MAKING PEACE WITH OBSESSIVE TENDENCIES

Making Peace With Obsessive Tendencies

Coming up on 2020, I bought myself a new planner for work - something I’ve always used to help me stay on task - and the first thing I did when I got to work on Monday was add my weekly meetings for the whole next year.

I flipped to every weekly page in the 14-month planner, writing “team meeting, 10:00” and several other repeating events (like writing my blog posts!) in every single one. If I’m doing the math right, that means I wrote these and other phrases 56 times before I looked for my monthly meetings, planned trips, and everything else I write in my planner for the year.

Many of my friends who keep planners do this on a monthly or even weekly basis, not bothering to get everything done at once. But I always tell them I do this so that I don’t have to worry about forgetting a weekly meeting I’ve had for over a year or neglect this blog that I haven’t missed a week for since I started it.

That probably seems like a flimsy excuse for obsessive behavior, and it is. But for some reason, repetitive behavior like this can help me feel better when I’m down. December has been a hard month for me between a loss in the family, a difficult new project at work, and a lot of changes to my routine. And I’ve noticed that, all month, I’ve been doing a lot of repetitive things.

These actions aren’t associated with thoughts like “if I don’t fill out every page in this planner, something bad will happen.” It’s more of a way to keep myself calm. If I feel stress building up, this helps it flow away. Sometimes, there isn’t even a conscious thought to do it - I’ll notice it’s late when I’m done with a task like this and realize I’ve been doing it for hours when I’ve planned to make it a quick errand.

I think this works as an in-the-moment coping mechanism because I know what comes next. I know what I need to do, and that the next page will also have the same meeting at the same time on the same day. I can zone out and let my mind be calm, knowing that I’m doing something useful that will help me over the next year while also giving me time to decompress.

This is the same reason why I can identify any song from the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy within the first few seconds (a feat I enjoyed displaying to some friends last week), why I’ve read my favorite books until I know what’s on every page, why I listen to the songs that inspire me until I can choreograph music videos for my stories in my head. It’s why I have patience for things like hunting shiny pokemon, which involves pressing the same button over and over for days or weeks or even months until I reach my goal.

It may be hard to accept sometimes, but my brain is hard-wired to want to do things over and over. Sure, there’s a special thrill when I read a new story that becomes a favorite or listen to a wonderful new song, but the positive feeling is almost as potent when it’s the tenth time or the hundredth. Some of my friends can find it hard to understand why I’m content to do the same things over and over, but I find it equally hard to understand the boredom of repetition.

I hadn’t thought about this much before, but as I filled in my planner this week, I realized that these benign sorts of obsessive patterns can actually be good for me. I’m so used to trying to defeat my OCD that I hadn’t stopped to think it’s sometimes good to work with it, especially at a time when I’m fighting on other fronts.

I’m not at the point where I’m entirely comfortable with what I call my “obsessive tendencies,” and sometimes my love of repetition scares me. But in one of the front pages in the planner, in the space for new year’s resolutions, I’ve put in that I’d like to work more with my brain rather than instantly thinking everything related to OCD is the enemy.

For now, I’m at the point where these thoughts appear and I challenge them, but I hope to reach the point where I don’t automatically think it’s bad that I knew “Return of the King” from four bars in or have read a new favorite book too many times to count or organized my planner a whole year ahead. Sure, it’s something I’ll want to stay vigilant about, but as long as it isn’t disrupting the rest of my life, I want to make peace with these tendencies in my very well-planned 2020 and beyond!

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.

THAT'S NOT ME

That’s Not Me

Trigger Warning: Depression, suicidal thoughts

Recently, I received a message from someone who I haven’t heard from in a year. We used to spend time together on a roleplay writing website that was, for years, one of my primary coping mechanisms with my OCD and all sorts of other negative thoughts and things in my life.

I joined the website on a recommendation from my best friend, who said that writing on forums like this would be a great way to make friends while also honing my craft. We joined together, and I soon fell in love with the site’s system and the character whose story I started writing. It was an outlet for me to find like-minded friends and fellow writers and a way to write new projects I truly loved.

However, all of this was about to come crashing down around me, as I signed up for this site at the beginning of junior year of college - right when I began experiencing PTSD-related flashbacks from my surgery two years prior, had my first panic attacks, and was plagued with constant suicidal thoughts not out of a wish to die, but out of trying to make that horrible pain disappear.

Each day felt like a year, and soon, my only comfort was the website. I logged in a few times a day at first, but later that turned into ten times a day, then dozens, if not more. It was the only thing that could put a smile on my face and the only way I could feel like myself. All of my interest in writing - my lifelong passion - had disappeared except for this site. It was the only place where I felt like me.

I needed that feeling as much as possible, and so I kept checking the site for updates. The way it worked, every time I wrote something, I would need for one of the site’s volunteer moderators (often called mods) to reply back to me. Like a DM in Dungeons & Dragons, they were in charge of my character’s journey, and I couldn’t write any more until they wrote for me. There was usually a backlog of several days to well over a week as the site was booming in popularity.

But I needed it far more than that. It was like a drug for me, the way I fixated on achieving my goals on the site. At first, people were understanding, but it didn’t take long for them to get frustrated. With my mind in a frenzy and the thoughts about this site my only positive obsessions, it was impossible for me to understand I was being pushy and obnoxious about getting my one character’s story updated so I could write more.

As the panic attacks and depression worsened thanks to my Xanax prescription backfiring, I couldn’t deal with only having one character on the website anymore, but that was the limit for new members. I realized I had to do something, and after checking around for other sites but not finding any I liked, I decided to create a second character under a false name.

In hindsight, I did this deception very badly. My writing style was the same for both characters; I talked to myself in the site’s chatbox and sometimes forgot to change names; I wrote posts for my characters at the same time. But somehow, at first, it worked.

When things got worse in real life again, I did it again, and again. I practiced with different writing styles and got to the point where I had multiple things to write every day. It worked for a while, but eventually, I got caught. It’s been enough years that I don’t remember exactly how I got caught or how things went, but I was scolded sternly by the mod team, who told me to go down to just the one character I’d started with.

At that point, I became fixated on an offhand remark the mod working with me said once. He implied a reward that I might be able to earn if I wrote well enough, and soon, it became all I could think about, all I could talk about to my best friend, all I could sing about and take pictures of and fixate on nearly all day every day.

My nagging soon switched over to this, and after months of escalation, I found myself in a situation where the site’s main administrator (admin) and leader lashed out at me in extreme anger. She said horrible things as I sobbed at my computer, threatening me both online and in real life, and making me feel like I was such a horrible person I didn’t deserve to live.

Thankfully, I was on the upswing from my depression at that point, and my psychiatrist had fixed my medications to the point where I was no longer suicidal. I left the site in deep sadness and although I moved on, I was not quite ready to be done.

Almost a year after I left, the site was experiencing a decrease in active members, and they announced a challenge that if anyone wrote 50,000 words related to the site in a month, that person could have the one goal I’d needed so badly and never achieved before the admin’s harsh words drove me from the site.

“I have a crazy idea, but it just might work,” I told my best friend that night at dinner, and later, we worked together to write a character with such a different writing style than my own (and, well, worse) that it was easily distinguishable from my writing a year ago. I came up with a fake name and backstory for myself, as well, and I was thrilled to get accepted on the site with no indication that anything was wrong.

My plan started as a form of revenge that wouldn’t hurt anyone, as well as a way to achieve closure from my abrupt departure, but I soon came to love the site again. I was incredibly happy to write the 50,000 words (essentially my tenth NaNoWriMo) and felt an immense satisfaction when I earned the reward I never thought I’d get.

At that point, I’d planned to leave, but I wanted to stay. I was having a lot of fun writing this new character, and I was even beginning to allow myself to write to other people in the chatbox after some serious practice.

I practiced neurotypicality, first with rules - how much I could write in a certain amount of time, how to properly respond to other members and mods when they spoke to me - but soon, I felt comfortable enough to try to be myself, even if just a little bit.

I had a pseudonym, a fake life, but other than that, I was soon acting like myself - and people liked me.

People liked how I was so active on the site, always willing to pitch in. People liked how I was passionate about my characters as well as the site events, and I wasn’t taking things too far. I started to make friends with plenty of new people, even some mods like the friend who reached out to me recently.

But before long, the admin who said those things to me a year ago killed my character thanks to a decision I made in-character. I knew it wasn’t personal, but it still hurt hard at a time when I was struggling in grad school.

Instead of lashing out, I decided to stick with it. I created a new character - my sloppily-written deceased character’s brother, Alexander - and began a journey to earn my special reward back.

This time, although I faced the same nearly-impossible challenge for the reward, I appeared calm. I may have struggled to keep myself from obsessing, but I did it. It took me a full year in real life to earn the reward once and for all, and from there, my activity and euphoria on the site soared.

When a position opened up on the mod team, I applied and was quickly accepted. I made it my mission to make up for the things I had said and done, even if no one knew it had been me saying and doing those things, by writing for people’s characters as well and as often as possible. People started requesting me as a mod, and before long, I became head mod, third-in-command on the site and in daily contact with the admin who had treated me so cruelly.

I was confident until I started exploring the archives. As head mod, I was able to see the hidden records of the site that even regular mods couldn’t see. I found an area for “problem members” and didn’t take long to find the longest thread: me.

I knew what had happened, but I couldn’t resist looking through the records. There were old messages from the mods at the time talking to each other about how to deal with me, which was upsetting enough to see, but then I found records of my own messages.

I recognized my writing, but I also recognized things I couldn’t see at the time: desperation, anger, a raw need for the one thing that was making my days bearable. I saw the extent of my pestering and rudeness. I saw how my words and actions were stressing out the mods, who, at the end of the day, were volunteers who also went to school and had jobs in the real world.

Immense guilt overcame me as I continued to read. I could tell when things got worse from how my tone got resentful, sharper, meaner. “That’s not me,” I kept telling the computer screen as I scrolled more and more, watched things escalate until the day the admin went off on me and I left.

I had always seen things as being all her fault for being so cruel to me in our final interaction, but reading through the logs let me see that both of us were at fault. I might not have been myself mentally, but I was still an adult who should have known how to be responsible for how I acted, even if my thoughts had landed me in hell.

The admin wrote, in the end of the thread, that she’d gone too far, but neither she nor anyone else expressed remorse. I, however, felt immense regret from seeing what I’d done, and redoubled my efforts to be a better moderator. I tried to practice patience and urged it from other mods, especially the admin whose temper sometimes got ahead of her. I tried to get between her and people who were in a bad mental health state, even if it hurt me to insert myself into what was going on, because I didn’t want someone else to suffer on the site in addition to whatever they were suffering through in real life.

There were many problems with the site aside from this, and although I loved getting my character stronger, I realized there wasn’t much time left. Soon after Alexander became the strongest on the site, the site’s waning popularity meant that it went down for a while, and many of the existing mods (including myself) became excluded from the admin’s preparations for a relaunch. At that point, I decided to leave. I’d made amends as best as I could, and it was time for me to move on with my life as I was moving to Chicago in the near future.

I still miss writing my characters to this day, and hearing from my old friend from the site made me unbelievably happy. Tentatively, I brought up something about Alexander, and she responded in kind; it felt great to reminisce about this time in my life without going into the details of why it had all gone wrong.

Nowadays, when I look at the 250,000 words I wrote of Alexander, my last and favorite character on the site, and think of the tens of thousands more I wrote across many other characters, I am able to feel proud of how far I’ve come. I took something horrible and created something beautiful, even if it took me years to do so - and now, I have someone to share this passion with once again.

So thank you, friend, for reaching out - and for seeing that I’m more than the obsessions and depression and pain. That wasn’t me - but there is a person in here worth getting to know, and I’m incredibly glad to have the chance to re-meet her as my true self.

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.

ON THIN ICE

On Thin Ice

Winter used to be my favorite season.

Growing up in the South, it was the only time of year when I wasn’t overheated all the time and trying to get back indoors whenever I had to leave. I always imagined a “real” winter as filled with white, fluffy snow that I could use to build snowmen and then come inside and drink hot chocolate. I kept this image in my mind when I moved to upstate New York for college, and on the first day it snowed, I took a video where I enthusiastically squealed into the camera about how excited I was.

But even in that first video, a clue of my future problem appears: as I turn the camera, the video shows a patch of ice on the sidewalk. “That actually looks kinda dangerous,” I giggle. A few hours later, I tried to go to the library to study, and even with holding the banister, I fell and badly bruised my tailbone.

My college never put salt on icy patches, and after my first fall, and after the New York weather covered the entire campus in thick ice, I found myself facing extreme anxiety to get anywhere when the ground was slippery.

After a while, I developed a system where my friends who weren’t afraid would hold my hand, and although I felt like a little kid, it was often the only way I could go downhill on a campus mostly composed of hills. Whenever I was alone, even when there was a banister, my pace would creep so slowly that I would often take five or six times longer than usual to get anywhere simply because of shuffling my feet so slowly or having to psych myself up just to take a step at all. If that single step seemed like too much, I would sit down on the ice, no matter how cold it was - I couldn’t get hurt by falling if I was already on the ground, after all - and scoot my way down the flight of stairs or steep hill.

Even in winter boots with thick treads, anxiety plagued my every step in winter. It never got any better, and I spent four years learning how to walk on the grass so if I fell it would be soft, to plan my walks around my friends’ schedules, to stay inside whenever I could. I hated that anxiety and fear were keeping me from the winters I’d always imagined.

I went through college without building a single snowman, and still haven’t to this day. Wherever I’ve moved, I somehow find myself in a place where the residential area isn’t properly salted, and that curtails my activity as much as the overbearing heat of Southern summers used to in my childhood.

This even applies to Chicago - although the areas I go to in the Loop are usually salted, my neighborhood depends on individual stores and apartment buildings to clean in front of them, and many remain icy. Last month, on my way back from my book club, I took a bus that dropped me off five blocks from home. A walk that usually takes me ten minutes took me over an hour of clinging to fence posts, shuffling through the slush in the streets, and frantically talking to my mom on the phone for support.

I envied the people all around me who were walking quickly, who could slide and keep moving, who got to their warm homes long before me. I wished that I could just walk, just get over this fear keeping me inside during what should be the happiest time of the year. Instead of praying for snow like I used to when I was little, I now pray that the weather stays cold but clear all winter, if only that I don’t have to deal with this anxiety as much.

I’ve started trying to do exposure therapy about my fear of falling on ice. I use motives like rare pokemon in Pokemon Go to get me out of the house on icy days, and take short and mostly manageable trips. I have what most people would consider proper gear, and I still keep those old waterproof pants around in case it gets truly terrible.

I hope that one day, I’ll be able to get to the point where I don’t take an hour to walk five blocks, where I’m out in the cold until I can’t feel my fingers and toes. I hope I can learn how to enjoy an actual winter rather than the idea I imagined in my childhood, and winter won’t be a thing OCD takes away from me any more than it already has.

As winter is quickly approaching, I can’t deny that I’m looking forward to my family’s annual trip to Florida to escape the potential ice for a week, but I also want to learn to love Chicago winters. But just as I learned to love dogs and try new foods, I will challenge myself this winter to be brave on ice and win another victory in the war against my OCD.

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.

THERAPIST FRIENDS

Therapist Friends

Ever since I first saw my best friend taking mental health medication at the dinner table, I’ve enjoyed talking about mental health with friends. Although I have a reliable psychiatrist and supportive family, talking to friends in similar stages of life can be really helpful in figuring out how to deal with everyday problems as well as bigger things that come up.

Recently, I heard the term “therapist friends” applied to the kind of friendship where people feel comfortable telling each other about mental health issues and offering solutions for each other’s problems. Looking through my messages with the people I talk to the most, I can easily see that many of my friendships fall into this category.

Now that I feel comfortable sharing my diagnosis with my closest friends, I have found the experience cathartic, rewarding, and a key ingredient in friendship. Friendships now feel incomplete without this level of trust that comes from sharing something so intimate and personal, and in my experience, the therapist friend benefits as well, learning techniques to fight their own issues.

Not every friendship is suitable for this, whether due to a lack of comfort or a lack of desire to help with things like this. I even had a friend who interrupted me as I was telling her how I was struggling with flashbacks after my surgery to tell me, “I don’t care.” I’m still in touch with her, but don’t tell her more than the most shallow “I had a good day at work” kind of news in my life.

I will admit that it’s hard to be a therapist friend, especially for multiple people at once. Last month, I found myself supporting someone who lost her home and pets in a fire; someone going through emergency surgery only to suffer from flashbacks like the ones I used to have; someone living in an abusive situation and faced with physical and mental health challenges; and someone whose work schedule was overwhelming them to the point that they couldn’t spend time with friends or family.

It can be hard to find a balance between caring for other people and caring for my own mental health, especially when life deals a hard hand to several of us at once. But for me, finding and being a therapist friend is an incredibly rewarding experience that helps me get to know my friends better and widens my circle of support for whenever something bad happens on my end. It’s incredibly comforting to write a message to a few friends when things are going downhill and coming back to my phone a few minutes later to see messages of love and support.

My friends and I know each other’s coping mechanisms and what works best. I know who to distract with cute animal pictures or memes and who to ask for every detail about negative thoughts; who to invite for dinner or ice cream and who to give alone time to process what’s going on. Getting the right kind of support can be immensely helpful in dealing with a problem, from the smallest thing to the biggest. And with a friend who knows you well, you don’t have to explain how to help or what you need, which can take some frustration out of an already-difficult situation.

As a kid, I fell for the stigma and firmly believed that sharing my diagnosis or any of its effects on my life would mean I’d never have a friend again. As an adult, I now understand that it means that some friendships won’t work out, but the ones that do are stronger for it. I’ve never had a large quantity of friends, but people who fall into this category in both giving and receiving help are my closest friends. Since I trust them with who I am entirely and they accept me for who I am, and vice versa, the bonds formed by a friendship like this are unparallelled.

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.

DISAPPOINTMENT WITH A SIDE OF PICKLES

Disappointment With A Side Of Pickles

Sub shops always get my order wrong.

I cringe every time someone suggests eating at a sub shop. It tends to be on road trips or when people are in a hurry, when there aren’t other options to consider or time for negotiation. But it’s just as frustrating every single time.

Just going in one makes me start to feel anxious, because there’s no way to actually make it work. The “veggie” sub option is usually full of things I can’t or won’t eat, and trying to make modifications makes it even more complicated. And then, even with spending what feels like forever at the counter or customizing an order on the app, I’ve never just walked into a sub shop and gotten my order made correctly.

There’s always meat or some type of cheese I’m unfamiliar with; sometimes, I’ve had mushrooms, which disgust me deeply and I can still usually taste even after removing them. I’ve wondered, sometimes, if I’m a supertaster, because I seem to be able to taste things very strongly even when they’re supposed to be mild or distinguish flavors of things others can’t tell apart. It just makes something like this more difficult.

I try to watch what’s going on behind the counter, but on a road trip, I feel like I can’t inconvenience the other people I’m with. It’s easier to order on the phone or through an app, and if everyone but me gets theirs right, it’s hard to make a fuss. After all, it is technically my fault. It’s my phobia, my obsessions, my rigidity that prevents me from ordering without modifications.

I know I should be used to this by now, but it somehow still feels disappointing every time I go to a sub shop. When I see the words “only” next to certain things and then other things show up on the sandwich, I can’t help but feel like some sort of weirdo who can’t just order the normal people sandwich and be done. I don’t know 

I’ve had a lot of similar experiences at other types of restaurants, but it usually plays out in different ways. The looks and the embarrassment stay the same, but I’ve had several times where it’s gone even further.

At a lunch with my coworkers at my old job, where we were sitting at a table with over a dozen people, I ordered pasta at a restaurant that wasn’t Italian, but still threw in a few dishes. It was technically on the menu, but the waitress turned me into the butt of a joke when she announced to the table that I was ordering like a “picky little kid.” Everyone turned to look at me, and the time between that and the next order felt like a decade. I couldn’t wait to flee to the bathroom and stay there until the conversation would pass me by. I slunk back to the table later, ashamed.

And at a convention, one of my favorite places to be, I went with my best friend and their family to an Italian restaurant. They went out of their way to go there for me, but I found meat in my spaghetti marinara. Upset, I tried to switch dishes with my friend who got the cheese ravioli, only to find meat in there as well. At this point, I’d tried enough of the food to worry about the meat potentially making me throw up, and I was obsessing worse than I had in quite a long time as the waitress couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t just eat the dishes as-is.

My allergy provides a convenient excuse for many moments like this, but it’s not foolproof. I can’t pretend to be allergic to something I’m not in a particularly convincing manner, nor do I appreciate the way some people take allergies less seriously because they think everyone’s faking.

I definitely understand the rationale, though – for people who respect allergies, it’s a quick way out of a situation that’s making me anxious. And it helps in a culture where, as one of my favorite Tumblr posts says, if people find out someone can eat something but doesn’t like it, “people will hound them, mock them, coax them, harass them, try to force them to eat it, or even trick them into eating it, and they will never hear the end of it.” (from a-spoon-is-born)

So, when I go to a sub shop, or any other place where I feel the need to modify what’s on the menu even slightly, all of that is going through my head. Not just the negative experiences I’ve had, but possible comebacks if I get questioned, ways to interrupt food being made incorrectly, and what mistakes I’m willing to put up with on that particular menu.

I understand that making food to order is complicated and not necessarily possible – for instance, if sandwiches are premade, or if something’s already mixed in the sauce. But for me, these experiences are just another reminder that I’m different. And here’s the thing – I don’t need a reminder of that. On days when I’m feeling frustrated or ashamed of something already, it just compounds what I already know – and on days when I’m doing really well, it feels like a setback because no matter how hard I try, there are some textures, smells, and types of food that I’m not ready or willing to try.

I do my best to present as neurotypical or “normal” as possible, and times like these throw a big wrench in my plans, my self-confidence, and my ability to eat a decent meal. It’s something I’m still learning to live with and something I may never fully get used to. And it’s something I bring to your attention for a reason: even if you’re not in the food service industry, you can help people like me in this situation in several ways:

·      Try to be tolerant if someone’s taking a long time to analyze the menu or asks for help determining what things are. As someone trying to introduce new foods in my diet, I sometimes don’t know what ingredients are or what they taste like, and people with more varied palates can offer explanations.

·      If someone seems to be ashamed of what they’re ordering, draw attention away from them. It’s embarrassing enough to do a special order without having a whole table of people watching and commenting.

·      Stick up for your friend or loved one if anyone is making inappropriate comments, and help them speak up for themselves if they’re having trouble getting what they need.

·      Even if what someone is ordering seems funny to you, it may be deeply embarrassing to the person ordering it. They might seem okay with you making jokes, but it might hurt more than you’ll ever know.

·      If a particular place or type of cuisine causes a lot of stress for someone, try to visit those places less when you’re with them – that way, you won’t completely lose out on a place you enjoy, but your friend also won’t have to feel stressed.

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.