about getting hit by a car. Today, I worry about too many things to list.
     All through the years, I've always been worried about one thing or another. One thing I never worried about, though, was whether or not my worries were rational or irrational. I didn't think worrying about things made me a "crazy" person. I thought worrying about things made me cautious, and that it meant I had self-preservation instincts. Worry was always "normal" to me.
     Then I got diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. I was relieved to have a name for thing that made me feel like a "crazy" person. However, mixed in with that relief, was more worry...about my worries. One of the symptoms of OCD is irrational worry, fear, and anxiety. Irrational...that word stuck.
     I started to worry about how rational or irrational I was. Every time I got worried about something I got worried that my original worry was irrational, which meant it was just another way that OCD was trying to maintain control of my life. I started to pathologize every little thing and worry that the OCD was trying to take over again. I know that sometimes, my OCD brain will pick out a strange thing to make me feel worried about (Example: what if some place is haunted, and because I already have a funky mind, what if some malicious spirits attaches to me...totally irrational. Demonic supernatural possession was one of my first OCD obsessions, in case I hadn't mentioned that before.)
     I had to come up with a way to separate my worries into rational worries and my anxious thoughts. So, now when I find myself worrying about something to the point of anxiety, I have to ask myself some questions. Number 1: Is this related to any of my obsessions? If I answer yes, I toss the worry in the OCD pile. If I answer no, I ask myself question number 2. Question Number 2: If I had this thought at a no-anxiety time, would it give me anxiety or could I shrug it off? If I could shrug it off at a no-anxiety time, that means (for me) that the worry is tied to my anxiety disorder. If it would still cause me anxiety at a time when I wasn't feeling any anxiety, then (for me) it means the worry is a rational worry.
     Example: I recently thought of switching from whole milk to soy milk, and so I got a carton of soy milk to try. (Trying some new foods/drinks/medications that I have never tried before makes me anxious because I'm afraid I'll have an adverse reaction to a new thing and possibly die.) After I bought it, I was still researching soy milk and health-related things. I discovered that there is some controversy surrounding soy milk and it's effects on hormones in women. So, I was afraid to drink the soy milk because I was afraid of the health consequences. I had already drank some, and so I was anxious about it. Question 1: Was this related to any of my obsessions? The fear that I was going to die from the soy milk was, so I tossed that away. Question 2: If I saw this soy milk-hormone-trouble related stuff on a day when I had no anxiety, would I still be worried that I had consumed soy milk? The answer: Yes, I would still be worried, and therefore I would not continue to drink the soy milk even if the data was inconclusive (so far) because more research is needed. Conclusion: being worried about the health effects of soy milk is rational for me, and it's okay if I don't want to drink any more. It's also okay if I don't want my mom to drink it, too. It has nothing to do with my OCD.
     I'll end with this: It's so easy, when you get diagnosed with a mental health condition, to pathologize behavior, and it can take work to figure out the best technique to use to determine if a behavior is a "normal" behavior or a pathological behavior. The best thing that works for me in my life with OCD is to ask two simple questions. Question 1: Is this worry related to any of my obsessions? If the answer is no proceed to question 2. Question 2: If I was having a no-anxiety day, would this worry be something I could shrug off without any anxiety? That might not work for everyone, but it is a good way to learn to flag anxious thoughts versus rational worries. Just remember, because you've been diagnosed with a mental health condition doesn't mean that every behavior is caused by that mental health condition.
    

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

     I worry about my anxiety a lot, particularly during the months of June and July. It seems like I catch myself monitoring my anxiety more often during those warm months. I catch myself saying first thing in the morning, "I hope my anxiety isn't too high today." If we go out somewhere, I catch myself thinking, "I hope it isn't too loud or crowded so my anxiety doesn't get too high." If I feel my anxiety start to rise I'll think, "Oh no! I hope this doesn't get out of hand."
     Checking in with yourself about your mental health is a good thing. Worrying about your mental health condition, however, is not a good thing. Worrying about my anxiety actually has a negative effect on my well-being. By worrying about it, I'm creating a space for it to creep in and take over. By worrying about it, I'm constantly thinking about it and guarding against it, and that makes me hyper-aware of any symptoms of anxiety that might show up. That's pretty much just asking for the anxiety to show up since I'm thinking about it so much and being wary of it at the same time.
     My therapist explained it this way: She watched a TED talk on stress and the body. There were two groups of people involved in a study (longitudinal study is my guess). One group thought that stress didn't negatively impact the body. The second group thought stress negatively impacted the body. After time passed, the group that didn't think about stress hurting their body were still mostly fine. The people that worried about the impact of stress on their body had more health problems. She explained that the same idea applied to worrying about anxiety as well. The more you worry about something like anxiety, the more likely it is to happen.
     Basically, just like the people that worry about the effect of stress on their body, by worrying about my anxiety, I created my own self-fulfilling prophecy. By worrying about my anxiety, I invited it in for a visit because I kept it on my mind. The same thing happens with panic attacks. Worrying about and fearing a panic attack often causes one to happen.
     The simple solution would be not to worry about the anxiety and panic attacks, but that is more difficult than it sounds. It takes quite a bit of effort to move your mind away from something scary. I'm sure we were all confronted with something scary, like a medical test, that we just couldn't stop thinking and worrying about. It's not something that you can just stop thinking about because it's always there, floating around in your mind somewhere.
     At the first sign of worrying too much about my anxiety, I start changing the way I think about the things. I'm always worried that I'll be as anxious as I was when I was forced into treatment, and I'm always worried that I'll let my anxiety ruin my birthday. I always start to worry about that in June. So, now, I try to talk to myself differently about my anxiety. Instead of the negative, worrying statements, I say, "You know you're anxiety might be higher right now, but that's fine. You're in a different place than you were a couple of years ago, and you have no reason to think the anxiety is going to spiral again. You are doing better, and you can continue to do better."
     I also try to change the pictures I have in my mind. Instead of picturing myself so anxious that I cry and have a hard time functioning, I picture myself as content and busy with cleaning and writing and playing with my cat. I don't picture the anxiety as part of my day. I wake up in the morning, and instead of worrying about my anxiety immediately, I think about the things I planned to do that day. I picture myself doing them instead of being frozen in anxiety. In other words, I try to create a self-fulfilling prophecy of fun productivity instead of anxiety. I find that doing this one thing helps me to  manage my anxiety throughout the day. (However, this doesn't make the anxiety go away, because some days are just anxious days no matter what you're thinking and planning, but this is a management tool for the days when I'm more in control.)
     I'll end with this: Sometimes, we create the way we feel by the way we think.  Worrying about anxiety and panic symptoms will likely bring on the symptoms, just like worrying about stress hurting your body leads to stress hurting your body. Picturing a good day, or at least a busy day without picturing the anxiety, doesn't leave as much room for an anxiety invasion, which (at least for me) makes the anxiety more manageable.

Everything is (Not) Fine

     I always tell my therapist that living with anxiety is like living with a toddler inside my head. Anxiety behaves like a toddler. It screams and yells and says mean things, and doesn't listen when you try to be logical. If you can hang on and not give into the anxiety long enough on a good day, it gives up. Other days, when the anxiety is having a particularly persistent day, you may end up lying in the floor, crying while the anxiety continues to scream.
     As a result of thinking of the anxiety as a misbehaving toddler, as my anxiety levels rise, I find myself saying a lot, "No, no, it's okay. You're fine. Everything is fine." I tell myself that everything is fine, and then I try to ignore my anxiety, much like a parent might ignore bad behavior until the misbehaving kid moves on to something else. I just pretend everything is fine, and I don't acknowledge the anxiety until the anxiety drops off, which may take anywhere from a few minutes to a few days.
     My therapist pointed out that sometimes, when I don't recognize and acknowledge the anxiety that I'm feeling that I could be just feeding the anxiety. That sounds weird, right? Well, she explained that by pretending I was fine while my brain was going haywire with thoughts and my body was shoved into overdrive with anxiety's physical sensations, while I'm sitting there just telling myself that I'm fine, I may be just adding to the anxiety.
     How am I adding to my anxiety by pretending I'm fine? Because anxiety is a feeling that I experience, and all of my feelings need to be acknowledged and recognized whether I want to feel them or not. Not acknowledging it and recognizing it sort of means it stresses me more because on top of the anxiety I'm feeling, I have added the pressure to not be anxious, which just makes me feel the anxiety and think about it more. Basically, I'm sending myself the message that it's not okay experience anxiety. Also, the longer the anxiety goes the more gruesome, more frequent, and more terrifying my OCD intrusive thoughts become.
     My therapist suggested that, when I experience the anxiety, I should acknowledge the feelings, like the racing heart and chest pain and sweaty palms and tingling hands and feet. Then I should recognize that I didn't do anything wrong that made them happen. Anxiety just happens, much like a sudden headache or muscle cramp. Then I just have to tell myself that feeling anxiety isn't necessarily bad because my body is just functioning the way it's supposed to function, just in overdrive.
     I had never thought of anxiety as a thing that wasn't a bad thing until she said that. Anxiety is just the body functioning properly, but it's in overdrive. It's not bad that that happens sometimes. So, it's not a bad thing to acknowledge when it happens instead of pretending that it isn't happening. I mean, toddlers have bad days, and when parents admit that their toddler is having a bad day, it's probably easier to deal with than when they try to pretend everything is fine and they so totally aren't frustrated with the situation. (I also have to admit that realizing anxiety is just my body functioning normally, but in overdrive, might make me less terrified that my anxiety will kill me while I'm home alone.)
     I'll end with this: It's okay to admit to yourself that you aren't totally fine. It's okay to admit that your anxiety is having a terrible two's kind of day. Admitting that to yourself is actually a way to get a tiny bit of distance between yourself and your body in overdrive so you can do what you need to do manage it and get to a better place. It's also a kindness to yourself to admit that you're not fine in the moment so you can give yourself an extra bit of compassion and self care instead of adding the pressure to JUST BE FINE ALREADY.

We Don't Talk About That

     This past week, I spent some time with some old family friends that are more like family than friends. We discuss a whole range of topics. Mental health is one of those topics that tends to come up as some of the people in that group (aside from me) also struggle with anxiety and other mental health conditions. We're not shy about exchanging stories, therapist information, or medication/natural remedies that we have found to be helpful.
     This time was a little different. Someone in the group had gotten married in the not-so-distant past, and their husband (whom I had only met a couple of times before this) was part of the group this time. As the topic of mental health came up and we were discussing anxiety issues (mine and one of the teen's anxiety struggles) the husband said in a perturbed tone to his wife, "We don't talk about this." This man acted like the family's struggle with mental health was the elephant in the room everyone pretends doesn't exist over an awkward Thanksgiving dinner. (His wife waved that off, explained that we were family, and the conversation continued.)
     This new person acted like mental health was an embarrassing topic, that you hide from other people, like mental health struggles are a dirty little secret. Mental health isn't an embarrassing, dirty little secret. Mental health is simply a health issue that requires treatment just like any physical illness. I'm never embarrassed to talk about my struggle with OCD and Panic Disorder. Why should I be, especially if talking about it could possibly help even one person?
     Here is my other problem with what this new person said: if they aren't talking about the mental health struggle that affects this whole family, how do they expect anything to get better? Mental health conditions might only be diagnosed in one person in a family unit, but that diagnosis impacts the entire family unit. Everyone in that family unit should talk about it and make changes as needed to achieve and maintain wellness for the whole family. When one person in a family struggles with a mental health condition, the whole family tends to feel just as helpless and lost as the person with the actual diagnosis sometimes.
     Here is another problem: how does that attitude that mental health struggles are a family's dirty little secret make the person with the mental health condition feel? My guess is that it made that person not feel good. Did that attitude make the person feel embarrassed of their mental health? It could have. Did that attitude make the person feel like something is wrong with them, like they should be ashamed? It could have.
     Even though the mother still wanted to have a discussion on the topic of mental health, she explained some time later that the teen in question didn't really like to talk about it with people. (The teen was mostly absent during the conversation.) That I understand because some people are just very private people, but I still don't think the new husband should have seemed embarrassed or perturbed by. He could have said, "Well, (insert name) doesn't really like to talk about it," instead of acting embarrassed or irritated by the topic. So, I was left to wonder if the teen not talking about it had more to do with her step-parent's attitude or her own wishes.
     Either way, I still feel bothered by the "we don't talk about that" attitude surrounding mental health. Mental health is something that we all NEED to talk about, especially within our own families. Families should be a safe place to openly discuss if something isn't quite right or if you're having a bad mental health day, without feeling ashamed or embarrassed. Healing isn't going to take place until acceptance and kindness take place.
     I'll end with this: Mental health conditions aren't a family's embarrassing, dirty little secret. Mental health conditions are just that, health conditions, like any physical illness that the person didn't ask for. Making them feel embarrassed and ashamed for talking about their mental health condition is unkind, and honestly, it can prevent them from seeking help and/or taking medications that they may need to function at a high level. That said, it's totally fine to set boundaries for who with and when you want to talk about your mental health as long as you aren't doing it out of embarrassment or shame.