THINKING IN GRAY

Thinking in Gray

It’s three months since I came home, and every day, my mom has bemoaned the gray hair that has infested her head. We’ve talked about how much she misses hair dye over our walks several times a week, and sitting on the couch last night, as she said she had finally scheduled an appointment to get her hair colored, she asked me a question:

“Is there any gray in your head?”

I misunderstood at first. I’m in my 20s and have never seen a single gray hair on my head. But she meant something else entirely, and clarified: Can someone like me think in shades of gray instead of seeing the world in black and white?

All-or-nothing ANTs have been my most common negative thoughts since I first started tracking them, and as my mom noticed, they make their way into every area of my life. I can be thrilled to meet a new friend, thinking the social problems that have plagued me are finally over, only to doubt I can ever make a real friend when people cancel plans. Although I’ve lost over ten pounds since coming home, I’m still nearly as unsatisfied with my weight at the beginning of the quarantine, even though I’m very close to my goal. And I went from yearning for DragonCon to happen against all odds to anxious that it wasn’t being canceled fast enough.

Usually, these thoughts don’t affect much in my life. They’re there a lot of the time, but they don’t often influence my behavior. In terms of the quarantine, though, it’s a lot harder to not behave based on these thoughts.

When I think about returning to Chicago, I’m excited and scared, anxious and anticipatory. Since it’s unlikely that my workplace will be one of the first few places opened during Stage 4 or beyond, I will probably be coming back before the office is open, meaning I’ll have to make the choice myself. I’ll have to balance several factors like which places are open and whether I’d be able to see my friends and the guy I’m sort-of dating so I won’t be lonely when I go back and will be able to try to resume my old life.

I’ve decided, for now, to hold off on any thoughts of moving back until at least the second week of July. After my dog celebrates his 14th birthday, I will have to make a decision that involves seeing shades of gray. How can I balance my need for social contact with my fear of getting sick? How will I tell when is right to go back if I’ll be lonely if I do it too soon and lose the everyday contact I have with my family, or too late and jeopardize my friendships with people who I haven’t seen in months?

The fact that my dog’s birthday is coming up gives me some time where I can fall back into this old pattern - after all, there’s no chance I’m moving back before then. But every day after that is going to be a choice, and it’ll depend on so many factors that it can’t be a simple black and white choice.

If no one is making the decision for me, like what happened when work shut down along with the entire city of Chicago, I find it hard to not oscillate between extreme thoughts along this spectrum. For example, “If you go back too late, you’ll never have friends like you did before” could be true, as could “if you go back too early, you’ll jeopardize the progress you’ve made with coping mechanisms by overeating out of loneliness.” It really does seem like the middle is an unobtainable territory and I’ll have to swing too far on one end or the other.

In CBT, I tried to learn about thinking gray. I tried to teach myself to think things like “I may not have the ideal job at first, but I’ll learn and get experience on my resume” instead of “I will be stuck forever in a horrible job.” I’m going to do my best to apply this technique to the gradual reopening of the world, but it’s complicated when, as Mom implied, I have a harder time thinking in gray.

Black and white thoughts come easily to me thanks to my history of childhood obsessions. I never thought something bad “might” or “may” happen if I didn’t do a compulsion. There was no gray, and I had only one choice - to do whatever I felt compelled to do before the bad thing happened. As I got older, these sorts of thoughts transformed into my all-or-nothing ANTs that plague me still.

I’m not sure what these thoughts may turn into next, but for now, I’m going to try to be as flexible as possible. When the time comes, I’ll do my best to listen to reliable news sources, local friends, and work to determine what time would be best for me to return. Maybe I’ll even try some old CBT practices involving writing alternate thoughts, scenarios, and more. In the end, I will make a choice, and in this situation, it will have to be something other than black and white. It’ll be one of my first experiences choosing gray, and I hope it’ll be the first of many more to come as I continue finding ways to expand the rigid world I’ve made for myself.

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.

WHEN LOOKING BACK HURTS

When Looking Back Hurts

This week, inspired by my grandma’s move, my family started going through our attic. We tore into old garbage bags filled with old art projects and stories, laughing and enjoying ourselves as we went through old memories. I was particularly amused to find my first-ever fanfiction that I had completely forgotten about, written two years before I ever read or saw Lord of the Rings, written in my familiar, childish handwriting.

I was initially disinterested in this process, but I quickly became very involved, tossing my phone aside and digging through everything eagerly. I was especially excited to see the fanfiction and other stories I had written, but I felt a lurch in my chest when I found a story I had no memory of, written in honor of Rosh Hashanah.

The prompt appeared to be using characters from the Arthur book series in a Rosh Hashanah story, but even from the teacher’s note on the cover, I could tell I hadn’t written a happy story. The teacher praised my use of foreshadowing when I said “Don’t dip too many apples or you will get sick,” and I knew what I was in for before I even saw the vividly-detailed picture of Arthur throwing up on the cover.

The story only takes half a page to reach the inevitable conclusion of my obsession-riddled mind, and it gets worse from there. I shuddered as I put the story aside, not realizing how the way I always process my emotions in writing must have begun in childhood.

I started getting involved in the process again, finding more school projects. But even as the ages of the papers got younger, nothing changed much with me. A yearbook from the end of my four-year-old class was filled with things I didn’t want to see, like saying that I love my mommy and daddy because they take care of me when I’m sick (I was almost never actually sick as a child, although I was convinced I was sick almost all the time). At the end, there is a page titled “Me and My Friends,” and in every picture, I am alone.

All it took was that - and the next item, my first-grade report card that said I need to learn how to be “a little less excited” - to send me on a very unpleasant trip down memory lane.

It sent me to the most painful times I’ve heard that I’m “too much,” the times I’ve been left behind by friends, the times I’ve been called all sorts of names and made to feel like an outsider from childhood through today. I could feel the papers sitting on the pile staring at me, and I didn’t feel peace until I forced myself to think about times when I have felt included, mainly in my current D&D group and my group of friends from DragonCon.

Also this week, my friend Annie (name changed for privacy) came to me upset one evening when a minor incident with someone she loved brought her back to one of the most painful moments in her life. It might seem strange to feel triggered by something like this, but for both Annie and I, even a much smaller example of a feeling was enough to send us back in time.

Annie, who knows I have experience with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), asked me if I had any techniques for this. I rummaged through my old CBT materials until I found my list of automatic negative thoughts (ANTs), but none of them matched what was going on with us. As she described it, it was like there was only a break of a second between the trigger in the present and the memories of the past, and there’s so little time in between that it can be very difficult to stop the process.

I knew exactly what she was talking about, and as I was looking at the four-year-old yearbook, all I could think about was a recent time when someone told me that the only reason I was tolerable to be around was because, unlike other mentally ill people, I could control myself. I felt like an animal, only good because I was a trained one, and those memories poured out of my mouth. Annie shared with me too, telling me everything that hurt her so long ago that even a small incident took her right back to.

She asked me, again, if I had any ideas - but I don’t know the answer to this question. There’s nothing in my CBT worksheet that says what to do for myself or others. There’s no specific way to stop the thought process that jumps from a current trigger to a past incident.

What works best for me, and what I told Annie, is to find a way to counteract the thought in the present. For example, the last time my “I’ll never have real friends thanks to my mental illness” thought entered my head, I logged onto Discord and found my group of DragonCon friends playing a video game. They called out to me happily when I entered the voice chat, and a couple hours of gaming later, I had almost forgotten what I was so upset about in the first place.

Looking for growth can be another way to start moving forward. I’d never write another story like the Arthur one I wrote, because I have learned how to process my emotions in a healthier way. I would never have another lonely “Me and My Friends” page because I reach out to people every day to keep my friendships strong and challenge myself to find new friends by engaging in new activities.

There’s nothing Annie or I can do to erase the memories of something that should have been beautiful, but ended up tainted. There’s no easy fix, and although moving forward is the only way to carry on, there will always be a part of me that wonders - even in the middle of a happy group of friends - if I am truly welcome, if I am allowed to talk about my interests, if I can fit in like everyone else.

For anyone else struggling with these feelings, I’ll leave you with a comment from a recent meeting with my improv group. I joined the Zoom call early, and started talking with the only other person there. She said she had been thinking, in advance of our show that got postponed, and she realized that two of us in the class really blossomed as the class progressed.

I wasn’t sure how to interpret that, but when she said I was much more approachable and seemed much more comfortable once I started sharing more about myself and my interests, I couldn’t help but smile. I had let the “too much” thinking get to me when I first started the class and, caught up in memories, I kept myself walled off from others. It was only when I started to get past my own fears that I was able to take concrete steps to actually fix them.

Take a look for moments like this in your own life. Find things that contradict your triggering experiences, and try to jump there instead of the more painful parts of your life. It’s much easier said than done, but even working a little bit on interrupting the destructive thought process can lead to a far more fulfilling life.

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.

IT'S FINE

It’s Fine

I’ve been trying all week to think of something to write about for this week’s blog entry.

I don’t usually have problems coming up with things to say - I’m often very chatty with people in real life, including about mental health problems. But this week has just been a little too much to think outside the box.

I’ve helped my Nana move into a new apartment, and thoughts of her getting sick with coronavirus thanks to her exposure to the movers, technicians, and various people in her apartment complex have run rampant through my head. It only makes it worse that there’s no way to tell for two weeks, and that every step of the process was riddled with complications and trouble.

Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot of people saying that they’re feeling a similar way. Between the ongoing pandemic and protests across the country, many people’s resting anxiety level has been higher than usual. Adding the complications of the move on top of that - plus various shenanigans at work - has made my week particularly hard.

It’s easy to feel bad about getting stressed about little things during times like these, or to wonder why it’s harder to muster inspiration for writing or other types of projects. It’s easy to feel like I should be able to handle each individual thing with a smile, no matter what else is going on.

But for me, an increase in my resting anxiety level means that I’m more likely to fall for my own ANTs; intrusive thoughts are likelier to enter my head in the first place; and my friends who are usually around as a support system are often facing their own problems if my major stressors are more environmental than personal.

I’ve had some success with forming a routine at home, but the uncertainty of the world right now is making it harder to do the things I usually do. As someone ambitious who considers giving in to my mental illness even a little bit as a failure, it’s been hard for me to accept that I need to be kind to myself when things aren’t normal.

“It’s fine to not be fine” is advice I’ve gotten before, and although I’ve ignored it in the past, I’m trying to work with it now. There are so many things going on in the world that we don’t have control over, and everyone has different ways of coping. Our normal coping mechanisms might not work as well at this time, and that’s fine too. At a time like this, it’s a good idea to shift goals from being “perfectly normal” to feeling as good as possible during stressful situations.

With everything going on, emotions - especially stress - will run high. That’s fine. It’s also fine to feel overwhelmed, scared, and unsure about both personal and global futures. With a little self-kindness and acceptance, we can get through times like these and make positive change in ourselves and the world.

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.

BABY STEPS

Baby Steps

It’s almost Father’s Day, I reminded myself as I stepped into Target for the first time in months. I needed a card, and that was a good enough excuse to be brave.

I’ve been talking with my mom on our evening walks, and when I expressed that I’m amazed she can go to newly-opened stores like Target to get necessary things, she encouraged me to take baby steps. I’m coming back to Chicago at some point, after all, and when I’m living alone again, I won’t have someone to go into stores for me.

I decided to give it a try early in the week, during the afternoon so hopefully it wouldn’t be crowded. There were a lot more cars than I would have liked to see in the parking lot, but I pulled up my mask so high that I almost couldn’t see and stepped inside.

It felt like returning to a world I hadn’t visited in forever, and a place that never felt strange to visit suddenly felt dangerous to me. I couldn’t help but notice that only some people were wearing face masks, some of them were touching their faces, and many weren’t staying six feet apart from each other. I felt the nervousness enter me as easily as my breath, which could have been contaminating me even as I stood in the doorway.

I made my way to the middle of the store, telling myself that I couldn’t control what other people were doing, just me. I could stay six feet away from people with masks and farther from the people who weren’t wearing them; I could read the cards without touching them and choose only a couple to look at instead of taking my time and reading all the cards in the row. I found one I liked and took it, touching it even though I don’t have gloves.

Turning to the other side of the aisle, I noticed I was near my favorite part of the store - the tech and games section, which has Pokemon cards. I remember coming to this particular Target five years ago when I felt hopeless, and the cards were the only things that could - at least temporarily - alleviate my anxiety. For a first trip, I said I could reward myself with exactly one thing - not going on a binge like before - and only a thing I could open with a friend on Zoom later, making myself accountable. Another step there, in recognizing that I can treat myself without going off the deep end, and that the cards wouldn’t fix the stress, they would just help me have a good time with a friend.

As I made my way to the back of the store, where I knew the cards were kept, I felt my breath come faster, hitting me in the face as it bounced back at me from the mask. Somehow, it helped - I could imagine that the barrier was so thick that no germs could get through, and that bolstered me when I realized that the cards I was looking for were behind a glass case - I’d need to find an associate and talk to them. And since it’s not polite to yell at someone from across the store, I realized I’d need to stand at least somewhat close.

I soon found a store associate wearing a mask with the Target logo printed on it. Just like in normal times, I asked her to accompany me over to the case and take the cards out, but unlike normal times, it felt weird to take the product from her hands. She offered to check me out in the back so I wouldn’t have to wait on the regular line, but I did still have to take out my credit card, meaning I had to touch my purse’s zippers.

She recognized my hesitation - I’m sure I’m far from the only person worried about going inside stores, even if many people seem okay - and she offered me a tube of Clorox wipes. I confessed it was my first time coming back to Target as I wiped my hands and the credit card before and after touching the machine, and even though I usually have to sign receipts at Target, she didn’t make me sign. I got to leave shortly after, and by the time I got to my car and pulled down my mask, I felt like I’d done a great job.

It still makes me nervous to think of what I may have touched or breathed in while I was in the store, but I do feel that taking baby steps is an important thing for me to do. Now that I know I can do this and feel relatively safe, I can hopefully expand what I’m able to do, like shop for groceries for my family. I know there are a lot more steps to go, especially thinking about moving back to Chicago, but I think if I treat exposures to the “real world” like exposures to other things I’m afraid of, I’ll be able to do it.

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.

THE HIGHEST FORM OF FLATTERY

The Highest Form of Flattery

I was so excited to see a package with my name on it at the door the other day, quickly tearing it open to get the fabric inside. I’d ordered a large amount of Aida cloth to go with the embroidery floss I ordered the previous week, to feed my new hobby of cross-stitching.

After I started out with a basic starter kit, where I learned how to embroider a flamingo, the friend who helped me learn told me that a flamingo wasn’t nerdy enough for me. Soon, she sent me the links to several online kits depicting scenes in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth. I chose Bag End - the home of The Hobbit’s protagonist Bilbo Baggins - and made a bookmark of that.

I didn’t realize there were so many options for patterns out there, and especially didn’t think of making my own. But with the arrival of the new cloth, I had the opportunity to make something completely unique.

Instead of brainstorming and starting to draw a concept no one had ever thought of before, I immediately went to Spriters’ Resource on the recommendation of a friend and found pixelated art of two of my favorite characters from Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I greatly enjoy their interactions in-game and love the thought of them living a happy life together after the events of the game.

It took me a while to put the pattern together, and many hours to piece together the project, and when I finally finished, my first thought was that I could have chosen to make something original, but I didn’t.

The characters were created by someone else and are voiced by professional voice actors. The inspiration for their relationship comes directly from in-game dialogue and works thanks to a plot I didn’t invent. The only completely original thing on the cloth was the heart between them, and even that was copied from a design on Google.

Even though I’d been thrilled to show my friends progress photos, some of my old shame about “copying” started creeping in. As someone who has always prided myself on my creativity, I have always felt inadequate when I base any of my creative efforts on someone else’s work. When I was young, I was convinced I was a thief and a fraud, not creative enough to come up with my own things, but so desperate to make something that I would steal from someone else. And worst of all, I saw it as just another sign of an obsession with a book or a game that made me think I was incredibly weak.

But over the years, I found a way to reconcile myself with this beloved habit of mine. The shame still ebbs and flows, but it’s gotten a lot easier when I realize that I am putting a lot of work into what I do. In order to make this new piece of embroidery, I had to research sprites, manipulate them to create a pattern, and use over twenty colors to complete it. I spent a lot of time researching, planning, and outlining, and then made a sincere effort to represent a story worthy of the characters I love.

I ended up showing my friends the completed project, and they loved it, regardless of their feelings about the characters in question. I couldn’t stop smiling when I saw their feedback, and it helped me realize that In the end, my new hobby is supposed to be about making me happy. It’s not supposed to matter what I choose to embroider, only that the movements relax me and I love the feeling of completing a project. And even if I choose to embroider something that already exists, I can still be creative.

I transform the works I love with “headcanons,” imagining what happens after the end of the story and coming up with entirely new things. The more I continue in this vein, the easier these parts of the story blend with what was officially written, but it in fact creates the beginning of a new story. Just because the inspiration comes from something that was already created doesn’t mean it’s bad or wrong for me to use it as the inspiration of a fresh start.

This is especially important to me considering that I’ve just chosen two prompts for the Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang, in which artists create works inspired by Tolkien’s books, and then writers come in to fill in the blanks. I’m beyond thrilled to be writing for two wonderful artists this year, especially the one whose drawing depicts one of my favorite elves teaching his half-sister how to cross-stitch.

Accepting my proclivity to not starting from square one has been a long time coming, and I still have a ways to go before the judgmental thoughts stop entirely. But now that there’s so much time to work on hobbies, I find my new self-acceptance invigorating, and can’t wait to see what happens next in the interactions between my favorite books and games and my mind. It may not be entirely original, but it’ll be beautiful, and a welcome support for me during this tough time.

 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.