Latest / Living Uncertain an OCD Podcast / The What If and the Grace of It All (OCD) (Episode 08)

Transcript

The What If and the Grace of It All (OCD) (Episode 08) · Living Uncertain an OCD Podcast

• Marc & Stacee: I'm Stacey and along with my husband Mark. We want to thank you for living uncertain with us Of course, y'all know this is the podcast where we talk about all things OCD and ERP and we want to welcome you to episode 8 Where we'll be sharing the what-if and the grace of it all Thank you for joining us on today's episode and 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. Here at Living Uncertain, we're building a community of support. 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: We wanted to take the opportunity for today's podcast to discuss two different pieces of the OCD process, or at least the therapeutic process. The first of which is the what if. And the second is giving yourself grace, giving your partner grace, giving your loved ones grace. This is a big undertaking going through ERP and managing your OCD in a better, healthier way. 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: If you and your significant other would like to share your story, we would love to have you on the podcast. Please click on the link in the episode description and fill out the interest form. And so there is going to be times that you have to give yourself and those around you some grace. And that's a lot of what we're going to talk about tonight. The first thing though, is we're going to talk about the what if of it all. And in my experience and in my OCD journey, the what if was always that tiny little voice that started as a little nugget of a worry. And that worry would get bigger and that voice of what if would get louder. Opening: I am much more than this diagnosis. We all can be. Marc & Stacee: And it would get bigger and louder until I didn't realize at the time, but it would begin looping in my head. And it was all I could think about. And it was all I I could wonder about at the time. And I couldn't get it to stop. And in order to get it to stop, I began doing a very ritualized mental, what I've learned now are mental compulsions, but a very ritualized commentary to myself. a pep talk to myself, if you will, in order to convince myself that I was okay, that everything was okay. And when those didn't work, then you would externalize it and put it on to other people. Yes. Which would be myself. Yes. When you did those. Absolutely. When it got too much for your own rituals. Absolutely. Yes. Then I was the one that was the voice of reasoning per se. The reason I could, that I kept my OCD hidden even from myself for so long was because I didn't have anyone or I wasn't necessarily externalizing that reassurance as much. I was depending more on the mental compulsions earlier on and then I started to ask my family for reassurance and then by the time Mark and I met and were married, I very much depended on him for that constant reassurance. And so for me, those mental compulsions were really the staple of my OCD. And that became so naturally a part of my life that I didn't even realize that that's what it was. And it's always the what if. Because you know when you have OCD, you can't necessarily live uncertain. It's not easy for us. We like control, we like certainty, we like to make sure that everything is okay. And in that uncertainty becomes anxiety and intrusive thoughts that then you have to get do compulsions to get out of. So the what if was always there. And I've seen that a lot written now and I've heard other people discuss it in terms of their own journey with OCD and ERP that it's always a what if, what if this happens? What if that were to happen? What if she thinks, what if they want? And it becomes so intrusive that it really does take you away from living in the present and being a part of your everyday life. Which is very difficult when you have a family needing to manage a household. Yep. Needing to manage life. know, when you're always constantly just thinking about those what ifs, you know, and you're not in the present moment. ⁓ You know, and there are sometimes like I have noticed with when I see the what ifs become a little bit more is when they're more stressful events in life, holidays can become one of those stressful events or different gatherings to where you're maybe not as much in control and you want to anticipate what might happen. It says what ifs. ⁓ yeah. That's the cornerstone of OCD. We like to anticipate. We like to guarantee ourselves in some form or format so that we never have to feel that anxiety that comes with the uncertainty of it all. Yeah. Which unfortunately then does not make those special times enjoyable for you or did not. I agree. And as a spouse, it definitely did not make them enjoyable because you were always coming at me or checking in with me and to make sure that what had happened or what might have happened or what might will happen type of thing. Yes. You know, to make sure that it was all going to be just right. Very much loving things to be just right and loving things to be just the way that we saw them going in our head. Because anything out of that was too much to bear. And the anxiety would then push the compulsions. And I think when I mentioned one of our topics in a different podcast, an earlier one, was the idea of moving targets. And I think that becomes really important when you are talking about this what if worry is that over the years, those what if worries were always about something different for me. It wasn't necessarily always about the same thing. was just this little something would happen, something would be said or not said. I would write something or say something and it was just this little piece of my brain that would start the worry train. And then the mental compulsions would finish it. But then it would bring it back up again. Something else would happen. Another target would come along. I would say something else that I wasn't sure of or I would write something else that I questioned. it kept happening day in and day out until I finally got the intensive treatment and the ERP and feeling much better. better than I've ever felt in my life now. But that's not to say that I don't have OCD sitting here with Mark today and that I'm not going to have it tomorrow or even next week. And while ERP is incredibly helpful and I feel so much better, it is a constant. It's going to be a part of my life and something that I'm always going to have to be aware of and do my best to try to overcome. It's almost like taking a daily medication pill that you have to. be on top of, know, continuously doing the ERP and not skipping moments and, you know, having to work through different aspects because you know it's not going to go away. Absolutely. And, you know, when Stacey talks about some of those, those worries or those, those pieces, those little nuggets that started to creep into our mind, you know, something that doesn't have OCD, that, you know, it's very easy for us just to say, Why are you sweating that? That's just ridiculous. I never thought of that. I'm kidding. But yes. And there are many times I would say that, but not before even your diagnosis. And it just seemed kind of ridiculous to me that you were fixating on something so small. And now that I see it from a different perspective and a different lens, I can absolutely see. why Mark would have said things to me like, hey, let's not worry about that. That's the small stuff. We don't sweat the small stuff, right? That's something we've heard as well. But for those of us who have OCD, that small stuff becomes so big, it's hard to ignore and it's hard to leave it behind. And if it was only that easy to just not worry about it or to not think about it, ⁓ I've considered that many times over the years too. I, in fact, that's probably become one of the ritualized things that I've said to myself because I wanted it to be true so badly and I wanted to live that freer life and I couldn't figure out why I couldn't do that. But of course I didn't know that that's that it was OCD until now. So when we when we started, you know, going through therapy and together to to work on your OCD and doing ERP. We took it in systematic chunks. Yes. You know, you have a wide range of different OCD traits. ⁓ But we had to pick ⁓ one or two things to work on every single week. But it was very systematic. Yes. You know, we did start off with the death aspect. We did. And then and then we layered in the the people pleasing, you know, to where you couldn't send the emojis and, you know, or checking in where the kids were. You know, so we started to kind of do like a layered sandwich with it. Until we first it was an onion. Now I'm a layered sandwich. Right. Really beautiful. Thank you. But we didn't just. start off with the full grouping of everything. We started off small and we grew and every week we would add on a new component, a new component, know, something new. But once I was in the intensive, it was every week. There was something new every day that I was supposed to manage through ERP. We were constantly looking, both Mark and I, for... what can be an ERP moment, what can be an ERP moment today? And we were in a constant new norm, if you will, of practice. We had a lot of homework. so when you're going through the ERP treatment, you you go three, six, nine hours a week, usually in, if it's an outpatient type of scenario, you know, there are programs where it's inpatient. You go through those, but yours was outpatient because you had to live your you're trying to live your day-to-day life. with me being a part of those sessions, we are able to then tailor your homework. And I was able to be part of that process to make sure that you were following through that homework. And without that accountability to Mark and then to my therapist, I would not have made the progress that I did. Mark was instrumental in my being able to overcome as quickly as I did and to be able to maintain those skills even now that were out of the intensive phase of the treatment, but we're still actively in treatment because again, the OCD doesn't just magically disappear. And we might've been working on one aspect of your OCD, but it didn't mean that we were forgetting the pieces that you had already learned. No. those pieces would come up from time to time. And some of the moments of ERP that I had to dive into, they were particularly challenging. I then did depend on Mark to be my... Barometer. Thank you. That's the word I was looking for. That's it right there. ⁓ boy. Yes, I was looking to him to be my barometer to see... Is this OCD or is this just Stacy? what is, where do I stop and my OCD begins or vice versa? So for example, when I was working through my people pleasing tendencies and my text messaging was a big part of that and my use of emojis and my use of especially exclamation marks and it was literally a compulsion that I could not leave a text message without. many, many of those on everyone that I sent. And so I gained a strategy in therapy, clear, concise and quick, a CCQ. And I had to mine my CCQs while I was texting, which meant zero emojis, zero punctuation. Appropriate punctuation. Okay. Yes. But wow, that was actually that proved to be one of the most challenging for me. because the compulsion to do it a different way and to be so uncomfortable texting while I was minding my CCQs was very challenging. And it's that moment too. It's that living in that uncomfortable, uncertain moment. That's how you make an impact with OCD, learning how to live in the uncomfortable moment. And that was one I remember. And I needed Mark's help. to stay accountable. I'd be like, want to just put a little emoji in there. No one will know. And here's the piece about that. She could not show me her phone and say, look at this message. Because once again, that's a check in. What I would have to do, and this is where that trust layer comes in with this process, is I would take a look at her messages then afterwards to see if she had sent multiple. emojis or whatever and that would be my check-in on her progress and then we would have to have that conversation during our therapy sessions whether or not she was doing that or not and that's hard you know to have that that trust you know with a you know your significant other like they're prying into your personal space your phone is your personal space and everything but I needed that though without him doing that I wouldn't have maintained that accountability and I wouldn't have progressed without him quote unquote throwing me under the bus on more than one occasion with our therapist during our sessions, I would not have made the progress. I trust this man more than you will ever, I could ever say in words. ⁓ And so yeah, the trust factor is huge in OCD and ERP therapy. So with those. emojis, think that was like, you know, we're, we're pretty emojis when we started with technology. that's a very kind way of saying that we're Gen Xers everyone. And yeah, we lived without the internet and now we live with it. So, so emojis were a cool thing when they came around like, ⁓ let's try these emojis. And then you start using them and kind of just becomes your daily habit. And it's funny, like when she's going through her you know, through her ERP with that, you start to look at your own messages going, ⁓ my goodness, I probably threw a couple too many emojis in there or there's that. And even our therapist has said, you know, I'm sending these messages because you're working on that. And she knew you were working on that as part of your ERP. She was recognizing it in herself that she was doing it. know, it's like, you know, I think as a society, we just got so used to absolutely just throwing around a bunch of emojis and messages when it doesn't really need to be there. And when you think about some of these things, that have become part of my OCD journey or some of these things that became my compulsions. And I share these because I'm hoping that if there's someone else out there, a listener out there, someone that you know that might be dealing with something very similar or the same thing, that they're not alone. But when I hear these come back to me now, I think, goodness, that's such a... I had a compulsion to send emojis. Like that is hard to believe. Almost does sound very silly, yes. And to this day, I rarely send emojis. It's like I can't bring myself to do it now. To my kids, yes, Mark, occasionally, of course. ⁓ But I am very good now at keeping the personal personal and the business business, et cetera. And I wasn't so good at that before, but I am now. ⁓ But when you're in that moment or when you're recognizing that this is part of the... The onion, this is another layer of the onion, if you will. It does mean something. It is a bigger deal. It is a bigger thing to have to overcome. So you're now a year and a half, almost a year and a half past from when... ⁓ the big day for us, was February 19th. And that's kind of like our bullseye, our target, our timeline when all of this stuff started. And then now we're where we are right was the day that one door closed and this new door opened. Many more doors have opened for us since then. Absolutely. ⁓ But we still are in therapy. This is not something that has slowed down for us. We're down to every other week now, which is good. Sometimes it's once a month, depending on the need. But recently, there are some stressful stuff that has come up. And our therapist has said, okay, you have stressful stuff that comes up in your life. And a lot of people, it's holidays or this or that. It can be anything that can be a stressor in your life. comes around, work and kids and home and... and things get busy and things get overwhelming. And like Mark said, yeah, stressors kind of pop up and this is where the grace of it all comes in. Because, you know, and working with our therapist, she said, it's okay to not make everything an ERP moment. It's okay to still fall back into some of those rituals of OCD is not great, but sometimes your stressors are so great that you have to focus in on those and deal with those pieces. And I'll use an example, like if somebody happened to pass away and that did not happen to us, but if somebody did, you can't necessarily work through ERP and deal with the loss of somebody you love at the same time. she has given Stacey recently the grace to, you know, back off and myself on the ERP because we were still going through the exposure therapy. We're still working through it. But with stressful moments in our life, you know, I'm not going to necessarily call her out on different scenarios that are happening. She gave us permission to give ourselves grace. Yeah. to say, if life is throwing some curve balls and it gets a little stressful, put ERP on the back burner. ERP will always be there. Now in our case, and thank goodness for that, we'd have already been through the intensive, we've already been on the other side of what it is to think about life differently, to think about OCD differently, and so the idea that we can put ERP on the back burner is a bit easier for us. And when this stage of life passes us, and we're able to focus back in, the ERP will come back because I want it to, because I'm ready for it now. And I know that if I don't stay on top of my ERP. outside of the times when we might be going through a stressful stage, then I will regress a bit and I've come too far to do that. And I think that there's so much living to be done on the other side of where OCD keeps you kind of shackled that it will. the ERP will always be there. Give yourself grace that it doesn't have to be every single moment of every day. Or if you have an ERP moment and you quote unquote fail because you regress into your compulsions, that's okay too. It is not gonna be a perfect scenario. ERP just will be there and it will get you through the next time. Can I talk about the other night? ⁓ Well. Why don't you start and then I'll let you know, because I actually don't know what you're talking about. But OK, here we go. This is this is it. We are real. are authentic. We are completely raw with what our journey has been. And so let's bring it on. So we've talked about this in the past with panic attacks and for Stacey, they usually come on. ⁓ goodness. Late at night. And, know, to the point to where, yes, I will be sleeping because I do fall asleep pretty fast and. You know, I can stay asleep for the most part, you know, where you're not the best sleeper in the world. And but you have not had a panic attack in probably over a year at night. But but this past, you know, night, you did happen to have one. Yes. But you felt it was coming on. You told me it was coming on. But I will tell you this, just, you know, just because we were not allowed or we are to be able to give ourselves some grace with not doing ERP. You haven't had those experiences for about a year. I had to let you go through it in ERP during that moment. Did you though? Did you really have to let me go? didn't have to, but I sure wanted to. Did you? Because I absolutely love to watch you, you know, scream in the middle of the night. Yeah, was a pretty It was a pretty wild one. Yeah. Yeah. And it went on for a little bit. It was my first in a very, long time. And again, it was the panic attacks had ceased too because of all of the ERP and the intensive treatment. And so to have another one like I did the other night did come on suddenly and surprisingly. And one of the things that we were taught early on is that if I do have anxiety, if I do panic, if this does happen, I have to just let my anxiety rise to a level where I can bring it back down myself. I cannot seek Mark. I cannot seek to him for reassurance or help me regulate. I have to self-regulate. And so in this moment, even though we're in a more stressful stage of life and things are happening. And I had a panic attack. I rolled over and I let her have it. And I did. And I had a full on panic attack and I got my anxiety up there. He did allow me to have that ERP moment. He helped me work through that and I gave myself an ERP moment in that regard because I had to get myself back down to good. I had to self-regulate. where I was, which was sky high to a 10 plus, all the way back down to where I was a one. And I felt it come down. I felt that moment of, ⁓ I got up there. I was uncertain. I was uncomfortable. I was anxious. And I didn't, nothing happened. I'm still here. I'm still able to be in another moment now. And perhaps because I didn't go through a compulsion to stave off the panic attack and I let the panic attack happen, Now I realize I don't have to have a compulsion every time I get anxious. Now I hope that, you know, my panic attacks continue to stay on the We don't have another one for sure. Quite a while. Let's hope. hope. Let's go down that road. And I honestly think we will because your body and your mind has not experienced that in such a long time that is every time I would have Mark help me regulate. with a panic attack that just started the cycle all over again. Yeah. I didn't want this one to stop. And as the spouse, is where I had to pick, you know, was this the moment to do that ERP or not? And it's hard to see you go through that, you know, to go through that panic attack. But I knew it was the right moment to do that. But during the day, when we were having conversations about the stuff going on in our life, I know that that's not the moment to do the ERP. You know, so I, you know, I'm able, you know, it's hard to be that person standing on this side to regulate per se when we're doing the ERP or not doing the ERP. And I think she trusts me enough to. You have to trust that person to do it. He is, he is going to have to be the person that regulates the ERP because certainly as the person who lives with OCD, Although I say I'm ready for the ERP, I'm ready to do it. I mean, you know, it's not great. It's not fun, but it is helpful and it is nice to get past that hurdle. But I would never be able to regulate it for myself like I trust Mark to do it for me. that's a big part. You and I been together over 20 years and it's a trust aspect. know, I know I've hurt you by you know, not necessarily giving into your compulsions and you've gotten mad at me and. Yes, I would say as far as I get, I get mad, but I, you've not hurt me because my logical brain tells me that we're doing the right thing and he's doing the right thing. My emotional side wants to say back off, right? But no, it's good. But there are times that you do get mad. just before we started recording this episode, I showed you an email that I had sent. you're like, well, why didn't you ask me about that? Because unfortunately, I know what your OCD brain is going to tell you. Why are you going to send that? And sometimes it's better to ask for forgiveness later than to argue with you about it before doing it. Wow. And because I know it's the OCD and sometimes, you know, it's a spouse, it's hard to battle OCD. It's an irrational thought. you are never an intrusive thought. And it's a thought process that, you know, the person we're never going to win that battle. You know, and that's where the ERP really comes into play is it's to if she is willing to participate in it, if your spouse is willing to participate in it. It is making it is very uncomfortable, but sometimes there's times that, you know, as the, as a spouse, you don't want to have to battle why you do something or not do something. And sometimes it's better to ask forgiveness later. I can understand. You know, yeah, you know, so, you know, that's, it's that grace too. It's, know, she's giving me grace on my side after, you know, I have sent an email or have done something and, know, and I think you've given me that grace too. I have and well, certainly you've given me a fair share of grace. So I think it goes both ways and and when you know, the whole premise of this podcast is that we are a married couple. went through the OCD ERP intensive treatment process together. He was never absent for a session. He helped me stay accountable. We brought homework home to do ERP during the week so I could make quicker progress. ⁓ Because it's important for us to share that it takes a lot of love, a lot of trust, and a lot of work to stay on target, to stay consistent. It gets exhausting, but you have to stick with it. And once you stick with it and jump the hurdle, man, the stuff that's on the other side, life changing for both of us, I think. Yeah. And I don't want, you know, If there happened to be anybody out there that we actually know that listen, you know, has listened to this episode or whatever, or anybody down the road that might hear it that actually know us, you know, I don't want anybody to sit there and go, ⁓ my goodness, I feel so sorry for them. I feel so sorry for them. I feel so sorry for them. You know, that I never want anybody to ever say or feel because this has been the most rewarding journey. It really has. That I have gone through with you. It's built our relationship a lot stronger. You know, to see you get the support that you need to be able to live your life to the fullest. To be able to see that translate to our kids too, to see them be able to live their lives to the fullest that they can with limitations as a parent. That's what we have to do. You know, and of course they're not going to like that sometimes, but You know, we're doing the parent thing, you know, but I don't want anybody to sit there and go, man, I really feel sorry for them. Or, you know, why? Why did you know? sorry that Mark had to marry her with all that stuff. OK, all right. Let's not go crazy here. OK. But I will tell you, this has been the best ride that I have been. It really has. And I totally agree. And I could not have done it without him. We couldn't have done it without our therapist who is one of the most amazing people I think that we've ever known and that has come into our life at this amazing time that we needed it. So just thank you for that. 100 % over and over. And hopefully if you are somebody that is going through, you know, ERP, hopefully you find a therapist that specializes it, has a deep understanding of it. because just like a medical doctor, they can all have their specialties and whatnot. Find somebody that is actually, has a good understanding of OCD and the different types of treatment. mean, ERP is just one of them is kind of the gold standard. There's a couple other ones that people will ⁓ use with patients that have OCD, but make sure you find that person that. you can connect with too, because it is a trust relationship that you have to have with your therapist that they're going to guide you down the right path. Absolutely. Because I do know that you probably felt like, ⁓ my God, why is she making me do this? This is ridiculous. Why are we going to a cemetery? ⁓ that was quite an adventure. Yes. And I do know that I had some misgivings throughout the process on occasion. ⁓ But when you click with a person, you know, in our case, our therapist, it's just the right. fit the right ⁓ connection, it does make all the difference as well. And we were very fortunate to get that too. And that's why I think we're both so adamant about talking about what Mark just mentioned, which is, if you find the right person and find someone who specializes in it and who gets it and who gets you, it also really makes all the difference. But don't forget to give yourself some grace through the intensive part, through the not intensive part. every day, every week. So if you happen to want to know a certain topic, if you're out there listening that you would like us to maybe talk about of something that has come up in our lives, shoot us an email. If you or know somebody that would like to join our show, please fill out the submission form and we'll get back to you as far as time. But we'd love to share your stories too as long as we continue to share ours as well. Thank you for listening to our episode today. And thank you for living uncertain with us, y'all. Appreciate you.