I know Prozac isn’t for everyone, but it has allowed me to reach a place which I thought I wouldn’t see for years. I’m sure I’ll backslide before I get steady footing here, but I’m so thankful to be here, even if it’s only for a little while.

I am beginning to experience moments, very short moments, of real relief from OCD. I am actually beginning to experience moments without OCD. I haven’t had a moment without OCD in as long as I can remember. Most of my childhood memories, all the way back to when I was a very small child, include OCD in some way or another. I don’t remember what non-OCD thinking feels like. I don’t remember what it feels like not to have anxiety constantly smothering me.

But now I have moments of that kind of sanity. For instance, I frequently take the kids I babysit to McDonald’s for lunch so they can burn off some energy in the playplace while I enjoy air-conditioning. The only thing I will eat at McDonald’s is fries, so I’m usually still very hungry when the kids finish eating and go off to play. The three year old never finishes his fries. I used to throw them away and was unable to finish them for him before. His dirty little hands were all over them, after all. But twice now, I have eaten his left-over fries once he ran off to play. Disgusting, right? But I didn’t feel any anxiety while eating them. It was exhilarating not to be afraid of the contamination I was most definitely ingesting.

Now I’ve done lots of things that OCD doesn’t want me to do through exposure therapy. The difference between all of those things and this is the anxiety. When I do an exposure, I experience a lot of anxiety and have to wait for it to come down. With the fries, I had zero anxiety to begin with.

I can’t really put into words how amazing it feels. Like I said, they’re very short-lived moments of sanity, but they’re there all the same. I still have so far to go, so much work to do, but this taste of what it feels like not to be burdened by constant anxiety is a huge motivator. All these years, I have been working toward a goal that I couldn’t wrap my mind around, a state of mind I couldn’t remember ever experiencing. Now I have a couple of moments to remember as I continue, and those moments give me so much strength.

So much has happened since I last updated. I’m still struggling with the dark cloud, but I’m not depressed; it’s not constant.

In May, I increased my dosage of Prozac to 60 mg/day. The previous dosage, 40 mg/day, had begun to take the edge off general anxiety but had not yet helped with OCD. This current dosage, though, has been amazing. I’m doing so many things that I never thought I’d do. It’s too much to cover in one post, so this will be the first of a series of updates on how Prozac, OCD, and I are getting along

First up: my fear of being barefoot

I have been unable to be barefoot for years. Yes, this includes at home and in bed. I have been terrified of leaving my feet unprotected from contamination. I have been for years, but this particular fear got a lot worse a couple of years ago when I got a fungal infection in my toenails that took forever to fight off. I didn’t understand it at the time. I am SO careful about my feet. I regularly took the girl I babysat to the pool. I didn’t swim (that’s a whole other fear), but I walked around the pool area in sandals. As soon as we would get home each day, I’d ditch the sandals for my socks, thinking they would offer more protection.

I was wrong, though. OCD completely misled me. Surprise, surprise, right? Wearing socks 24/7 actually helped the infection along. If I had just suffered through being barefoot a little, I would not have had to deal with all of that crap.

ANYWAY, the point of all of this is to say that I am getting better about being barefoot. A couple of months ago, I started a barefoot exposure on my own. Instead of putting on socks immediately after showering, I had to walk downstairs into the living room before I could put my socks on. I didn’t always make it all the way down before caving. However, the past couple of weeks, I have been sleeping without socks EVERY night. I don’t remember exactly when I started going without, but I have not worn socks one night since. It’s amazing.

It was really hard the first few nights. I kept a clean pair of socks in my pillow case just in case I couldn’t make it through the night, just in case I panicked. But I never used them. I don’t even get nervous about getting in bed now. I habituated SO quickly.

I was really skeptical about trying Prozac, as I’m sure many of you remember. I almost quit so many times during the process of building up to this dosage. I’m so glad I didn’t, though. It has made ERP therapy so much easier. Doing my homework doesn’t seem like such a tremendously impossible chore anymore. This sock thing wasn’t even homework; it was just something I decided to try on my own.

On the other side, I’m still majorly struggling with stupid little things like TV remotes and steering wheels and kitchen counters. I’m still paralyzed when it comes to cleaning my house, which is infuriating, but I’m hoping that will loosen up soon.

I get so mad when I think about my health. I have both mental and physical chronic illnesses. I have major chronic pain. I’m too young to need all the medication I’m on (in addition to psych and phys therapies). It’s embarrassing! What the hell did I do to deserve all this? Every moment of every day is a struggle against all of it.

And I hate complaining so much because I have a great life. I have so much to be happy about, but the constant pain and anxiety and helplessness doesn’t allow me to fully enjoy the great parts of my life. If OCD doesn’t scream at me not to do something, then my back or neck will make it difficult and painful to move. If not that, then I’ll have trouble breathing. Recently, my body decided that crap wasn’t enough, so it decided to change how it digests some foods. So much fun!!

And after getting worked up in a fury, all I can think about is how this is probably as good as it gets. I’m in my twenties, the supposed peak of my health and ability. I’m barely an adult. Both the physical and mental struggles will only get worse and more difficult to deal with as I get older. That’s not a very bright future. Hard to get excited about. I have so many other wonderful things to look forward to, but they’re all under a really dark cloud that seems inescapable.

I don’t want a pity party. I’m not asking for that. I just need to express these feelings sometimes. I hate feeling sorry for myself, but sometimes it seems impossible to escape despair.

How do you deal with these feelings? How do you get past them?

Dermatillomania is an impulse control disorder.  It, along with trichotillomania (the compulsion to pick one’s hair out), is a commonly comorbid with OCD because impulse control disorders are considered to be part of the OCD spectrum.
I used to hate this terrible habit—what I thought was just a habit, anyway—and I though it was childish to be unable to stop.  It has always disgusted me.  But it’s not just a bad habit.  It’s how my brain works; it’s an involuntary action, so I can’t just stop.  Like OCD, it gets much worse when I have a lot of outside stress.  It calms me when I’m stressed.  I know this won’t make sense to a lot of you, but it’s very comforting, embarrassing, but comforting.

I had managed it well for awhile, or so I thought.  I quit playing with my cats so that I wouldn’t have scratches on my arms to pick.  I keep my nails painted, so I can pick at the polish instead of my skin.

But these don’t solve the problem.  To stop picking, therapy prescribes a stress ball.  The idea is that if you squeeze a stress ball every time you want to pick, then it will retrain your brain to need/desire the new action over the old one.  Eventually, when I am stressed, my instinct will be to squeeze a stress ball instead of pick my skin.

The problem is this involuntary part.  Most of the time, I don’t know I’m picking until I draw blood and have to get a bandage.  By that point, it’s too late to get the ball; the damage is done.  I always have the ball with me in my purse, but I always forget it’s there.

So what to do?

For those of you who know me in real life, who see me on a regular basis, I need your help.  If you see me picking at my fingers, arms, or face, then tell me to use my stress ball.  You probably notice what I’m doing before I do (because it’s weird and gross).  I would say you should slap me on the hand if you catch me picking, but please don’t.  You’re all well aware of how much I LOVE being touched.

But it’s all pretend, and this kind of pretending is more dangerous than helpful.  When you start therapy, OCD gets bigger, a LOT bigger.  It seems like OCD is suddenly everywhere all the time.  The reality is that OCD has always been everywhere all the time, but you were ignoring it—sort of—really just pretending.  It has always been there, but now you’re shining a spotlight on it, and you can’t ignore it anymore.

And when you start to fight back, OCD seems scarier.  It’s like a bully: as long as you do what it says, it doesn’t make a huge fuss, but the moment you turn around and refuse its orders, OCD has to puff up its chest and be as intimidating as possible.  It wants to scare you back into submission.

But if you hold your ground, if you refuse to submit, if you throw a punch or two back, then that bully, OCD, will begin to shrink back, slowly, but it will.  When you assert your dominance, OCD begins to lose control; its grip on your life begins to loosen.

So therapy is scary at first.  I know.  I have spent the last year realizing just how crazy I am, and that has been super scary!  I tried to pretend otherwise for years.  It seems like OCD has suddenly become my life, but, really, it already controlled every aspect of my life.  It already influenced every decision in my life—no matter the size.  I just refused to see it before.

Now, it’s impossible to ignore it.  I see it everywhere.  Everywhere.  And that makes me mad, furious as hell.  That anger is a great motivator, though.  That anger spurs me to fight, to win.

But I realized something today.

I am free from a couple of compulsions that used to have serious control over me.

Before, when I finished showering, after turning off the water and pulling back the shower curtain, I had to turn the water back on to wash my hands because the shower curtain seemed so contaminated.

Then, after drowning my body (except for my feet) in lotion (because contamination OCD leads to super dry skin), I had a very ridiculous and complicated process for putting lotion on my feet.  I would grab new clean socks and tuck them into my pajama pants.  Oh, this is embarrassing.  Then I had a towel that I would use to wipe off my feet.  Immediately after wiping off one foot, I would quickly put lotion on it and then the put a sock on it before putting that foot down.  Then I’d repeat with the other foot.  I looked extremely silly hopping around on one foot at a time, trying not to fall over, trust me.  I just couldn’t handle being barefoot because floors are dirty.

I don’t do either of those things anymore.  I haven’t done those rituals in months.  I don’t even think about doing them anymore.  I completely forgot about them until today.

And I don’t even have to thank my meds for that.  It’s all me and my hard work.

It’s easy to forget these things because that is the goal, after all.  The purpose of ERP is to erase compulsions from the brain, so I didn’t notice when these two disappeared.  It’s easy to forget about the things I have accomplished when there are still so many hurdles in front of me.  But today I want to look back and reflect on what I have conquered.

So therapy is working, slowly, but that’s ok, and it will keep working if I keep up with it.  I have proof for myself that it’s worth it.  Now I just have to get back to work.

Side Effects

Sleep deprivation was MUCH less than before
Sweaty hands (etc.) have not been as bad as before, though they didn’t get bad last time until the second week, so we’ll see.

The Good Stuff

Right before I increased my dosage, I started noticing very tiny positive effects from the Prozac.  Things like small decisions having less anxiety attached to them.  That’s right.  I can make decisions like where to eat dinner tonight without freaking out about picking the right place.  Last night, for instance, my boyfriend asked me where I wanted to eat, and I blurted out the first thing that came to mind.  That was it.  Decision made.  A minute later, our to-go order had been made and he went to pick it up.  It was amazing, so fast!

That motivated me to go ahead and go up to 40 mg.  That little bit renewed my hope.  I want to see what happens.  I want to see if life can be easier.  Who knows?  This could really work.  It’s nice to be hopeful again.  It makes me want to actually to my ERP therapy homework again.  I have been slacking on that sooooo terribly.

I’m excited to see how this goes.  I really want it to work.

Update (3/23/11 9:38 pm)

The sweating got tremendously worse in the last hour.  I guess that makes sense.  Last time it took a week to get bad.  I hope this does not last a full week like it did before.  I really don’t want to deal with this disgusting crap again.  So the question is whether or not to use the antiperspirant medication tonight.  Nasty, sweaty hands or cracked, peeling hands?

Breathe.  I can do this.

I can do this.

We’ll see.  I’m not giving up on Prozac just yet, but I’m leaning more and more in that direction.  It’s supposed to lessen my anxiety, not increase it.  It seems like every week there’s something new to mess with my head.

Even if it’s not the Prozac, saying it’s the Prozac is helping me not lose it.  I am more rational when I can look at the crazy emotions I’m feeling and blame them on my medication.

Oh and the sweating thing still isn’t completely gone.  Much less than at first, but still enough to be super annoying.

What do you think?  Any of you females who have taken Prozac have a similar experience with Prozac and hormones?

I decided to wear a dress today and be pretty.  My wardrobe is usually pretty casual, but I thought it would be fun to dress nice for a day.  No.  I was so uncomfortable and self-conscious all day.  I second and triple guessed myself all day.  Every word that came out of my mouth was met with harsh internal criticism and was replayed over and over and over in my head.

I remain convinced that everyone was staring at and judging me all day.  I hate being this paranoid.  All day, I just wanted to find a nice place to hide.  I wanted to run home and bury myself under the covers until people stopped being so scary.

On top of that was worse-than-usual perfectionism.  I struggle with perfectionism on a daily basis, but it was a lot worse today, for whatever reason.  I have been consumed with fear of failure because of my imperfections.  I have felt so overwhelmingly helpless all day.

You know that impossible feeling?  That absolutely paralyzing feeling of incapability?  Yeah, that has been my day.  I am overwhelmed with my inadequacies, with my disabilities.

I hate, hate, HATE wallowing in my own self pity, but it has just been that kind of day.  So now I’m trying to enjoy a glass of wine and hoping that tomorrow will be better.

My side effects are finally subsiding.  My sleeping is normal, which isn’t to say that it’s good, just back to the normal bad, which is less bad than prozac bad.  Oh, how I miss good, restful sleep!

The sweating is manageable now, thankfully.  It’s almost gone.  I quit using the medicine after my last post because my hands started peeling the next day and continued to peel until yesterday.  It was disgusting.  And it was super distracting, seeing as I also have dermatillomania (impulsive picking).

But now my hands are back to normal.  I never thought I’d be so glad to have dry hands!

Suffice it to say, I am in no hurry to increase my dosage again.  I’m still so far from taking a dose that would affect my OCD.  I so badly want relief, but this latest round of side effects was pretty awful.  I’m not sure that I’m ready for them to be even worse.  I guess this is just going to take awhile.
Any advice?  Is just wish there were a way around the side effects.  I wish there were an easier way to fight OCD.  This just seems so impossible sometimes.