If you have OCD like me, you have experienced intrusive thoughts, also known as aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrggggggggghhhh. Intrusive thoughts are pretty much just that: random things that invade your mind and that can include some disturbing images or emotional reactions. I have been dealing a lot of with this lately.
Triggering content below, don't read on if you don't want to get into heavier stuff.
Most of my intrusive thoughts right now center on suicide and death (Disclaimer: you can have suicidal thoughts or ideations but NOT be actively suicidal, so don't freak out. I'm not going to kill myself. I am an old hand at this type of stuff). One of my main intrusive thoughts is that I am afraid I am going to lose control and commit suicide. Another intrusive thought I have is about dying and death. I have obsessive thoughts over aging and death. Every day lately death thoughts occupy my mind. I run on the treadmill at the gym, pounding away to music. Why am I running on a treadmill? My mind asks me. Because you are trying to be healthier so you DON'T DIE AS SOON, my mind blasts back. I take a multivitamin supplement. Why are you taking that? My brain asks me. Oh, that's right, TO AVOID DYING. Seatbelt goes on in the car, intrusive thoughts about mortality set in. I start counting my gray hairs, because it's my hair follicles slowly dying. I had a tooth pulled at the beginning of the year; another symbol I'm dying slowly. My daughter is getting ready to celebrate her 8th birthday. She is growing up, which means I am getting old and closer to dying. And on and on on and on. I can't seem to pull myself out of these morbid death obsessions. They occupy most of my mind these days.
I am considering making an appointment with my psychiatrist for an anti-depressant, but after just coming down from a hypo-manic phase, anti-depressants may not be an option. Therapy has been a little helpful, but it's expensive and I haven't been able to go regularly.
Now, there's another side of me, the logical side of me (which I call the Spock Me), that I am slowly learning to nurture and listen to as much as I can. The Spock Me looks at me and says: We all are mortal and going to die at some point. No ifs, ands or buts. No avoiding it. We may improve our health and therefore improve our experience on this earth in our bodies (sometimes), but eventually our bodies will give out. Besides, Spock Me points out, everyone has done it. There are loads of cemeteries full of people all over the world who have died just fine. Some were peaceful deaths, some violent, some young, some old, some healthy, some sick. Who knows. I am an Atheist, so I don't think there's anything after this. All those headstones are are rocks marking a story of someone who once lived and is now nothing. Oh, well, Spock Me says with a shrug. It is what it is.
Another intrusive thought I've been having is that I will not sleep well at night and cause an accident the next day and kill someone with my car, or miss an alarm and not take my daughter to school, or miss work and get fired. That leads to panic and anxiety about not sleeping, and well, you can see where that goes. I have been off of sleeping pills for several months now, and am relying on a mindfulness app called Calm and my normal bipolar medications to help me sleep at night. The intrusive thoughts are causing panic attacks, and it just becomes this vicious cycle. Depression has set in on me today. It's a lot to take in. I have had trouble falling asleep, then I snatch a few hours and wake up early and go work. Then I come home and fall asleep even when I'm trying not to, then my sleep gets fucked. Arg.
How do I manage? I'm not sure, really, if it's called "managing" as I feel I do it rather poorly. But some things I do when I am in the middle of OCD hell:
- listen to Spock Me and counter irrational thoughts with logic
- write in a journal or on here about what I'm going through
- seek support online from OCD resources specifically relating to obsessive/intrusive thoughts
- get on Twitter and read about others' experiences with OCD (it helps to know gobs and gobs of people out there are going through the exact same thing).
- try to maintain a healthy lifestyle (I'll get back to you on that, I've started about six weeks ago. I think it will take several months of working out and healthy living to see if I am having any effect on my mental health)
Here's a cool website I found specifically relating to OCD intrusive thoughts.
Another informative website on OCD is linked here. This one goes into detail on Ruminations, or Morbid/Metaphysical Obsessions.
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