Awful

So... I understand my anxiety but not OCD. I understand both but not in "my born this way world." I have done a lifetime of teaching myself I'm weird, goofy and different from the average accepted societal person. Why: because I've been teased and bullied all my life for not fitting the script. I have chose to be a survivor and not a victim because be a victim SUCKS! to me. Its a black hole that your cant alwaus climb out of, it leaves you dependant on someone happening by and someone that has a caring soul. In my world you're F'd if you wait for the latter version. So I mentally wired my brain to love me, accept those differences and pat yourself on the back for it. I learned to celebrate it and be happy with it. I nutired it and made it the beast that it is today. So if I truly have OCD, I literally, intentionally and purposely created it wishing me unknowing that it was not good. So, after all these years, the Corporate world says No. We do not have to allow this? I have never known it to harm or hurt anyone. So it's difficult to connect the problem? Anyhow, now I have learn, redefine and understand ME from a entirely new perspective. And that is my initial struggle, the other struggles, the other stuff, I have being dealing with and its nothing new to me. Buy telling self that it's a mis-fire is strange and hard for me to accept? It confuses me still. I have always seen OCD as a autistic behavior. I did not then and still do not perceive autism as a mis-fire or something wrong or unacceptable? Still this pwrplex me. When in school I studied mental health and deep dived. I enjoyed it, learning it. I guess I don't view mental health as psychotic or crazy. Maybe because I grew up in a home of an X military father who had flash backs a lot and we just played the parts until it wasn't fun anymore and my older siblings and mother got tired of dealing with it. I never felt afraid or threaten, just accept that is how he was. Every now and then he would start playing out a experience. I am a curious individual so I thought it was quite interesting to know what happened. Otherwise, he sit quiet all dad, like no one else was there and chain smoke one cigarette after the other. I remember my mom complaining that his cigarette then next his cartoon of cigarettes cost as must as the food they had to keep in the house. I thought it was an exaggeration until I good older and understood it from an adult point of view. I think when it first click, I was outside play tag. hide and seek or something. Me and a another girl run under the window he usually sits at to low smoke out of. We run through all pile of cigarette butts and she said, "dang, where did all these cigarette buds come from, it's like a gigantic ashtray. In that moment, I didn't know. But when I looked up I realized that was my dad's window. I think that was the first time I realized how much he was smoking and why my mom had said that years ago. Anueay, I do understanding the behavior of a persistent, uncontrolled behavior that does not cause a resolve but instead increases the non-productive obsession that you're reacting to which creates the necessity of a compulsion help you deal, cope, or adapt in a way you can tolerate it. This increases the stress responds, the anxieties and/or flight or flight chemicals that are being produced. We react mentally and order to feel "ok," we have developed something that make us feel safe, better, or accepting of whatever our minds are telling us that is wrong, cannot do, or adding shit that is not necessarily true. Hear, if I have intrusive thoughts most of the time they are true. I go into a response of anger, then protection. Then the replay keeps me stuck because i have been forced outside of my safw zone or my protection has being tampered with of something that makes me feel feel the andrinaline is neex becauseI about to go to battle by all means necessary. I think that is how it is happening for me. Anything else is not connecting? My broken trust bonds => morphed into F it just don't trist nobody. There is no benefit of doubt. Let them prove they can be trusted until they can not. But... ? I say what is wrong with that? It has always washed away the BS people that I don't want to be bothered by. That works for me???... Yes, of course, when I was young trust issues did interfere with things that it should not have. But I have learned to reconcile that with observation and analyzing my environment and the action of one's words versus their behavior. And now at my age today, IJDG2Fs if I can't trust you or not because I only deal with people as associates and it doesn't matter anymore. Now this pattern of thinking and believing may be all wrong but I have lived life my entire life in survival mode some say. And that adrenaline that is full in me, I have conclude, is my lifeline, my saving grace and why I have never been able to reduce the heighten response in me. I think, still learning... TBC But I'm open, I am here, and trying to rewire this "new" beast that is my bestfriend. When that Counselor helped me to understand that my intenssity of surviving has created this flight of fight heighten energy = anxiety. I had never viewed it to be the problem yet instead my personal instinctive ALARM. A protective system. This is throwing me off. Really off. Then there are some that keeps telling me anxiety is my fearing... what? No. I have literally not feared much of anything. A man once said to me, that I had a God complex. I said, No, Sir. I do not believe I am better or above anyone. I'm sorry that my confidence in my own self makes you feel uncomfortable. My cheerleader- motivation toward self has nothing to do with you persinally or any other person. Its what I do to keep pushing and NOYB. It's for me only. Please stop inserting yourself, I am not responsible for how you feel when I use my motivated confidence to get through shit. Please excuse yourself from my chapters. Anyway... Why do I say this. My protective energy... because I grew up rough, I've learned to protect self. I know I said I believe in a Higher Power, but when you are young, and about without parents. You tend to say to yourself, Well God ain't here, so what are you going to do? You can't wait for that pie to fall from the sky or you will die. Are you ready to die? And of course, I'd say to myself, "Not today." So, you then use that fight or flight as your strength to help save yourself, adapt and do shit yourself. No disrepect. Whatever it takes until that Higher Power say you're fine now. Relax. Vicious i was, I learned to hard way. And don't regret it. 🤷🏽‍♀️ I guess I'm here to learn how to be delicate and soft. He'll idk. Night, Nighy. Psss ... I had something else to say but it went in another direction. OCD ... ADHD ... 🤷🏽‍♀️

This is my first post. I know I need to work on sharing and asking for help, so I am sharing my first journaled day of after group exposures. Perhaps someone can give me a new perspective. Today I had 4 hours of intensive outpatient therapy that I am currently undergoing and it's 3 days a week. Also, 2-4 hours of after every group assignments called exposures to complete for ERP. Today I am supposed to drive to a homeless shelter and sit with my distress, letting it reside naturally. My first attempt at going to the homeless shelter, I was feeling very sudsy on the way there and had to stop once to go to the pet store to run an actual errand on my way to do the exposure. The thought had entered my mind that if I bought a fish I would just head home and not do the exposure so I could get the fish in the tank. So I acknowledged it as the anxiety and proceeded to head to the homeless shelter. I then realized I did not bring a drink and feel overwhelmingly compelled to go home. My physical symptoms were very strong at this time and I was only 1/4 of the way there. I did feel very nauseous but decided to get a drink on the way and continue. I feel as though my mind is fighting the exposures more than usual and the feeling of dread is stronger. I arrived at where I would turn in to park and immediately panicked when I saw the people standing around. I couldn't go back around and quickly left the area. Peak suds 90 specifically when I had seen the homeless people on the property. Low suds 50 in an hour and 10 mins. It was another hour or so before they came down to a tolerable 25/30. On my second attempt at 7pm, I arrived. On the way here, I acknowledged the presence of intrusive thoughts out load. A thought had entered my mind that I was having physical symptoms from the suds. My heart rate was up and it was hard for me to swallow because my throat felt like it was closing. My suds went up and down from 30 to 70 as an assortment of intrusive thoughts occurred. The last 5 .minutes of the drive was hard. As I was approaching a stop light, after seeing a large number on homeless outside in one particular area, (50-75 people) an image entered my mind of seeing myself homeless on that corner. My suds went up to 85/90 seeing myself in my mind sitting on the concrete under the bypassing with my knees in my chest and my face buried in shame. I turned up my music and moved onto my next thoughts while driving with suds still at a 70. I arrived at the homeless shelter 3 minuets later as was able to park. I had also been crying on the way there of dreading the exposure. I had also had a very high suds when I made a mistake by not turning on red and the person behind me, went around me. As he passed, he loudy announced that he was flustered by my mistake and called me out before going around me. I felt so embarrassed and completed the turn after he was up far enough that I wasn't near him. Unfortunately I ended up at the next red light next to him. I consciously pulled up further so he wasn't able to see my face. He slowly crept up next to me and stopped to hollar into my open window "I know you're tired and all" and I was frozen solid. I was paralyzed and was just staring at the light begging in my head for it to turn green so I could move for what felt like an hour. I was notice and confronted which is my worst fear when making a mistake. It confirmed in that moment that I was being judged. While at the homeless shelter, I noticed myself looking around the area and not concentrating on the building. It made me more sudsy when I looked at the building number on the front so I moved my car closer and parked directly in front of the plaque that read Home of Bethlehem Haven. I looked directly at the number on the building and reading the plaque and sat with my suds until my suds reduced by half. Peak suds 80 low suds 40 in 9 mins Suds peaked at 80 when the vision occurred in my mind that the next step may be walking into the homeless shelter and asking for information. I immediately refocused on the front of the building to reduce my suds oddly and I didn't know what they meant but it struck me as weird. I began looking away and back at the number until my suds were at a 30. I encouraged myself to stay for a while 20 mins with my suds fluctuating. I said out loud several times "I might live here someday" at first quietly and then decided if I am going to say it, say it in my regular voice and not whisper it. 10-20 suds going up and down with the vocals. Upon leaving the area, my suds had gone down to 20 on the way home. My suds varied and swelled, as I began ruminating about the experience. I put my music on and drove home. I want to break the habit of chewing on the inside of my cheek. When I get nervous, it's really sudzy, because my jaw tends to hurt after having a very Suzy day. I also started engaging in some deep thought about why I do certain things. And I realized that I have watched every episode of intervention to watch how bad these people get, and I'm doing so to try to scare myself straight. So I don't end up in that situation. Cause I feel as though. If it does get bad in my life that I will give up completely. I'm afraid of giving up not being homeless. And I did begin journaling my exposures, because I feel that a lot goes on during my exposures that I'm not sharing, because I have forgotten, and I am not great at remembering details unless I write them down at the time. That's why I write things down so much. But it occurred to me, and it always felt like there was something more to my core fear and though I am absolutely terrified of being homeless again and being helpless. I felt that there were parallel themes in my other triggers not relating to being homeless, such as accidentally hurting my puppy. So, there was just always something that made me uncertain. I had an Aha moment when it occurred to me, that perhaps my actual core fear is giving up for good. I also want to note that I theorize the reason a homeless shelter is scary is because it would mean that I gave up for good. It is that would be a much more serious and long term outcome. More final. When I had been homeless in the past and sleeping not under a real roof (shed/car/truck) it had been relatively short term (a few days to weeks). Where as a homeless shelter signifies the shame and embarrassment of giving up. It brings up the disappointment in how my life has been changed for the worse. For the way I have been damaged by the people who were supposed to be the one that would protect me with their lives. Not ruin mine. Earlier today I sat with the distress of not engaging in any kind of relationship with my father or step mother because it is in my best interest. Peak suds 90 and stayed at 60 for an hour throughout dinner.

TW: mice/rodents; contamination/virus; feeling unsafe in my home Hello, I'm new to the community, and new to OCD at 42 years old. My OCD is about contagion but specifically around mice and a virus some of them carry (hantavirus). For background, my husband and I have been in our house for a little over 10 years, and in all that time, there have been mice coming in and out through what we've discovered are chew-holes in the sill plate where the house frame sits on the foundation. Mice are gross, but we never saw evidence of them in the actual living spaces (only attics and cellar), and I was okay knowing they were there. I was a new mom when COVID hit, and the anxiety over that ratcheted up my general anxiety, which was never awful but definitely had me thinking more about contamination and contagion in a big way. Two years ago, I found mouse poop in the upstairs where the bedrooms are, got some traps, never caught anything, and then ended up actually SEEING a mouse come out from behind the toilet. It went back into the wall before we could catch it. After that, I got steel wool and expanding foam and plugged up EVERY hole in the house--mostly pipe holes for the radiators, toilets, sinks, etc. And I was still OK. Then, two months ago, I was in the cellar doing laundry and I saw a larger-than-usual dropping, bigger than mouse OR rat droppings, I thought, sitting on top of the dryer. I was like...hm, that's strange. I mentioned it to my Discord writing group, most of whom live in the Midwest (this will become relevant), and one of them said "oh, you have to be careful with mice, they carry Hantavirus. My husband had it a couple of years ago and it was really scary." I didn't know what hantavirus is, so I looked it up and found out you can contract it through breathing/contact with mouse poop, urine and saliva. The sickness that results from hantavirus has a 40% mortality rate, which scares the heck out of me b/c that's really high. Further research told me that the CDC started tracking Hantavirus in 1993. Between then and 2022, the latest of their available data, there have been fewer than 900 cases in the entire US; 96% of those cases were west of the Mississippi, and there has been in that time only ONE confirmed case in the state where I live. So, objectively, the risk of me or my family contracting this virus from our local mice is low. And I wouldn't think about it at all, except that there are still mice in the house. We've had a pest company setting and managing traps this whole time; recently they also came to plug the existing holes in the foundation, but they keep finding mice in their traps and they found a new chew hole near one of the cellar windows this week. We're working on a more aggressive solution (1/4" hardware cloth over the places where they're getting in), but it's slow going and in the meantime, there's still the risk of coming into contact with mouse stuff. But my brain has ballooned this into something so much bigger than that. I'm washing my hands so much that they're starting to crack and bleed and the skin feels tight. I'm afraid to go in the cellar to do laundry, because that's where the mice are. My husband has no problem going down in the cellar, which means I'm afraid to touch things around the house because what if he touched something with mouse virus on his hands? And even though I've plugged up all the holes where mice could get into the living spaces, I'm still obsessively afraid of every single surface--what if a mouse touched it? Ran across it? Peed on it? Even though I don't see mouse droppings in any of our living spaces, nor evidence of them chewing anything, I'm still losing my mind with fear. And although I've heard that folks with contamination OCD typically clean a LOT, I'm afraid to clean because what if I move the mess (we both have full time jobs and a 6 year old, so cleaning isn't always top priority) and I find mouse poop under there? This is an absolute nightmare. I hate not feeling safe in my own home. And I'm frustrated because I was FINE for so long...I don't know where this OCD suddenly came from, but it went 0 to 100 almost overnight. My loved ones are concerned and want to be supportive, but they're also not afraid and have never experienced anxiety nor OCD, so their "helpful" advice is usually along the lines of "can't you just decide to be afraid and do it anyway" or "have you tried not feeling this way"? I know this is a weirdly specific OCD but that's my story. I've been working with a therapist now for a few weeks but her breathing techniques, while somewhat helpful, aren't enough, so I need to have a talk with her about what comes next for treatment. Thanks to OCD, my world feels like it keeps getting smaller and smaller. I want to just find a tiny chair where I can sit and not move and not touch anything until all the bad stuff goes away...but I know that's not realistic, nor is is healthy. I'm just...exhausted, and frustrated, and scared, and really hopeful that I can find a way through this.