Who are you?

 Who are you?” said the Caterpillar.

This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I—I hardly know, Sir, just at present—at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”

“What do you mean by that?” said the Caterpillar, sternly. “Explain yourself!”

“I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, Sir,” said Alice, “because I am not myself, you see.” 

Alice and the Blue Caterpillar, from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

NOCD.com is a fantastic platform that brings Exposure Response Prevention (ERP) therapy to the masses.  Before NOCD.com people with OCD, and related conditions, would have to find someone in their community that did ERP. Once they found someone, if there was one, they would have to join a waitlist and wait, and wait, and wait for an appointment.   More often than not the wait would be in excess to 6 months and it was very expensive. NOCD.com changed this.  Now, you can call... speak to an intake coordinator and get an appointment; mine was same day a few hours later.  They matched me with Cat.  I adore Cat.  She gets me.  She gets me better than any therapist has ever gotten me.  Cat has OCD too.  I have spent time in therapy before this.  Once when I was about 20 with a therapist in the psychology department at my university, again when my relationship with my ex-fiancé ended, a third time when my current partner and I split for a bit following what I now realize was an OCD breakdown.  None of these therapists ever treated my OCD. In reality, looking back with the lens I have now, understanding what I understand about what feeds the Jabberwocky, those therapists had no understanding of what OCD is or how it is triggered.  Frankly, I was worse because of their methods. But, the purpose of NOCD.com is to do ERP so all the other stuff that you have to deal with is not really the focus.  We talk about what is going on in my life as a means of finding areas of distress that we can use in ERP.  

After years of ignoring and misunderstanding my OCD I am in bad shape and my life is upside down.  I am deeply in Underland and I need all the help I can get to rejoin the real world. So, as much as I adore Cat, at her suggestion I added a talk therapist. This is a risk.  Talking about things is my compulsion and it triggers my OCD cycle. I use talking about things to calm my anxiety. But, I have added Blue to the mix.  She is much like the Blue Caterpillar.  So, that is what I will call her; "Blue". Blue asks me "Who are you?" quite a bit and her purpose to help me better handle the things ERP can't. My life has been filled with trauma; early childhood trauma and adult trauma.  I have unresolved grief and I am running away from dealing with my feelings. I have been so deeply in denial that depression has set in and even the smallest things take a disproportionate about of effort.  Blue is here to help with all this.  Our focus will be grief and trauma so not to feed into my compulsion to talk about the things going on currently. 

I haven't understood what is happening in my own head. I received this diagnosis of OCD three decades ago and I was released back into the world with nothing. I just know that I get anxiety that is so completely off the chart that it feels like I am being choked out and everything goes black. When my anxiety gets this high I cannot think.  Everything screeches to a halt in my brain and I become paralyzed.  I am not able to accomplish anything because my brain is in a fog from all of the anxiety. Then I want to run.  I am all flight and avoidance.

In school I had terrible test and math anxiety.  I chose majors in college to avoid math and I failed tests I was prepared for.  As my SUD would increase my ability to recall information accurately, or at all, would decrease until I just become a bumbling idiot trying to perform. This happens in aspects of my life to this day.  In my jobs if I am asked to recall performance numbers, I couldn't without reading it from a piece of paper.  I make mistakes, said the wrong thing, and looked unprepared; like I didn't know my business. My boss would approach me on the sales floor and start a conversation about how my team was performing and ask about specific metrics and I would have to say, let me go back to my desk and get my report like I was making an excuse for not knowing my numbers. In relationships I am asked direct straight forward questions about things I should be able to confidently answer and I get so anxious that I panic, say the wrong thing, and shut down. It often looks like I am lying.  This is debilitating which is why it is so frustrating to hear people make light of OCD and joke that everyone is a "little OCD" like it's a benefit.  I am just as guilty because I have done it to.  I didn't understand what was happening to me and I had no idea that this diagnosis of OCD was the explanation for all these things in my life. 

Let me explain what it has been like to be me for quite some time.  My internal dialogue is constantly tearing me down.  That voice is nonstop and it's mean.  To listen to this voice, I am lazy, fat, ugly, stupid, undesirable, gross, unworthy and the world would be better off without me in it. My anxiety is off the charts.  I am always on edge.  I have lived with the adrenaline of fight or flight for so long that I am exhausted. That safety seeking area of the brain is so over stimulated that I no longer take benefit from it. I don't see danger where I should and I see safety where I shouldn't.  I am in Underland and everything is upside down.  My internal sentinel is like the boy who cried wolf too often and I ignore it completely. But all the avoidance doesn't actually bring the anxiety level down it just tamps it so that it can pile more on.  The weight of it is crushing. 

Several years ago, I had a very bad OCD episode, one of the worse of my life, that resulted in me entering therapy for a short time. Someone had entered my room and vindictively riffled through my belongings taking something valuable and throwing it in the garbage.  I really don't have an explanation as to why I checked the bin, but I did and when I found the items discarded, I exploded from the violation of my personal space.  I wasn't able to calm myself down and the obsessive cycle started.  I called my partner at work, disrupted his day, I cried, and I threatened to leave.  When he got home, I was at a level 200 on scale of 10.  He tried to logically reason with me and it just made me more out of control.  I tried to flee, he stopped me, and I screamed at the top of my lungs that I was being held against my will while beating on the windows and crying out for help. I threatened to call 911 if he didn't let me go. I was irrational and disproportionally upset. He was right to stop me.  I was in no state to drive.  He was trying to protect me from myself. I collapsed in a fit of crying despair, inconsolable for hours, repeating the same thing over and over again until I fell asleep.  The next day he told me that he couldn't handle my behavior; it didn't make sense to him and it didn't make sense to me.  I tried to rationalize my behavior and couldn't. I felt embarrassed, remorseful, and crazy. I found a therapist, he listened to my version of the incident, and he gave me the following advice: Your fight or flight response is disproportionate to the situation so, when you get in a state of fight or flight just keep repeating in your mind "I am ok, I am safe."  I had disclosed that I had OCD and my therapist gave me a compulsion to use.  It made things temporarily better but, much worse over time. I had no understanding that OCD was the root of the melt down, let alone what it was, or how much damage a compulsion would cause. 

If those around me exposed to my word vomit of worry only understood that this is the very narrow tip of the giant iceberg under the surface. I am defensive, I over explain, I over speak, and I overreact driven by anxiety.  What they are hearing from me is 1% of what is going on inside my head.  I don't sleep.  I am constantly ruminating over everything past, present, and future.  So, when things really do go wrong, or I am hurt either physically or emotionally, I cannot process it and I can't let it go.  I have lived like this for so long that I didn't understand that it isn't how everyone lives. Cat told me in one of our earliest sessions that there are people in this world that are able to worry about things and then just dismiss it from their mind; this is apparently how the 97% of people in this world that don't have OCD think. 

My life has been a cycle of ability and inability to thrive.  I have restarted my life on several occasions when it has all fallen apart. Since the passing of my first husband and the trauma of his death I have barely kept my head above water. I lived with regret, guilt, fear, and grief and he has been gone for over a decade. This has been compounded by other events and finally a natural disaster. But, since I started ERP therapy, I have begun to address the years of unacknowledged trauma, I have started attending group therapy, and I am finally starting to feel a calm I have never felt in my life. I am still weak, but I know I can be strong.  Starting ERP and leaning into therapy has given me the preverbal Vorpal Sword that I need to slay the Jabberwocky and finally see Frabjous Day. 

-Alice