OCD, Anxiety & Me

Therapy day one

I had my first ‘therapy’ session, I was meant to be starting one to one CBT with my local NHS mental health service. The day or two before your appointment you have to fill in some of the questionnaires to see how you’re doing and the therapist can see your progress etc. I started my medication at the end of April so have been doing really well recently but was looking forward to starting CBT to give me some techniques to help manage my low mood better, to help me cope with life better. I answered the questionnaire honestly but have scored too low to qualify for one to one therapy.

I’ve been signed up to some online group sessions so I’m hoping this will still have the desired effect as I am feeling in a much better place now to how I was when I thought group therapy would be awful and even though it’s obviously a really positive thing that I’m doing ‘too well’ to have one to one therapy but also a little disheartened because of how well one to one therapy worked for my OCD.

I’ve got some things to work through before my first group session in a couple of weeks and I’m going to commit myself to it to get as much out of it as I can because otherwise what’s the point?

Depression

Depression is not the same for everyone, just the same as how OCD & anxiety are experienced differently by different people. For me depression crept up slowly. It was small moments in every day that turned into big moments, that ended up turning into whole days.

I knew when to laugh or when to cry, I knew when I should feel something so I acted like I did but in reality I just felt numb or completely overwhelmed. Everything just felt so so hopeless I wondered what the point was, would it make a difference if I was even here. I didn’t feel like I deserved this ‘easy way out’, what had happened in my life that gave me the right to feel this way? But it wasn’t one thing, it was the combination of lots of small things, small moments and before I knew it I was in the thick of depression and I had no idea how to help myself or how to ask for help. Everything felt hard, everything felt like it took 100% brain power and physical effort. I just wanted to stop being. I wanted to push pause and reset my brain but I couldn’t find the button.

Then one day someone shouted from what seemed like a million miles away that they could help me. That they knew the way out, just follow their voice. The effort to even admit that I needed help was immense. I felt so ashamed that I couldn’t cope with my life which was and is pretty bloody amazing. I felt like I didn’t deserve to feel this way and I felt everyone around me deserved better than what I could give them.

That was months ago now and I am on my road to recovery. It’s not always easy but I can see a bright future. Remember, there is always someone out there to help. If you are struggling then please reach out to local crisis helplines. I wish I had much sooner.

Life lately

It’s been a few years since I’ve written anything here and initially that was because towards the end of 2020 I had my baby (J) and we began adjusting to life as a family of 4. I had a great start to motherhood the second time round, such a contrast to my experiences with H and I was able to breastfeed J for an extended period of time. Something I am incredibly proud of myself for. I returned to work and although I had a few issues we settled into a good routine with help from family with childcare and looking after the dog. We’re very lucky that we have family around us to enable us to work the shifts we do and not have to pay out for childcare.

During this time my mental health was at an all time high, I had bad days as we all do but I felt on top of the world. I was no longer taking sertraline, I had continued to use what I had learned in therapy to manage my OCD and my anxiety was much more manageable. Overall, life was great.

Unfortunately towards the last few months of 2024 I began to experience really low mood. This was something I hadn’t really experienced by itself before. I stuck my head in the sand and convinced myself it was just a bad day, a bad week, a bad month. I’d come out the other side and all would be back to normal. I was able to cover it up at work for the most part no one knew how I was feeling. I plastered a smile on and got on with my job. I worked extra shifts and I just pretended everything was fine. At home I was quiet, snappy, impatient and in my opinion hard to live with. I’d managed to get myself into such a deep dark hole I couldn’t see any way out. Cracks began to show at work and I started to have some really dark thoughts and was harming myself more than I ever had before.

It was at this point that a friend and my husband made it clear how worried they were about me (neither knew about the dark thoughts or self harm still) and insisted I go to the doctors which I did the very next day. I saw the mental health nurse who I will be forever thankful to for helping me in my moment of crisis. I started taking sertraline again and have found the dose that works for me and I referred myself to talking therapies again in my area. The mental health nurse took the decision to sign me off work (I have recently returned) and things I could do immediately to help myself. Talking to someone and admitting I was not coping was the biggest relief. Even though I felt absolutely mortified that I had been signed off work deep down I knew I needed some time to get back to being me.

Fast forward a few months and the medication is helping, I have way more good days and I have my first therapy session in a few days time. I plan on writing again, it helped me massively before so I’m hoping it will have the same effect this time. I’m going to sign off there and hopefully write up another few posts so I can get back to regular posts about my mental health, how I got to this point and how I have been managing it.

How things have changed…

Over the past few weeks & months so many things have changed in my life. We have had a family member staying in our spare room for some time now and although they will be moving out in the next few weeks it’s hard having that extra person. I’m pregnant, which in itself is a massive change especially when it comes to mental health, we have a dog who will be around a year old when the baby comes.

When I stopped writing here I was doing so well with regards to my CBT, I was well on my way to combatting my compulsions at work and I felt like I had really got ahold of my intrusive thoughts with regards to H. I had techniques which I used and I used them well. When covid-19 came along it didn’t really affect my OCD much, I’ve never really had health anxiety or OCD around cleanliness and contamination and with being pregnant it meant I was quite limited with what I could do at work due to the nature of my job. When I stopped taking my medication I felt so good for weeks I really thought that my CBT techniques alone were enough to help me deal with my thoughts better. However, I slowly started to notice more reassurance seeking creeping in, I was becoming snappy and I was feeling really indifferent in a lot of ways. It took me a while to notice what was happening but eventually I did, there was still that voice in my head telling me it was all in my head and I found it hard to accept what was happening. I finally spoke to J about how I was feeling and boy did that help! It was such a relief to just get it out so it wasn’t all bottled up in my head.

Since then I’ve felt better, not great and still incredibly worried about the time that is coming with having a newborn baby at home and potentially slipping back into old habits with my compulsions. But, I have been reassurance seeking a lot less especially in the past week. I am going to start my workbook this week which will hopefully reinforce some of the techniques I’ve already learnt in my CBT sessions.

Such a large amount of change in a relatively small amount of time was bound to bring up some of the feelings and thoughts that I used to have and I feel like I need to be kinder to myself. But at the same time I need to give myself a shake sometimes and remind myself that I know how to deal with these thoughts and I have learned good techniques of how I should deal with them. Putting them into practice is the challenging bit! I am sure that is the case for a lot of people and I know the challenges I feel are in no way exclusive to me, in many ways I am lucky that I have had access to this free CBT service and that it has been working so well.

Over the next few weeks I am going to be working really hard at using my CBT techniques every day in the hope that when the baby comes I will be in a much better place and therefore able to deal with the thoughts that I am so worried will come at that time.

It’s been a while…

Hasn’t it just?! I’m going to be honest, I’m not in a great place right now. I’m in my third trimester of pregnancy and a time that should be filled with joy and love are just filling me with dread right now. I feel awful because I’m not giving my best self to H, I’m not paying attention to him as I should be and I feel like I’m failing him when I’m meant to be preparing him for school.

So, my pregnancy! I found out I was pregnant end of February so around a month before lockdown happened. As I work in healthcare it has been an incredibly anxious time for me more because I’ve been worried about how people at work will think of me for my decisions about being/not being at work and how much I’ve been fighting (or not) my corner to get things put in place at work. I’ve been ok with the health side of things, I feel I’ve been protecting myself well but not overdoing it. I made the decision to stop taking my medication around 8 weeks pregnant and until recently I’ve felt like I’ve been doing really well. Recently my intrusive thoughts and compulsions have been a lot worse. I’ve been reassurance seeking a lot without even noticing I’m doing it. I’ve also been feeling a lot more ‘down’ over the past week or so and struggling more and more to pick myself up, I’m feeling so lonely as well, not something I’ve really had an issue with before. I have friends I just don’t feel like I have anyone to talk to day to day about any of these feelings I’m having and it makes me feel so alone.

I cannot wait to have this baby, I’m so looking forward to the birth, to having a newborn, to seeing H with his baby sibling. He’s so excited it warms my heart every time he talks about the baby coming and what will happen. He even said about the baby sleeping in his room when it cries because he’ll be able to make him happy. I am looking forward to taking walks with the dog and the baby, to doing the school run, to starting baby swimming lessons. I want to be a good mum to this baby and hopefully get those feelings that I missed with H. Right now though, this stage of pregnancy I’m not enjoying, I haven’t really enjoyed any part, I didn’t with H either. I turn into a moany mess when I’m pregnant! I wish I could enjoy the kicks & movements, the little feelings of having this tiny baby growing inside of me but it’s not happening for me and I’ve come to realise that and stopped trying to force it. Instead I’m looking forward to when the baby is here.

I’m definitely rambling now! It feels good to be writing again, I’m going to try to do it more often again as it definitely helps. It helps me make sense of my thoughts and kind of makes me feel like I’m talking to someone about how I’m feeling. Thank you as always for reading, even if it doesn’t make much sense! Hopefully my next post will be better but for now I’m going to leave it there.

Update November ‘19

I didn’t manage to write a blog post between my sessions & I’ve already had my 6th session but I thought I’d talk about how I was feeling in between my last 2 sessions as I feel like a lot has happened and I don’t want to waffle on too much and end up with a super long post!

So I’m my 5th session we decided to repeat some of the experiments I first did and rate my anxiety around each one to see if this had changed. I started by doing the one with the iPad (H sat with the iPad and I think of snatching it from him). I have my belief (I’m going to act on my thoughts) a rating of 50% and the alternative (they’re just thoughts) 75%, for this one I was fairly confident that I wasn’t going to do anything because I had done this but before. My anxiety around it was quite low and I finished with belief ratings of 25% & 90%.

I then went on to repeat the experiment about harming one of H’s soft toys and I did this one two more times, in order to compare how my anxiety was – mainly if it changed at all. The first time I rated my belief 40% and the alternative 75% and my anxiety while I was doing it was around 4-5. I started to feel like I was trusting myself whilst doing this experiment and it almost felt like I was turning a corner. At the end my belief and alternative ratings were 20% and 90% again just that little bit of me that remains not 100% convinced. I decided to repeat this one in order to compare my anxiety and when I did it for the second time I rated my anxiety at a 2-3.

Repeating these behaviours experiments gave me the boost that I needed to take the next step. My next experiment was to think of pouring water over H. Normally if this kind of thought was to occur I would put the water down, distract myself & reassure myself. When I thought about my belief and alternative ratings for this one I felt surprised when I found myself believing the alternative (that it’s just a thought) more than my original belief. I have them 30% & 75%. My anxiety around doing this experiment was around a six because I was worried about accidentally tripping and spilling the water on H which would be a failure. I continued with the experiment and afterwards gave my belief 30% and the alternative 80%. When I carried out the experiment nothing happened, I didn’t pout or spill any water. I decided that I would repeat this one before moving onto the next as the next step feels like a big step that I wasn’t quite ready for!

When I redid this one my anxiety had reduced slightly (4-5) and my belief ratings had gone down (25% and 80%) partly because I had previously done it with nothing untoward happening. I felt more confident in the alternative that ‘thoughts are thoughts’.

The last behaviour experiment that I did was the very first one I spoke about with my counsellor. The situation was that I could push H over. Usually I would remove myself from the situation and give H something that he can occupy himself with. I also tend to distract myself and mentally reassure myself. When I first set this experiment my belief in my prediction of acting on this thought was 100% and my belief in the alternative was 0%. When I actually did the experiment although I felt anxious about it (5-6) I did believe that I wouldn’t do it. H was fine and we continued on our walk to pre school. This tells me that I need to remember again that they’re thoughts. I’m not going to harm my son just because I have a random thought. At the end of this my belief ratings were 25% and 90%. I think there will always be apart of me that believes my thoughts and some days it’s easier to accept them that others.

CBT Week 5

I’m so bad at keeping on top of this writing, I write everything down in my notebook but am so bad at getting round to typing things up!! So this is from my fifth session which was actually a few weeks ago now!

This weeks session was 2 weeks after my last session as I had double booked myself. During the past 2 weeks I had begun to notice my mind becoming more ‘chatty’ and louder. I had also stopped taking my medication (sertraline), I think this was partly because I was unsure if they were working and I think part of me thought that with the CBT I didn’t really need to take them. I am also really bad at remembering to take medication every day. J also had started to notice that I was getting worse. I decided this past week that I would restart my medication. I’ve started by taking 1/2 my usual dose as I did when I first started taking them to try to avoid most of the side affects. I have had a headache for a few days but it is manageable with some paracetamol I know it’s going to take a few weeks to have any kind of affect. We discussed this in my session and my counsellor was pleased that I have a plan (I have a reminder app on my phone that I’m going to use).

So we started by talking about the behaviour experiments that I was to do over the past couple of weeks. The first one I did was to think of snatching a biscuit from H. I set it up – I sat next to H while he had his biscuit and I brought into my head the thought of snatching it off him. I gave my belief – why would I think it if I didn’t want to do it? – a rating of 95% and then the alternative – they’re just thoughts – a rating of 0%. When I was doing the experiment I wasn’t in a great mood, I was thinking to myself ‘what’s the point’ and was convincing myself that doing the experiments was a waste of time because they could only work for individual situations and wouldn’t help me. I did the behaviour experiment and H was fine, nothing bad happened. I learned from this that ‘thoughts are thoughts’ they don’t mean anything until I attach meaning to them. It was hard to tell myself this with the mood that I was in but I wrote down my thoughts around it anyway. We spoke about this in my session and we talked about how it’s normal to have ‘bad days’ when you’re learning something new. It’s normal to sometimes have doubts and maybe take a step back before taking more steps forward. I have been making progress, my belief ratings have been going down and hopefully my medication will help when it starts to take affect.

I did another behaviour experiment, this one was based around harm coming to H’s favourite soft toy. Normally in this situation I wouldn’t even hold his toy, I would distract myself and mentally recall where knives or scissors are. I sat with H at bedtime and I held his soft toy. I invited the thought into my head and kept it there while we had a story and a cuddle. I felt awful for thinking it but nothing happened. I gave H his toy and he went off to sleep. This again shows that theyre just thoughts not actions and I gave them the power to cause this upset. I felt like this was a bit of a turning point for me. I’m actually starting to believe that what im doing is helping. My anxiety scores and my belief ratings are going down.

We also spoke in this session about safety behaviours that I could potentially be using. telling myself in a ritualistic way that its going to be ok when I have these thoughts, or gently tapping my wrist to distract myself. These little things I need to be really aware of so that they do not become a ritual and also so that I’m not suing them as a safety behaviour. I’ve found that it is so easy to neutralise my thoughts because I’m so used to doing it and it is a habit I need to try and stop to overcome this. I need to learn to accept my thoughts as they are and allow them to play out in my mind without affecting the rest of my day.

Over the next couple of weeks I have a few behaviour experiments planned which I hope will help show me that my anxiety is decreasing. I’m going to try and write a blog post between now and my next session which is 3 weeks away. That give me lots of time to fit in all my behaviour experiments I have planned! I’m hoping to also fit in some writing about how I’m feeling day to day.

CBT Week 4

I’m writing this over a week after my actual session so it’s not going to be the best. I always mean to write about each session right after they’ve happened and so far I’ve been pretty good at doing this but I’ve had such a busy week I just kept forgetting!

We started off again by talking about my week and my behaviour experiment that we set in the previous session. H hasn’t been sleeping fest recently so I’ve been tired and had a shorter temper than normal. My behaviour experiment was harder than I expected it to be mainly because it was such a small thing and I’d been building it up as I was so nervous about doing it. I had to sit beside H while he was doing something that he enjoyed – I decided to do it when he was on the iPad – and force myself to think of snatching it from him. It was hard initially to keep the thought in my mind and I noticed I was led on my hands to keep myself from doing anything. I sat up and interacted with what H was doing and I kept the thought at the front of my mind. I felt really anxious and my heart felt like it was racing but nothing untoward happened. Afterwards I felt a sense of relief that I could think something like this and nothing happened.

Part of the behaviour experiments is to give a ‘belief rating’ at the start and then after. When I wrote out my experiment my belief that I was going to act on my thought unless I neutralised it, moved away from H, or sat on my hands was 100% and my belief in the ‘alternative’ was 0% (they’re just thoughts). After my behaviour experiment I thought they would switch but although they did change I still have that belief that I need to neutralise my thoughts, I need to do something to ensure my thoughts do not happen. Why would I think that and not want to act on it? It’s not a miracle cure, it’s going to take time and effort for me to one day believe ‘they’re just thoughts’.

My next behaviour experiment was to take another step towards thinking of pushing H (which I still find too much). We decided on giving myself a few options so that if I feel one is too much I can choose another to try and do instead. The things we decided on was; taking food from H, cutting or harming his favourite soft toy, pouring water over H or cutting his comfort blanket. I get anxious just thinking of doing trying these behaviour experiments but I know from the last one that they help. I know this anxiousness is me attaching meaning to these thoughts. It doesn’t stop it and I know I’m going to put off doing these behaviour experiments till the last minute but I need to do them to help myself. I love my son, I know I do but I question my love for him every single day due to the thoughts I have. I question everything about myself, my relationships & my life because of the thoughts I have and it’s exhausting.

I haven’t been very open with those around me about having OCD partly because of how much I see it trivialised. It makes me feel silly. I also have days when I feel like I’m making it all up. That I don’t have anything wrong and I’m playing on it. Is that ‘normal’ for me to question even having OCD, for even needing help?

My next session is in just over 2 weeks time so I may do another post in the meantime to go over how the behaviour experiments are going. I haven’t done any yet and I should have already done 3 so I really need to bite the bullet and do them!

CBT Week 3

Week 3 was last weeks session which I have written about in my notebook so it’s not me tackling it from a week ago! After each session I like to write down what we spoke about, what we decided and how I felt it went. I feel like it really helps me to make sense of my own thoughts and feelings around it and gives me an opportunity to think of any questions to ask the following week.

We started by going over where we finished last week and spoke about my week (stressful!). We talked about what I had learnt about intrusive thoughts over the last week which was mainly about how the thoughts latch on to the things that you care most about. That is where they get their power from. If the thoughts were about something benign, something I didn’t really care about or would feel embarrassment or disgust over then they wouldn’t cause a reaction but because they centre on those things I care about they case this focus and a reaction from me. I also learnt that intrusive thoughts are ‘normal’ (whatever that might be). I think it was something like 4 out of 5 people have intrusive thoughts and 1 in 50 go on to have anxiety about those thoughts.The fact that I believe the thoughts could come true is what causes me most of my anxieties. If I didn’t believe them then they wouldn’t give me anxiety. We also came to the conclusion that the things I do prevent me from realising they are just thoughts.

One thing that we talked about that we haven’t before was my birth with H and how I worry that I didn’t give him the best start in life and that I don’t love him. We decided that I would look into PND and attachment and bonding. When he was born I didn’t feel that rush of love partly because I was under general anaesthetic and then when I first met him I didn’t want to hold him as I was sore, groggy and tired from the anaesthetic.

I always feel like the hour I have each week goes by so quickly and I wish I had more time but I also think in hindsight we cover so much! This week we decided on a behaviour experiment. I am to invite into my head one of my intrusive thoughts – initially we said about pushing H over which is a frequent thought but this made me feel nauseous so we decided on a smaller step and that would be to think of snatching something from him. I have to sit or be close to him and think of snatching whatever he is playing with from him and not push the thought out of my mind, not distract myself and not move away from him. Then I need to see what happens, if I push the thought away I need to bring it back to the front of my mind. I am actually really nervous about doing this because at the end of the day what if I do it? That will mean I’m terrible.

I’ve recently started to struggle at work a little more than before, not stepping on the lines and cleaning has become a little worse over the past week but I have been more stressed and tired as H hasn’t been sleeping well and I’m really bad at taking my medication. Along with this I’ve been picking up a few extra hours at work. Any tips on on ways to remind myself of taking my medication regularly are greatly received, at the moment I’m thinking a big sign on the fridge should work but wanting something more subtle than that!!

CBT Week 2

I wrote this post a few weeks ago (after my second session) but again I was unable to upload until now. I’ve just had my 4th session so my 3rd and 4th sessions will be uploaded soon.

My second CBT session was exactly 2 weeks after my last one, hopefully they will be each week but with working shifts this isn’t always possible!

We began the session by recapping what we had talked about at my first session and I said about how I had been writing things down for the past week or so and had decided that I wanted to focus more on my intrusive thoughts rather than the low self worth that I was feeling. We discussed what I had written down around during the last 2 weeks and I came to the realisation (with the help of my therapist) that the low self worth is a cycle and once you get stuck in that cycle it is really hard to break out of it. We also discussed about how from what I was saying it showed how self critical I and and how this feeds into my low self worth. This is definitely something that I want to work on and am seeking to improve.

We moved onto my intrusive thoughts next & what I had written down over the past couple of weeks. Throughout a typical week I have horrible intrusive thoughts almost every day and I almost always react to them in some way or another. One of the first things we talked about was how normal intrusive thoughts are. The fact that most people have intrusive thoughts but that most people do not need to react to them.

We talked about a particular thought and my emotional and physical response to it. The thought was about me harming H unintentionally. Disgust & fear we’re the overriding emotions I initially felt led by the beliefs about the thoughts I have: – what if I act on them – they’re not normal – they make me a bad mum – I must want to act on them – people will think I’m unsafe for H. The physical reaction as a result of the fear would be shaking, nausea & changes in my breathing. I would then take steps to ensure the thought couldn’t/wouldn’t happen (behaviours). Then throughout the day my feelings of disgust would liner contributing towards a low mood and continuing feeling of disgust.

We finished up the session by discussing a new set of aims as I had changed the focus of my sessions. My new aims are to not react to my intrusive thoughts, to stop feeling anxious over doing things with H & to improve my mood. These things are linked and I hope will lead into each other. I have filled out the obsessive compulsive inventory and I am going to do some more research into intrusive thoughts and why I have the types of thoughts that I do. I’m feeling really positive about today’s session & I hope that continues.