Tag: ocd | The World According to MEH

Taking Out the (Emotional) Trash

Posted on December 29, 2015 by admin • 0 Comments

I tackled the concrete things in my life I want to do in the next year in my last post, and now I want to focus on the mental health issues that I want to work on in the upcoming year. This is more difficult because I can’t simply say, “I will set better boundaries three times a day–” Hey, wait. I actually probably could do that. It’s just a matter of discerning what boundaries I want to set and then do it. Yeah, that’ll be easy. A better example is, “Just stop thinking negative thoughts about yourself all the time.” OK, yeah, I’ll get right on that. I’ll just eradicate the thoughts that have been in my brain for nearly forty years like that. I”m snapping my fingers in case you’re wondering. That’s where the ‘write down concrete steps’ comes in, but so much of the advice for combating negative thoughts is horseshit. “Just replace the negative thoughts with positive ones.” The problem with that is I feel as if I’m lying when I say positive affirmations about myself. I can’t tell myself I’m beautiful because that is just patently false*. I can’t tell myself that I’m worthy of love because I don’t know what that even means. The few positive things I can say about myself–I have nice hair and eyes, that I’m smart and creative–I can’t even take any credit for them. I was born with them, and while you could argue that it’s up to me to use my creativity and my intelligence to my best ability, I was still born with them.

The other problem is that some of my best attributes are also my worst problems. I’m empathetic and have a knack for getting people to open up to me, which is ostensibly a good thing. I can hear you saying, “What’s the downside to that?” The downside is that sometimes, it’s more about appearances than actually caring about the other person. I’ve explained before that I need to be seen as a caring individual, which is partly why I exert myself in such a fashion, but there’s also a part of my brain that says, “This might be the only positive interaction this person has all day. Don’t fuck it up!” Again, it’s part of my training from childhood that I feel responsible for everyone else’s feelings. Logically, it’s self-aggrandizing to think that if I don’t respond to someone’s tweet or I don’t follow up on a person telling me s/he’s had a bad day, I’m sending that person into an irrevocable death spiral. Emotionally, it’s how I feel. I’ve been trying to work on it, but it’s not easy. Especially since showing concern and asking questions is like breathing air to me.

The thing is, I feel like a hypocrite when I do this and I’m not feeling it. It’s gotten me in trouble when people think we’re closer that we actually are. For all my caring and empathy, I have a coldness at the core of me. I have very few close friends in real life, and I like it that way. I prefer spending most of my time alone with my two cats. They’re enough companionship and sometimes, they can be too much when they’re being especially bratty. Despite my array of issues, I’m comfortable in my head,** and I can entertain myself endlessly. I don’t want to go out every night, and even when I have something planned that I know I will enjoy, I have to talk myself into actually leaving the house.

My Destination Unknown

Posted on July 9, 2010 by admin • 8 Comments

As longtime readers of this blog know, I am a bit of a control freak. OK, OK, I am a HUGE control freak. In the past, I have made my world small enough so I felt it was manageable (look, honey, I shrunk my life!). The illusion of control was just that, an illusion, but it gave me some (cold, my favorite kind) comfort.

Well, let’s just take that illusion and blow it the fuck up, shall we? Remember the entry I wrote about how I couldn’t talk to my mother about my father? When my therapist asked me which part I couldn’t say, I retorted, “Fucking any of it!” No way I could talk to my mother about how my father ruined my childhood. Uh uh, no how, no way, never in a million years.

Well, I did it.

Let me recount to you how it went down.

Tuesday, my mom and I had a few errands to run, then we were going to go to dinner at Taiko, a local sushi bar. My mom had gone there the Friday before with a friend of hers (moved to a new location), and she said it was as good as ever. So, we reach the location, and the place is deserted. There isn’t a car in the parking lot. The sign says they are closed for the fifth and sixth of July. Oops. For me, it was no big deal. Yeah, I was disappointed, but we could go another time. For my mother, it was A Big Deal She started griping about how they hadn’t told her they would be closed and why would they do that? She kept up with it as we drove until I finally said, “Mom, it’s not a big deal. Let it go.”

I have to tell you it’s really frustrating to watch her do what I do because it reminds me of how out-of-proportion such a reaction is. But, it also helped me see that I come by my control issues honestly. At any rate, we ended up going to Acapulco, which is a decent Mexican chain.

Helpful Housecleaning Hints

Posted on May 31, 2010 by admin • 7 Comments

If you are one of those people who like to clean, then this is not the entry for you. You can just grab your Swiffer and go dust something. This entry is for those of us who LOATHE cleaning with every fiber of our being. Personally, I would rather have my eyeballs eaten by maggots as I’m awake than clean the house. Be that as it may, there are times when cleaning is unavoidable. Say, for example, when one’s mother is coming for a looooooong stay. Then, one must suck it up and clean. Fortunately, I did a semi-thorough cleaning before I visited Kel last month, so the house wasn’t as horrendous as it could have been. Unfortunately, due to my complex feelings for my mother at this moment, I kept putting off the actual cleaning. It was as if I could forestall her visit by not cleaning. Childish, I know, but I never claimed to be mature. So, I put it off and put it off and put it off until I absolutely could not procrastinate any longer. I have a very unique way of cleaning, and I thought I would share some tips with you in case you’re ever caught in the same situation. You’re welcome.

First of all, this weekend has been hot here. Eighties/nineties, and for me, that’s hot. I usually keep the AC at eighty degrees, but I turn it down to seventy-eight when I clean. Still, even with that adjustment, I get damn hot. As I am a tad OCD, once I start cleaning, I put my back into it. And, I don’t stop. I get heated during any kind of activity, so I sweat like a pig when I clean. To that end, I prefer to clean in the nude. Now, however, I wear a pedometer, and I feel damn guilty if I am not counting my steps. I tried to clip the pedometer to my nipple and to my glasses, but neither worked. So, I kept on the boxers (South Park, yo!) and ditched the top. Then, I pulled my hair into a high bun because I hate that sticky feeling on the back of the neck from perspiring under my long mane of hair.

Then, to get myself in the mood to clean, I put on some music. It has to be blood-pumping music. This is one of the best songs to get me revved up to clean. It’s called Here Comes My Baby, this version is done by The Mavericks, and it was written and originally performed by Cat Stevens (h/t Steeplejack from BJ). I love the whole feel of the song, plus the outrageous go-go dancers. After I listened to this song a time or ten, I was ready to clean. Now, because of my aforementioned affinity for cleaning in as minimal clothing as possible, I usually wait until the sun goes down before I clean. I live on a golf course, and I don’t want to distract them from stroking their balls, if you get my drift. Besides, it’s cooler at night. Therefore, it’s a better time to clean. Here are my helpful hints to make housecleaning as painless as possible.

Or Am I Just Dreaming?

Posted on May 5, 2010 by admin • 2 Comments

I dream. I dream a lot. I dream too much. You say there is no such thing? Au contraire, mon frere. There is. I do it. I do not like it. I would rather not dream at all.

Choolie’s husband, whom I will call Kojak, is a lucid dreamer. He has been for many years. Choolie brought it up to me and suggested that I read a book about it and talk to Kojak about it. I had trepidations about it for many reasons–some I could name, and some more nebulous.

The easy reason for my fear: I have OCD. Duh, I can hear you think. You’re not telling us anything new, Hong! Hear me out. Because I’m OCD, I throw myself into any passion with a fervor approaching zeal. When I used to scry, I did it for hours at a time. When I was in the thick of my ED issues, all I could think about was food, dieting, exercising, and how many inches/pounds I was losing. If I were to try to lucid dream, I was afraid I would never stop.

Another easy reason: I have been enamored of otherwords for some time. One time during bodywork, voices called for me to join them. I started walking towards them, and I was crushed when my bodyworker called me back to earth. That was many years ago. I have resigned myself to living on this earth for now, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. I am afraid that if I start lucid dreaming, I’ll never want to be awake again. Kojak told me that you can do anything you want in lucid dreaming. You can manipulate anything and everything. It’s only a dream, right? I told him he must not have been raised Christian because I instinctively flinched at the idea of manipulating everything, even in my dreams, even though I haven’t been Christian for a very long time.

Damn It, I Already Used that Title

Posted on February 1, 2010 by admin • 8 Comments

I was going to call this entry Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes, but I already used that title while I was in Taiwan. Still, it really is what I wanted to call this entry, so read on with that in mind.

I hate changes. I know that many people don’t like them, but I hate them. Part of it is my OCD issues, but most of it is that in the past, changes were rarely good things. Or, to be completely honest, most of the changes I experienced, I viewed as negative in retrospect. Whether they were actually negative at the time, the jury is still out on that.

Let me backtrack for a minute. When I first fell into a deep depression, I sharply whittled away my world so that it could fit in my pocket. I didn’t feel as if I had any control, so the only way to deal with that was to cut out all the extraneous shit that I couldn’t handle. The problem with that, of course, was that every day, there seemed to be more that I could not handle, so I would continue to cut cut cut (sometimes literally) away. Depending on how stable I was, that world included a few very close friends whom I saw more not than often, performing, a job, and, for a whole year, school in another state. It included a four-year, long-distance relationship, and it included a lot of self-destructive habits.

Why the small world? In a word: Fear. Anything out of my routine terrified and overwhelmed me. To me, the world was a cruel, cruel place which showed no mercy. I didn’t believe in God, but if I did, it would be the mean, punishing, horribly petty God of the Old Testament who thrived on making people miserable. OK, I did believe in God (at least in theory) at that time, and He was exactly like the mean old bastard who never has a kind word to say or a deed to do for anyone. A bitter old man who wants everyone else to hurt as much as he does. That was my view of God, and if He had created the world in His image, then fuck the world, I wanted to get off.

Perfection, OCD, and Addictions

Posted on August 14, 2009 by admin • 9 Comments

Childhood Girls SMR made a point in the comment section of yesterday’s entry. First, she said that every day was a good day because Alan Rickman was alive. That was very kind of her because Alan Rickman is not attractive to her. She said it simply because she knows that I am totally gaga over him. That’s what a good friend does for you! The real point I want to focus on, though, is perfectionism. She said she wasn’t aiming for it. At my therapy session yesterday morning, I related a story to my therapist.

My middle nephew is considered the difficult child of the family. He has a knack for knowing what buttons to push to make you flat-out angry in two seconds flat. One day, he was focused on hitting me as much as possible. I felt helpless and angry and guilty because I just wanted him to go away. I left that day feeling very bad about myself.

The next time I saw my nephew, he wanted me to read him an I Spy book (the Halloween one). I said sure, so he sat next to me, and off we went. Now, when I used to read the I Spy books with his older sister, we would meticulously pore over each page until we found every hidden item we were supposed to find. With my nephew, however, I wanted to make things as easy and fun as possible. See, like me, he has a low frustration threshold. He is a sensitive as well as a perfectionist. I didn’t want to experience another full-bodied meltdown, so I made a snap decision. Instead of poring over each page, painstakingly searching out each item, getting more and more frustrated as time ticked on, we would do our best for a few minutes. Then, if we couldn’t find the item, say the fourth frog, I would turn to my nephew and say, “I’m done with this. You?” He would nod, and we would turn the page. Or, after a minute or two, he would say, “Pass,” and we would turn the page. Once in a while, I would say, “I’m bored.” He would say, “Me, too,” and we would turn the page.

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