If you're irrational and you know it, clap your hands

Every time I fold sheets I think about OCD.

Prior to being on my antidepressant, if I folded sheets and any part of the sheet touched the floor, I had to rewash it.  Even if I tried to continue folding the sheets and just stuff them in the drawer, I'd obsess about them and eventually pull them out to rewash.

I can now fold my sheets, and if they touch the floor they get stuffed into the drawer without another thought.

If I rearranged pictures on my wall and had nail holes, even if the nail holes were behind another picture and couldn't be seen, I had to patch the holes, prime them and repaint them.

Now, I can have nail holes in my wall.  When I notice them, I am able to go on with whatever I was doing without breaking out the spackle.

If I had any kind of pain or bulge, I obsessed that it was cancer.  I had many an "underground pimple" that I was convinced would result in chemotherapy.

I'd like to say I don't obsess about my health anymore, but I can't.  But I'm not running to the doctor for everything.  I give it time.  I talk myself down off the ledge of irrational thinking.

All of this was before I became pregnant in 2003 and started living with children.  Between hormones, lack of sleep and living with little people who thrive on making chaos out of one's household belongings, it is no wonder my OCD went threw the roof.

And even now, with breastfeeding hormones still in full play, 11 consecutive months of sleep deprivation (aside from those 2 nights when M slept more than 8 hours straight), and 3 little people who get sick.almost.constantly (at least once school is in session), it is no wonder I still require medication and still have to talk myself down from my irrational thinking.

What I continue to find funny is how I totally thought my thinking was "normal."  I mean,  it was normal for me, in the way that normal is the only thing a person knows.  I had always thought that way, and though it occurred to me that I might just stew too much or obsess, I didn't know any other way to think. I didn't know how to turn my brain off once I was on the path of obsessing.

Yesterday I had my dental work, and I remembered how before any kind of procedure (in the days before my meds) I would get nasty belligerent.  In my head I would be cussing the doctors and nurses to China and back, refusing to cooperate, just being a royal pain in the neck.  And this internal ugliness seeped out and made me angry, primarily with hubby and family (because I would never dream of actually being an asshole to the physician or nurses).

But it was unmanageable anxiety.  My fear of what I was having done and what the results would be.  I just didn't know how to cope.

My two little cavities also reminded me of how I felt (and still feel to some extent) like an utter failure whenever I made any kind of mistake or had any kind of unsatisfactory experience (like a health test that wasn't within "normal" limits).   Forget that I was cavity-free for better than 35 years.  In my head, the most critical issue is that somehow I failed and got 2 cavities.  And for that I feel a sense of shame.  Which I now know is ridiculous.  But I have to explain to my OCD-self that it ridiculous to think this way.

I felt this way when I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes in 2003.
I felt this way when I was diagnosed with OCD and GAD and required antidepressants.
I felt this way when I found out G was breech and knew a c-section would be in the offing.

So I have to remind myself that the GD was due to pregnancy hormones out of my control.  And I didn't have it with my subsequent pregnancies, so maybe it was all those female hormones floating around.

And I have to remind myself that I lived 30 years with OCD/GAD and was able to function well enough to graduate from college with 2 majors and summa cum laude, hold a job for 5+ years while earning my master's degree, marry, be a well-respected teacher, buy a home, travel.

And, Lord knows, I did everything I could to make that boy turn but he wouldn't and had to be surgically delivered.

Thinking about OCD reminds me of what a challenge it is to be a little less critical of myself, to recognize that it is darn near impossible to live up to the expectations I hold for myself.  That life is in control of me and not the other way around.