London Calling! Conquering OCD

 

Deep breath in, deep breath out. Because I’m dedicating my first post of the year to some “real talk.” A chance to just kind of level with everyone and be a bit vulnerable for a second. Which means sharing with all of you that… well… it’s been a bit of a struggle lately.

As some of you may (or may not!) know, I was diagnosed several years ago with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Contrary to what many people may believe, this isn’t just a sharp sense of “liking things clean.” OCD is, in fact, an often-times debilitating mental disorder that has wreaked all kinds of havoc on many people’s lives. It is, in my experience anyway, an all-consuming need to have some sense of control in a world that feels like it’s spinning hard off its axis with every second that goes by.

And through that burning need to control something, my compulsions, several of them, were born. Compulsions that I have battled on and off through the years as flare-ups of my condition come and go. Compulsions like constantly checking the house to make sure anything that could set a fire is unplugged and turned off. Compulsions like not eating for hours or even days at a time because I’m afraid of getting food poisoning. Compulsions like locking myself away in my house and hiding from the world because I’m too afraid of.. well.. (gestures around at everything).

It’s that last one that’s been a real problem lately. And it is the one that makes me feel the most troubled about my condition. Because even though I would classify myself as an introvert at the end of the day, I actually do love going out. I love frequenting local haunts, meeting up with friends, and catching a show at the community theater. I love shopping at bookstores. I’m a big fan of antiquing. I’m also a big fan of grabbing a drink at a local establishment and just people watching.  

But what I really love is travel. Packing up my suitcase and jet setting across the world to some strange place to learn my way around and have an adventure. To see the world through another lens, and to experience another way of living. Sometimes a way of living that is much harder than my own and reminds me of how truly lucky I am. I think that’s one of the most beneficial things about traveling. How much you learn about yourself.

With all my recent struggles lately, all of these things came to a screeching halt. I found myself staying in most nights and going to bed quite early (much too early, actually). My passport started collecting dust in its forgotten corner of my office. My suitcases remained painfully empty. Even with my husband being away in California, I didn’t take that many trips to see him. Even though I’ve had an ongoing love affair with California since I moved there when I was twenty-three and lived there for twelve years.

Suffice to say, my OCD was getting to a point where my need to control got out of control. So, I reached out for help (which is never an easy thing to do). I’ve had many talk therapists in the past, and while they were each wonderful, none of them actually had any training in OCD. This time around, I decided I wanted to talk to someone who knew OCD in and out, and who would therefore know exactly what I needed. So, I turned to the newly minted gold standard of OCD Treatment – Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy.  

It sounds more complicated than it is. Put simply – ERP therapy is “go do the thing you’ve been avoiding because you’re afraid.” If you’re afraid of food that makes you sick – go eat that food. If you’re nervous about driving because you were in a terrible accident recently, go get behind that wheel. If you won’t go out to the theater anymore because of fears of noisy stomach upset, then buy your tickets and embrace your singing gut. All the while, put a freeze on those compulsions. Just don’t do them. Sit with the nervousness and uncertainty. Accept it. Give it space and watch it change.

I will admit I was unsure going in. This all sounded quite scary, and I didn’t know if I had the energy or the courage to see it through. However, I was desperate to break the cycle, so I decided to dive in with a lovely therapist whom I met via the NOCD app (worth looking into if you’re an OCD sufferer!).

We started with some of the easier to fight compulsions. Like leaving the house without doing my routine (and quite detailed) checks of anything that could start a fire. Not as easy as it sounds, believe me, but I worked my way up to leaving for an entire weekend without doing the checks. Then we moved on to some of my bigger compulsions like my weird fears around food and getting sick. We spent a couple sessions eating spicy curry together over zoom, and sitting with the uncertainty of whether or not I would get sick. Then we tackled the big one. How to get this troubled girl out of the house and back into life.

I concocted the exposure idea for this one myself. Because my husband, who had been working in California for months, told me that his LA stay had been extended by a few weeks. Which was upsetting at the time, but then the idea popped into my head. Perhaps, instead of dwelling in the disappointment at being apart from my husband that much longer, I could turn this into an opportunity. Perhaps, I could create the ultimate exposure therapy. Perhaps I could travel somewhere across the world, by myself, and remind myself how capable and strong I really am. Before I even gave myself time to think about it, tickets were booked, hotels pre-paid, passports were updated and visas attained. Before I knew it, I had locked myself into going to London for two weeks. And although I do have a friend in London, for the most part, I would be completely solo.

I got pretty darn nervous on the plane ride over. Especially since I managed to leave the house without doing a single routine fire check. An exposure on top of an exposure. As the big airplane took me closer and closer to my destination, my nerves kept swelling. My anxieties ticked up. Would the house burn down while I was gone? Would I get through this? Would I figure anything out? Or would I freeze up and not leave my hotel room? Would I curl up in a ball and give up?

My first day in London didn’t go well. I was exhausted and jet lagged from the long flight. I was starving but had no idea where to get a good meal. People were swarming all about the Strand in Covent Garden – which is where my hotel, my home for the next two weeks, was located. A busy area right smack in central London which has easy access to pretty much every part of the city. Which made it very convenient, but also very crowded. All I really managed to do on that first day was get a coffee and pastry from the coffee shop across the street, and cry in my hotel room. Wondering what in the heck I had gotten myself into. Why I had chosen to travel across the world, alone, when I had been struggling so hard with anxiety and mental illness as of late.

But you know – it’s kind of amazing what a good night’s sleep will do. Because I went to bed early and woke up fresh on London time the next morning. I found a delightful café down the street from my hotel and helped myself to my first Full English breakfast (a staple anytime I visit England). Then, I decided to walk around and get familiar with my neighborhood. I surprised myself when I didn’t even bother using Google maps or GPS. I just walked around Covent Garden, losing myself in the scenery, the souvenir shops, and people watching. Despite the rain, I logged over 20,000 steps and discovered a whole bunch of fun ways to pass the time in walking distance from my hotel.

As I got more comfortable with my surroundings, as I kept forcing myself to get my shoes on and go out anytime I got nervous, which was A LOT in those first days, I felt the anxieties of the last several months slowly begin to peel away. Layer by layer. Fear by fear. London, as it turned out, was a master course in Exposure Response Prevention Therapy, and to my great surprise, I was handling it like a champ.

Especially when my friend took me on a weekend trip to the English countryside. A trip within a trip. Although at least this time I had the pleasure of someone’s company! Not to mention someone who knows England like the back of her hand, having lived there for several years now. However, it was still another big dose of ERP therapy, because it was yet another new place to adjust to. New surroundings. New routines. Especially when we first got to our destination in Downton in the dead of night and couldn’t find our way into our Air B&B.

But you know what? I handled each crisis that came up with… well, calmness. Confidence. Assuredness. Things I simply hadn’t been able to access in quite some time. When we couldn’t get into the Air B&B, I calmly stood there and had faith that no Air B&B owner would leave us stranded in the cold in the middle of the night, and when my friend called her, she came immediately. When my friend and I went on a countryside ramble the next day and got a bit lost in the fields and woods, I used a combination of pictures our Air B&B owner had given us and my Google map to steer us in the right direction. (Where we actually FOUND the Mizz-Maze, thank you very much, despite everyone telling us we wouldn’t. More on that in a later post!). When we almost missed our train back to London, in the pouring rain of Salisbury, I didn’t panic. I just hustled my little tooshie through the sloshing puddles and windy streets, reminding myself that even if we missed the train, there would eventually be another. We would figure it out. All would be well.

By the time we got back to London (on the train that we made just in the nick of time), I felt like a completely different person. No longer was I a frightened little woman who didn’t want to leave the safety of my hotel room. No longer did I feel lost and alone in a big, strange city, where I only knew one person who could steer me about. On the contrary, I packed my days full of things to do. Because it’s London. There’s no shortage of things to do! The British Library. The British Museum. Big Ben. Buckingham Palace (the King did not let me in. How rude.) Walking tours. Westminster Abbey (I finally got a ticket to go inside! Stay tuned for a future post). The National Gallery. And theater! Both West End shows and independents! Back to the Future the Musical. Six. Dracapella – an entertaining comedy about Dracula that involved quite a bit of fantastic acapella singing. Any nerves I once had about food got promptly kicked to the curb as I sampled so many different cuisines that I simply didn’t have room for all the leftovers in my hotel’s mini fridge. And all of this I did while hardly using my phone at all, except to take pictures. Lots and lots of pictures!

London, to put it bluntly, healed me. Traveling there by myself, reminding myself how strong and capable I am. That I can, in fact, do hard things on my own. All of it stripped away my OCD fears and helped my fiercely strong warrior self kick her way back to the surface. When it was time to go home, I was happy and relieved. Not because I couldn’t take it anymore, but because I had done it in the first place. I had spread my wings again, and I didn’t get knocked out of the sky. Battered about maybe, but I dealt with it when that happened. I fixed the problems. I figured it out.

Will I get another OCD flare up in the future? I’m sure I will. Because that’s just the way it works, isn’t it? But now I feel armed with a powerful weapon to defeat it. Now I know that all I have to do is get my shoes on and go on an adventure. Maybe not to London every single time, because that’s hardly practical! But there are plenty of adventures just outside my door too. All I have to do is spread my wings and ride the wind. The rest will fall into place. The fears will fade away. The warrior will reemerge. And dang. It feels good to be back. 

 

A FEW ANNOUNCEMENTS!

As the Storm Clouds Gather, the Paperback, is coming at ya February 24 of this year! Pre-order is available now! Click Here for more information! 

My new book, Hold On To Tomorrow, comes out APRIL 7 of this year! It’s coming up fast! Pre-Order links are live, reserve your copy today! Click here for more information!