Latest / Living Uncertain an OCD Podcast / Moving Targets (OCD)(Episode 3)
Transcript
- Marc & Stacee: Hey there, I'm Stacey and along with my husband Mark, we wanna thank you for living uncertain with us again. Welcome to the podcast where we talk about all things related to OCD and ERP. We've titled today's episode, Moving Targets because that is a key component of OCD. If you have OCD, you have to be aware that it will always try to find a way to sneak into your life. For example, when I talked about in the past episode, people pleasing and the need to... Opening: Hello, and welcome to the podcast, Living Uncertain. This podcast is dedicated to obsessive compulsive disorder, OCD, and the primary treatment, exposure response prevention, ERP. OCD comes in many forms, such as contamination, perfectionism, checking, harm, superstitious, religious or moral, sexual orientation, and or relationship. ERP is the gold standard to treating OCD. Marc & Stacee: And when we got married, you... Thank you for joining us on today's episode and for living uncertain with us. We are not therapists and this podcast is intended to provide information and support. It should not replace traditional means of seeking help from a licensed mental health professional. If you like this episode or would like to hear more, please like, subscribe, or share with someone you think may benefit. weren't driving. We had two cars. sold one car because back then I thought we were, ⁓ we're saving money. We're newly married. We're wanting to buy a house, save on gas, car insurance, all of the maintenance that goes along with a car. And unfortunately, now looking back, I realize that was probably one of the earlier days of your OCD that I now can look back and say, yeah, we got married. Opening: and it focuses on deliberately confronting fears, the exposure, while refraining from compulsive rituals, the response prevention. With repeated exposures and without engaging in compulsions, we learn to tolerate anxiety and break the cycle of intrusive thoughts. We are a married couple that have faced both the challenges of OCD and the incredible healing that ERP can provide to your marriage, family, and your home. As a person who lives with OCD, Marc & Stacee: leave conversations and situations just right. That's where it started. But into my 20s, I began to develop intrusive thoughts and an intense fear of death, as well as the need to check and recheck often dozens of times while I was driving. For instance, the intrusive thought that I'd hit someone and I'd have to check my mirrors until it felt just right. And then I was no longer looking forward and it became quite a safety hazard for me. that absolutely was your OCD. And in the beginning, it was fine because we worked close to each other. were kind of on the same schedule. It wasn't a big deal. ⁓ Then we ended up adopting our first son and ⁓ then doctor's appointments started to happen. Dentist appointments started happening. It became so obsessive and so intrusive that I stopped driving. And we'll get into that later in today's episode or maybe down line. When I was in college, I became obsessed with writing and rewriting to-do lists, any assignment that was in written form, and it had to be, ⁓ you guessed it, just right. And just when I would think maybe I would have it under control, another worry would creep in really quickly and it was never with my permission. Opening: I am much more than this diagnosis. We all can be. Marc & Stacee: And it became a little bit more challenging because I was the one that was having to coordinate my schedule to, to take them to those appointments, which I think you as a mom wanted to really do and go to those appointments, but sometimes you didn't because I was the one driving. So there was a lot of times, you know, up till probably even the beginning of the year, last year, even you missed out on I now know as well that every time I would convince myself I was okay and convince myself I had it under control and convince myself that I could do better was just my way of engaging in more compulsions. Those were my mental compulsions that I kept hidden from the world, from myself for so, long. So a lot of this podcast will be addressing what ERP is and how it works and how it can change your life so drastically. a lot of those appointments or if you were able to, you were able to go with me, we did them together. Right. But I would say probably 80 % of the appointments, I was going solo. Which, you know, I've done a lot of reading, you know, to kind of help me navigate this OCD aspect with you and, you know, I've been part of different Facebook groups and stuff and reading people's comments and And so when you begin your ERP journey, so that's the exposure response prevention technique designed to help with OCD, you have to keep in mind that if you truly have OCD, it will always find a way to move its target. And if you keep that in mind, that becomes crucial in finding relief because I can say that once I began ERP, I became pretty good at identifying as soon as I would have an intrusive thought, as soon as I would have a new worry. You know, there are a lot of people that, you know, jump into OCD treatment. It's very challenging. It's like doing something you don't want to do, but you have to stick with it, which you did. And I'm truly grateful for that because you and I are on the other side, more on the other side of it. ⁓ But I do know that as we go through this podcast, And I would be able to say now, given the therapy I've had, given the time that Mark and I have spent working on this, that, that's an intrusive thought. That's my OCD coming forward. And I was never able to do that before. you know, there are going to be topics that will come up. You know, we've gone through therapy together and we've talked about Euro CD and how it's impacted me. But I do know that there are going to be times that topics come up that we have not talked about in therapy, which then scares me on how you're going to feel about me on how maybe I hit things or how I dealt with it or. to manage the situation at hand. Right. Well, and you know, it just became so much of our norm that unintentionally I did not mean for you to bear that burden. But now, again, looking back at it, I can't imagine how much pressure you must have been feeling. And you must have had some way of handling it because Mark was as cool as a cucumber when it came to things, and especially as a dad and with our kids growing up and... Our oldest is about to turn 18 now, but when he was younger, it was just, he just was always there. He was always on top of it. He was always ready for anything. He was always willing to go and to do. And now thinking about how much pressure he must've been feeling in addition to just wanting to be the best dad and husband he could be. I spend a lot of time thinking about that now. And there's a lot of residual guilt, even though that time in our life was not intentional. by any means that I was doing that to you. ⁓ But yeah, I think a lot of things are gonna come up through this podcast and there's a reason for that. That's why we're here. We're here to give the perspective of a couple having gone through what we've gone through. The total lows of OCD and the highs of how ERP can really be so effective. We wanna show that. And so I think it's a good. opportunity for us to literally roll the dice and live uncertain, just as we're asking our audience to do every week, because, yeah, things are going to come up. And it will test my abilities as well not to ruminate and give in to mental compulsions. And it's going to be a good opportunity for both of us. I do know that you talk about like, how did I get through it? One thing about you and I that I do know is we deeply love each other. We do. And love is, I think, what has carried me through a lot of these hard times, especially in the first 20 years of our marriage was, you know, was difficult. And let's just take the driving, for example. That's just one small piece that became embedded in our life. There was a point to where you worked in the schools and then you quit that after a couple of years and then you moved into a clinic setting and then we had miles. And I've had a couple of positions in my career, a couple of placements that have taken me far distance-wise and Mark was bearing the brunt of all of that. Mark was... We were getting up early, he was driving me out to where I needed to go, driving back to get our son to daycare and then him to work as well. And then doing that whole thing to get me from work and then get our family home at night. And again, it became so ingrained as part of our norm. It didn't click until more recently. a... Well, I'm just grateful. Honestly, I'm grateful to have gone through this with Mark now because I don't know... He's right, our love has just really guided us through a lot of this and our willingness to never give up on each other has guided us through this. And I don't know that I would have been where I am. In fact, I know I wouldn't be if it weren't for him and his willingness to commit to this process with me, to see it through no matter how hard and challenging that it got. With the driving aspect of it, always wanted to, recently, probably in past two years, you knew you wanted to get behind the wheel. Before you were diagnosed with OCD, you wanted to, so we would practice driving. And when I mean practice driving, with our son turning 15, he was learning how to drive. was very similar to that with Stacey at... 46 years old, learning how to... Oh yeah, because I had given up on driving for 20 years plus at that point. So like we were driving around the block. We were driving to Starbucks and then back through the neighborhood. couldn't, you we weren't even thinking about touching freeways or driving to the grocery store or you driving independently. from me sitting in the passenger seat. And that was one of the first things that you ended up tackling with ERP outside of therapy. Outside of the six to nine hours worth of therapy that we did each week in the building, you were given homework. And that was part of your homework was to start driving. And it's something as simple as you had to go through a fast food restaurant drive through, which our daughter absolutely loves to do. Not great, but she loves to do that. And you had to take a picture of that to show as evidence that you did it. And I remember that day because you were super excited. You called me up and. I was elated, honestly. can say that I'm, I mean, jumping forward now, I had given up on driving, hadn't driven for 20 plus years, didn't think I'd ever get behind the wheel again, never thought that I would feel comfortable ever. And through the process of therapy and driving was one of the very first ERPs that I did tackle with both my therapist, but mostly at home with Mark. under her guidance, ⁓ I'm happy and very proud to say that I drive everywhere now. I drive at night, I drive on freeways, I drive on freeways at night. And I never ever in my wildest dreams thought I would get there. And the confidence that I now have in driving, I can only attribute that to the ERP that I kept exposing myself that I not, I kept putting in the techniques where I didn't engage in the compulsions and eventually it just got easier and easier and it got better and better. And so now I drive. And now thinking about the fact that I take our daughter to her orthodontics appointments or I take our son to his eye appointments ⁓ has become very significant for me. And knowing now that I have. taken a bit of burden off of my husband is a moment of pride for me at this point, I suppose. And relief on my side because I don't have to worry about that. I know that there's now two of us that can tackle those times. And even calling and scheduling an appointment. I was doing that because it was always revolving around my work schedule. And recently, you know, we had to cancel an ortho appointment and you rescheduled it. worked for you even. not even really considering my schedule, which has been a weight lifted off of my shoulders. Absolutely. And again, this is us being our most authentic and most vulnerable selves because our children are currently 17 and 14. And it has taken us this long to get to this point in our life, in our marriage, in our family life. And so this is really how significant those intrusive thoughts can be. Those compulsions can be in really holding you back from living your life. I think the other thing that we wanted to touch on in this episode of the podcast, because it was absolutely the very first thing that I went through ERP for was this all consuming fear of death, my own death that I had that spiked in my early twenties. And I think that was another one that really started to Mark as well. And it started to affect our kids once they got a little bit older because a big part of it became panic attacks. In the middle of the night, in the dead of silence, No pun intended. And I was army crawling down my hallway. I was screaming into the night and I'm waking the kids up. ⁓ absolutely. Waking them up, waking Mark up. I could not breathe. I could not stop. My heart was beating so quickly. I was having intense panic around this topic. And I was having panic attacks pretty frequently several a week at one point in my life. And so I don't want to get into all of the ERP that I did quite yet, because we're going to save that for another episode. But I will say this was the first topic that was covered in my intensive treatment. It wasn't my people pleasing. It wasn't my driving. It wasn't even what happened with our business. It was this all-consuming fear that I had lived with for so long. And again, in my lifetime, I never thought I would feel any differently about that topic or be able to talk about it. And now I do. To the point to where when she was having these panic attacks at night, I would always try to, when it was cold outside, when you live in Arizona, it's... doesn't get cold at night most of the time, but during the winter time when it would and you'd have panic attack in order to help bring you out of those, the only thing I knew how to do was to get you outside. Yeah. The cold weather kind of shocked her system. You know, her frontal lobe was not working at that point. You know, was just, you know, she wasn't firing on any cylinders and trying to shield. the kids from her panic attacks, especially at night, was very difficult. ⁓ her the fear of death, you we couldn't even talk about what we were going to do with our end of life ⁓ process with our bodies. Water cremation, y'all. It's a real thing. Y'all should look it up. I have now. I can attest to what it is. You know, and we'll get into more details as far as how we came up with that and how we now able to talk about that. It impacted the kids, especially at a younger age, when, well, more so as teenagers, you know, growing up, because she did not want to allow them to do different activities. Because then once they became of age to do things, my fears, my intrusive thoughts came, they stopped being... about myself as much and I started to put those on my kids. So if they were to leave the house and I didn't know where they were, even if it were for a moment, it would be, they're gonna die. I'm afraid that something's gonna happen and they're going to never come back. And those intrusive thoughts just kept looping and looping again to the point where I didn't wanna allow them to go out and do anything. And when you have a high schooler, that's what they want to do. ⁓ So I do know that it impacted our kids when they were younger too. They weren't going over to friends' house and spending the night. And that was very, very difficult times before we even knew what was going on. And I was the one that was taking the brunt of those feelings, not wanting them to. But I knew that they needed to have those experiences. And you know. when she would say, they gonna be okay? Of course I would say, yes, they are because I wanted our kids to have those experiences. And then I'd have to ask again. And again, and again, and again. And again. And one of the ones that I remember more recently is when we went to Mission Beta to go sailing and miles. had to sail out in the actual ocean, not in the bay itself. ⁓ And I was on my boat and he was on his boat racing in two different fleets. And you asked, is he going to be okay? Is he going to be okay? And this is something new that I have not told her is I had never done that race out there in the ocean. I had no idea how Miles was going to be. But I wanted him to have that experience and he needed to have that experience. I knew what type of sailor he was. He's very A very good sailor. He knows how to handle himself. And I do also know that different race committees, their number one priority is safety, and they weren't going to allow anything to happen to him. But I had to lie to her. I had to tell her, yeah, I've done it before. He's going to be just fine. No big deal. He had a radio. I had a radio, but, you know, he's doing his own thing. He's racing and Are you confessing live on this podcast that you have lied to me? Yes, to allow our kids to do different activities. Dan, wow. No, I understand. was a necessity at one point. So I completely understand. Yeah. So those are some of those ways that I had to deal with it and to ensure that our kids were able to experience life. before ERP. a big part of why I wanted to get treatment after I knew what it was after I was diagnosed with OCD and I knew how it was impacting me and then how it was impacting my family. It became even more important to me to stay consistent and to get better because I did not want to hold my children back from being able to live their lives. I did not want to be able, I did not want to live like that. ⁓ And so they became a huge reason as to why I didn't give up and I kept going because I knew that this was going to have a positive impact on all of us. Which it has. It's been life changing. My brain feels like it has been rewired and I feel so blessed and so fortunate to be able to say that. I feel so blessed to have a spouse who stayed by my side, who committed to the exhaustion that it takes to do this process. Honestly, I was finally ready. I was ready to make the change. I was ready to get the help. And I think that that's part of what's so important about what we're doing here, Mark and I, is that we are building this community for people to know that it's okay. It's time to get help and to live freely without the shackle of ⁓ OCD. I literally have the phrase live uncertain tattooed on my forearm and I look at it every day. That is how impactful this process has been and I never want to forget it. And I want to keep working on it every day. So next week, I think we need to talk about death. Everything related to death and body farms and cartoon videos. a whole lot now. Yeah. We'll share the whole ERP process next week. And the logarithms that YouTube has learned. YouTube thinks that, I don't know. So, you know, we appreciate you listening to this episode where talking about how your OCD has moving targets. ⁓ And we, know, the rate of these first couple episodes have been more light. You know, when we do get a little bit further in, ⁓ I know we're going to be talking about more how it has impacted me more recently, especially the check ins and how frustrating that was for me every time you had to do a check-in, especially when I'm at work in the middle of a meeting and my phone goes off. You know, I understand people's frustrations when I read some Facebook posts that their spouse just won't give it up. They won't get off of it. It just ruins the whole day. You know, and we'll get more into that. Probably. deeper episodes here as we move forward. I want people to continue to listen to our podcast and know that we're in it with them. Myself, as somebody that's lived with the partner with OCD, there is hope on the other side. It is a lot of work, but they're going to have to be willing to go through that journey. And hopefully you find the right person to help you go through that journey and be your guide, a right therapist. And I'm here too, as a person living with OCD who has lived with OCD for most all of my life, to be able to talk about my personal experience with OCD, with ERP, and how it can just completely change the game. And I want people to know that so that there is hope out there. On behalf of Mark and I, thank you again for living uncertain with us, and we hope to see you all in our next episode. Thank you all so much. Thank you.