neuvetoile

my name is neuvetoile. im an academic who focuses on disabled narratives, self-diagnosis, disabled free-will, and critical understandings of neurodiversity.

i like to post my personal journey with disability here through the poems and essays i write. i deal with:

CHRONIC PAIN // MORAL OCD / SCRUPULOSITY // ADHD // CPTSD IN REMISSION

i do engage with suggestive content sometimes as i am an adult. please approach at your own risk.

COMMISSIONS OPEN!!!!!!

stopped.

like they asked, i had to stop. tripping over my desires that sinking feeling biting my tongue it made me feel

sick? am i sick? running to the bathroom taking off my shirt hanging over the toilet, spitting up whatever i can

falling to the floor, curled up gasping feeling the cold tile against my side i got back up

put my shirt on and walked back out

i got quieter stopped letting out my little secrets

it was reassurance seeking it was guilt tripping i was being a bad person bad person bad patient patient

staring up the ladder unable to grab hold of its sides staring at the first rung im stuck feet chained to the ground

tens of hundreds of l a d d e R s

all the way up a desirable entity wholeness truth acceptance

is that not reassurance? that it will be okay at the top?

how can i make it up there when its rooted within when i pull myself back to the ground every time when its part of

“Do you have a cat?”

I stared blankly at my computer screen and cocked my head. This was my new therapist and I’s second appointment together. We were still going through the ‘life story’ portion of getting to know each other. I nodded, “I had a cat growing up. He passed away last year. My parents still have a second cat.” She gasped. “I knew I saw a cat in there! Sometimes I have this psychic ability to just feel things, y’know?”

I rolled my eyes inside my soul, and nodded. I let out a small laugh outside. 

“So, you hear voices that tell you how to feel?”

I nod again. “Yeah. It’s almost like, I have to do these things to prevent bad things from happening. Like, if I don't set my knife or scissors down when my roommates are close to me, I’m scared I might stab them. Or, I have to repeat ‘don’t stab them don’t stab them’ as I walk around them with the knife.” She pondered. “That sounds more to me like commanding hallucinations, like psychosis. I think you should instead tell your psychiatrist when you see him that you have commanding hallucinations. It could be dangerous if you actually stabbed your roommates”

I eventually left the call. I called my boyfriend, freaking out. Was I actually just schizophrenic? I had checked for hallucinations all the time, but. Was the voice in my own head just a commanding hallucination? Was I that delusional? Was I going to stab my roommates if I didn’t seek out treatment?

When I first recognized my OCD symptoms, I spent a long time questioning whether to seek out medical validation. I had finished C-PTSD treatment quite strongly with a therapist who I loved, but she, unfortunately, had no knowledge of OCD treatment and requested I seek out a new therapist. I went to my doctor, who was certain I had OCD, who immediately provided me with access to SSRIs while we waited for a psychiatrist (she claimed I didn’t need to even see him—she was pretty certain I had it from my description). I didn’t last long on them after they made my vision fuzzy and made me dissociate constantly.

But, my C-PTSD treatment wasn’t normal. I went through some EMDR, but predominantly, I went through an experimental therapy titled “Deep-Brain Reorientation” (DBR). Rather than a focus on eradication rooted within medical models, DBR seemed to force me to slowly go through what it was like to experience a trigger and come to understand better why my body was reacting the way it did. I learned to empathize with the reactions now encoded into my nervous system, embodied into my stomach and back, rather than hate and eradicate them. They had become a part of me, and I felt comforted accepting them within my body.

OCD was different. It never felt like a part of me—I couldn’t do parts work to try and understand it, because none of it was rooted in something real. While my themes were influenced by the trauma I had experienced prior, it was never acting up to protect me. It was acting up to control me.

I sought out two therapists. The first one was overpriced, ignorant to my problems, and encouraged grounding my intrusive thoughts in reality. It did irreversible damage to my relationship with therapy.

My second therapist didn’t really do a whole lot. I would come to therapy with questions and concerns about my OCD as a critical disability scholar, but would leave with “I see. That’s complicated.” and an e-transfer. She told me to expose myself to my triggers and prevent my responses. All something I could do on my own and $160 extra in my bank account.

So, I’ve been in limbo. No medication, no therapy. I have episodes often that last a few days where I isolate myself in my room and social interaction feels difficult, awkward, and forcefully scripted. I grow concerned about people talking behind my back, even those who I know would never. When nobody sits near me in the lecture hall, I check if I smell bad over and over and over again and remember to put on more perfume next time. More deodorant next time. I rub my face at least 10 times after I eat to make sure nothing is there, picking at my teeth and checking. 

I’m scared to go back through the medical system, especially for such a sensitive disorder. There are intrusive thoughts I have that I couldn’t disclose to anyone. I don’t want to deal with a system that focuses overtly on eradication, on the way my hormones are ‘out of balance’ and how that contributes to my OCD. I want someone who I can sit with and who can help me find a demedicalized, anti-capitalist route to ‘cure’. A route that helps me find love and acceptance within my OCD, where the focus is no longer on the debilitating symptoms of OCD but on the comfort I need to feel within it. But, that’s ‘reassurance seeking’ and ‘unhealthy’ when it comes to OCD.

I don’t know how to make the right choice.