Courage Within the Chaos

Over analyzing is another issue for me.  The constant need to understand why things are the way they are.  I come up with answers but always have more questions.  It's an endless cycle.  A few years ago I decided to take a course in psychology.  I was afraid my ocd would interfere and spoke with the professor and the university's counselor/psychologist about it.  They assured me that I was intelligent enough and encouraged me to go for it.  After being out of school for so long it was difficult for me to get in the swing of things.  Juggling just the one course and being a mom, was taking its toll on me.  I doubted my work was good enough.  I analyzed whether I was doing the right thing or not.  It would take me 20 minutes to walk to the university.  I felt out of place among the younger students.  My anxiety grew and I would find myself counting my steps, all the way from home to school.  In one of the last classes we touched upon mental illness.  The subject of ocd came up.  I was sitting in the front and the professor glanced at me.  He knew that I knew all there was to know about ocd.  He explained it to the class about the compulsion to wash one's hands over and over again.  The students laughed and made jokes about ocd.  I wanted to stand up in front of all of them and tell them there was nothing funny about it.  I wanted to tell them, that it was a roller coaster ride through hell with no stopping.  I didn't though because I felt like they were laughing at me.  I sat frozen feeling like a victim of society.  After class the professor apologized to me.  I told him that if I could change anything, that it would be that he not use only the compulsive hand washing as an example.  People who see ocd prortrayed on T.V. end up with the illusion that ocd is just about washing hands.  It's not.  It's so much more.

Another part of my ocd has to do with picking my skin.  The correct word for it is trichotillmania.  I think this is the most disgusting part and is what troubles my psychiatrist and family doctor the most.  I pluck the hairs out of my legs with tweezers.  One by one I pluck each ugly black hair out.  The black hair under the skin must get out no matter what.  I would spend an hour on each leg every day, obsessed with trying to pick out every single hair.  Ingrown hairs would make me even more determined.  I would dig and dig.  It would bleed, but I would dig more.  I couldn't stop until I got it out.  It felt like a matter of life or death.  I would get such a high when I got one out and saw the black root.  I had managed to get rid of something ugly that was inside me.  What a relief but it was brief because there were so many more to conquer.  I felt so defeated every time.

To make things worse and increase the anxiety I suffer from scrupulosity.  Scrupulosity is usually about religious obsessions.  For me it wasn't about religion but had more to do with spirituality.  I have high morals and hyper-responsibility.  I am obsessed with a life filled with spirituality.  I am very hard on myself and feel I am never doing enough to help improve human lives.  There is always someone who needs me, someone who needs "saving".  I feel responsible for taking care of everyone.  It is a huge burden and often I neglect myself in the process.  I never measure up to my standards and always feel like a failure.  I am obsessed with saving the world and yet I am "dying" inside.