My brain on OCD.

One of the worst things that could happen to someone with Contamination OCD is what just happened to me.

First let me say, this is to reduce mental pressure because I feel like I might throw up. 🤢 Literally.

We have a cricket problem. A huge one. Our house is infested and it's been a test and a half to survive with them on a daily basis. They chirp at all hours of the day, shit everywhere, climb on everyone and everything. AND, heres the REALLY BIG ONE, the thing that trigggered me to the pointing of nearly spewing....

Some of the crickets are infected with these massive worms that crawl out of them when they die. It looks like a long thick black hair. One was in my husbands coffee cup this morning.

Excuse me a moment to breath.

But, I don't understand why it can't be affordable. Why can't mental health care be affordable!!!

I need a psychologist. I'm at the point where I don't care what it costs but at the same time the cost of psychology is infuriating.

It's a 14-month wait in the public health system plus two groups sessions or $215 an hour for someone privatized.

How do you expect people to reach out for help when they can't afford it? Let me say that again, it is difficult to afford.

Seriously. Seriously! I need help, I am trying to get help, and you could help me a little bit. Throw me a bone mental health people.

First let me say that I'm not a danger to myself or anyone. 

Next let me say. This is a rant/vent. 

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I banged my knee on our marble table which made me cry. It hurt like a sun of a gun. Crying released some of my inner pressure which has been pushing me to the edge while I've been too tired to push back. 

It's the normal triggers making me feel like this, money and stress. I want to scream until windows shatter only then would I feel a little more normal. I don't know how to get back to where I was. I love my job but I don't work enough to get paid the amount I need to clear out my bills and debt. I love my second job, it's an hour a day/five days a week but I can only handle three days a week. 

I tried to think of solutions, I'm a handy person. I crochet and am learning coding, I write stories and bake. I just can't find a way to get out of this growing hole that I'm in and I'm still waiting on a psychologist. She was supposed to be up in November, nothing. Up at the December, nothing. January, nothing. February, to early to know. I'm stick in this hole and I can't climb out and I don't know what to do. 

Just a little something I'd like to get off my chest.

I would love to win the lottery, why?

First, I kind of hate money. There's a lot of places that won't let you use the bathroom unless you make a purchase and everything costs soo much.

Second, I'm under a lot of stress but I wouldn't change how things are.

My thing is that I'm taking care of my husband who's sickly and having issues with his mental health stability, plus my parents - one is set in their ways and stubborn. Thinks that yelling and threatening is the best way to deal with the other's long time addiction. - the other parent is an alcohol addict with text book ADHD and OCD but doesn't believe in mental health issues and says to my husband why can't you work, why can't you do it anyways, it's not right you should be able to do it.

This morning, a thing out of my nightmares happened once again. My partner has a large collection of breakable collectables and my cat likes to climb, sometimes places where he shouldn’t. 

I was sitting just a few feet away when I heard a heavy crash. I wheeled around to see my cat where he shouldn’t be and his victim on the floor. I’m not made at my kitty, but I was spooked. Immediately, my heart started to pound, my body started to vibrate like I’d had too much caffeine and I was numb in my knees. I could barely get over to the poor broken statue. I moved other objects out of the way, grabbed my cat and released him on the floor. 

I turned on all the extra lights and collected all the pieces of the statue. I’m in full blown panic already, crying, afraid, shaking, pounding heart but I’m doing as my phsycologist said, no meds and ride the wave. It’s terrible but instead of rushing to wake my partner and tell him of the misdeeds, I went online and picked out a new statue for him to look at when he’s awake. So that I can calmly and hopefully without tears tell him about what happened. 

I didn’t want him to have to clean up the mess, so I gathered it all together and then spotted the gorilla glue on his desk. Shaking still, I started to glue the statue back together, snot running from my nose, I had to keep stopping because it’s hard to see through tears and also, I glued my finger to it. Still riding the anxiety, I put it back together and back in place. 

Once he’s awake, I will still explain – I’m sure he’ll appreciate my effort and I’ll have him pick out a new one as a replacement. I love my animals and hate my anxiety, I hate my OCD thoughts telling me that he’s going to blame me and that I should take responsibility before he can. That maybe he’ll leave me when he knows. Or he’ll hate my cat. 

Mental health is a huge strain on married couples. I know because I’m married and both my partner and I have mental health that we fight with. I have so many intrusive thoughts when he’s not feeling well about what I should say and they’re things that I absolutely shouldn’t say and I just want to cry. 

I am trying my best. He’s having a turkey of a time. I get it, I do. BUT, I’m trying to find a job and I’m supporting him and my parents.

I love him. I really do but days like today when it’s going to rain and a sad event is coming up, also a string of random bad luck, it makes it so f*cking hard. Unfortunately no matter where you turn in this life you’re living theres a BIG HAIRY BUTT. Lol trying to make myself smile over here and I’m not there. 

I went over and said what I had to say before excusing myself. I tried not to make it about myself because it’s what he’s feeling - even though it’s for reasons I think are silly - and I told him to take an evening away from adulting, just lay in bed. 

I absolutely hate talking on the phone to strangers and I keep my phone on do not disturb almost all the time, the only exception is starred contacts. I don’t like answering the phone. It bothers me when the phone rings and it’s some random 1800 or 1855 or you know those local numbers and they look friendly but they’re a phising scam - you’ve won blah blah blah from blah.  IF you want to reach me, email me. You should have my email if you’re calling me OR leave a voicemail, I have that specail voicemail to text thing and I can see if you’re friendly or not.  This rant is sparked by the same number calling once a day for almost the past two weeks and they never ever leave a voicemail and the one time they did, it couldn’t be converted to text which means, it’s not in english. 

DON’T CALL ME. I HATE CALLS. 

Honestly, I have started to develop a bit of a phobia of answering the phone started by problems with lying creditors saying that I owe money or those this is blah calling to tell you that police are involved and you’re being investigated for charges in quebec. OR your amazon has a one thousand dollar charge pending. 

Sometimes, a situation in your memories gets picked at until it makes you raw and the intrusive thoughts circle around this particular moment and bring it up for years. This is the type of moment that I talked about and repeating it once is enough for me for now.

For you and for me, I did not do anything wrong but it feels like I did everything wrong. Even though it happened years and years ago, and there is nothing I can do anymore, it sits inside of me like a lead weight in my mind. It has its own gravitational pull almost.

This is an attempt to release the gravity and set things back on the right track.

Honestly, I've been doing pretty well lately. I set some goals, waking up around the same time every morning, putting down my devices every night for at least 2 hours, getting into yoga and not obsessing over my weight.

Morning thing, ace. Five stars. I can do this without a problem. I actually love being awake before the sun because I always get to see the sunset and I always seem more productive.

Putting down my devices for at least 2 hours before bed, it was a partial win. I'm sure you saw my post about being a technological addict. Crossing this territory has been extremely difficult, putting down my devices for any amount of time is just way too hard. I managed about three broken weeks. The attempt to put down the devices was to reduce stimuli so that I could sleep better. But now that I have a full-time job, I'm so tired when I get home that I just sleep no matter what.

Getting into yoga was a failure. I managed 10 days of self-instructed yoga, felt great about it and myself but could not keep it up for anything. Again, having a job kind of distracted away from this.

And, finally, not obsessing about my weight. This has been a hurdle. I am very tempted at this exact moment to go to the scale and weigh myself. There is no reason other than the fact that I am obsessed with my weight and I have low self-confidence. I will weigh myself everyday if I don't keep in control. So instead, I don't weigh myself at all. In the past 2 months I have weighed myself once and it is honestly bothering me not to do it more but I'm refusing myself to do it more. Part of me wants to know what it is so that I can obsess about making it better while the other part wants to obsess about how bad it makes me feel. Out of all of this, I have to do my best to remember that weight constantly fluctuates and changes as days go through. Women also tend to bloat and have other womanly things which are affecting of weight movement.

Putting all of this out here is scary. It really is. You don't realize all of the thoughts behind it, all of the worries and obsessions that come with the post like this. Or maybe you do, either way please try to understand that mental health is not one size fits all and there is a huge variety of it and of us.

The biggest part of my contamination OCD revolves around toilets. Toilets are the most contaminated but needed items that I can stand. Tonight while prepping for bed, I reached over to pet my cat and my pants touched my toilet. I had just picked out my pajamas, I was super comfortable and then this happened...

My mind jumped straight to its contaminated get it off of you. I'm managed to wear my pants back to my bedroom only to have further intrusive thoughts about the contamination and I wound up putting those pants in the wash.

I just took them out of the clean laundry, to wear them for 15 minutes and toss them back in the dirty. I can't think of anything more frustrating. I hate finding contamination like that, my toilet isn't even dirty.

I've never been a really active person unless I'm outside in the garden. I am in the process of setting up a yoga schedule for myself. My psychologist thinks this is a very good idea because part of yoga is calming the mind.

My mind is anything but calm. I have so many thoughts that it's easy to overwhelm me. I have chosen Tuesdays and Thursdays after 6:00 p.m. to do a short yoga routine for the next 3 weeks. Then I will attempt to switch the routine to Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

Starting this, has made me realize how I would have shaped by truly am. After my first go on Tuesday, all day yesterday I felt sore. I'm imagining tomorrow I will feel sore as well but I know that it is worth it.

I've noticed a sense of calmness inside of myself when I start plants and get ready to garden, as well as when I'm gardening.

It is the only place where I can stand getting dirty, the only place I can step into without a single thing on my mind

My addiction is technology, my psychologist wants me to stop using technology before bed because it's overstimulating and causing me sleep issues.My problem is, I feel lost and lonely without my devices. I have no connection to the outside world and it never used to matter to me. When I was younger we didn't even have internet, we talked to friends on landlines.

Now, I can't even go to the bathroom without making sure I have my devices. When I put my devices down, as my psychologist has directed, I get so tired, so easily. It's like a little weight is lifted off of me and I never even knew it was there.

But in the back of my mind is that craving to message somebody or check social media.I didn't even know that technology was my addiction or my obsession.

I was just about to sleep when she started to bark, my heart immediately started pounding and I knew everyone else was sleeping so I have to check.

I grabbed my bat and turned on every light switch as I went to the upstairs. Lit it all up. Figured the element of surprise would scare whatever it was.

But now that it's over I'm having intrusive thoughts, anxiety and I'm obsessing over it. Things like, they're on the dark side of the house, waiting to break the window on the room beside mine and my husband's. I'm thinking, I want to live and protect my animals. What if I can't get to my phone fast enough and more.

I did it. I did it. 

Today for the first time in ages, I was able to convince myself that it's okay to handle chemicals which may potentially harm me because my sinks needed to be cleaned and my drain wasn't working well. I'm not going to be able to eat for a couple hours but I had a good breakfast before so I will be okay. 

I hate phone calls. 

Something about the sound of the phone ringing makes my heart pound and my ears burn. Instant anxiety. I would love it if you emailed or called, it’s the best way to contact me and it feels the safest too.