I’ve never been officially diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder…
I just know for certain that I have a mild case of it. But before I get ahead of myself here, I want to start off this series of posts with a respectful acknowledgment of the people in this world who really do have a formally diagnosed form of OCD. I want to make this statement early on because it would never be my intention to use this very serious condition to exaggerate or amplify my reactions to life’s biggest challenges by flippantly diagnosing myself with something that’s a really big deal and a legitimate reality for some people.
But if you’ve been following my blog at all — and especially if you’ve read all of The Imposition Tour posts — then you already know that I have some very specific struggles with a mild form of behaviors and reactions to stress that present themselves an awful lot like OCD. Now. Most of my issues come out around my perceived beliefs regarding the cleanliness of things in my environment. But it’s more than just the cleanliness of my clothing or the freshness of the towels I use…or the bleach-ensured purity of the sheets I’m sleeping between.
In my own reality, my OCD is much more complicated and intense than all of that.
And…what I’m about to share with you expresses the most extreme version of my reactions to my life when everything feels like it’s spiraling out of my control.
So with that clarified, just so you know, I struggle the most with OCD when it comes to my hands and my feet.
When I’m at my very worst, if I touch something I believe to be dirty or germ-infused, I take the hand that came into contact with those kinds of cooties out of my “touching rotation” until I can thoroughly wash up. That means that I do my best to avoid touching anything else — including the inside of my coat or pants pockets or any other area of the clothing I’m wearing. And, I strictly keep that hand away from my face — especially my mouth and eyes — and, I obsessively avoid touching my hair with that hand, too.
In my mind, a little alarm goes off that’s specifically wired to the hand in question, and so if I so much as move that hand toward something it could touch and further contaminate, I can detect a pulsating sound coming from deep inside of my hand. That internal sensation usually prevents me from touching something with my contaminated hand — even by accident. But the alarm is not foolproof. So while that alarm is locked and loaded and ready to alert, when I’m deep into an OCD struggle, the wiser part of me instantly starts searching for a sink and some soap within seconds of the point of contact with the cootie that got transferred to one of my hands.
To be clear, I prefer washing my hands with soap and warm water to the use of anti-bacterial gels or sprays, but in a real pinch, I can mentally make those resources work until soap and water can be procured. I typically have anti-bacterial products with me when I’m in an extreme season where my OCD is a more pronounced struggle, but I really do like washing my hands over any other type of hand-sanitizing method. But as you might imagine, my feet are much more difficult to sort out whenever they come into contact with something that triggers my OCD because washing my feet is kind of an ordeal — which also makes my foot-oriented OCD the worst!!
Just for the record, I can totally let my feet get dirty — it happens all the time, especially at the weddings I work. I don’t love it, but I can live with it. Dust and dirt are just part of my reality when I’m working a wedding or going for a long hike up a dusty hill, and as long as I’ve been wearing shoes the entire time, I’m good to go. I can endure all forms of dirt on my feet because I know I can wash all of it off the second I get home.
BUT.
WHEN I’M REALLY STRESSED ABOUT MY LIFE…
Things get much more complicated.
If I step on something “unknown” with my barefoot, and, in my mind, if the thing I stepped on is somehow “unclean,” or has “a mysterious origin,” or may have been stepped on by a lot of strangers who don’t care about where their feet have been, my foot actually starts to heat up. I can almost instantly feel a warming sensation blooming on the bottom of my foot, and the bloom usually starts at the point of contact and then spreads outward until the entire bottom of my foot feels extremely hot. Mind you, the heat never gets too hot to handle — thankfully — but having a hot foot does bother me — especially if it lingers. And if it does linger, my foot begins to ache ever-so-slightly, too, and it’s not the kind of ache I want to walk on… Because it might get worse.
So responsiveness to a hot and achey foot is kind of important when I’m deep into my struggles with my control issues.
And the only way I can sort out my foot situation is to thoroughly wash my foot completely with soap and water — and then, after that, I feel so much “safer” if I slip on some sort of shoes that I’ve decided in my mind are “clean enough on the inside.”
(ESSENTIAL NOTE: No shoes are EVER clean enough on the outside — especially if the shoes have ever been worn outside of my own home! And even then, shoe bottoms are pretty much always the devil.)
But all of my shoes — no matter what kind, or what purpose I have for them — get an inner-cleaning on a regular basis with a Lysol wipe or in my washer with a splash of color-safe bleach — which isn’t perfect, but it’s enough.
However, there are some “dirty shoes” in my rotation that are still mentally approved footwear because they are only dirty with my own brand of germs, and somehow, I can cope with that idea most of the time. (When I’m not spiraling out, that is!!) But for me, it’s really just the “mystery germs” that might get on my shoes, and then somehow end up on my feet, that send me down a bad path…
Because the world is FULL of mystery germs.
Now, because of the mental gymnastics required to calm the triggers that take place with my feet, it’s always best if I avoid information about foot germs in general. And, I really do try with all my heart to evaluate the degrees — or the range, if you will — of my “clean-to-unclean foot spectrum” so I can function better in this life of mine. After many years of living with limited control over my personal environment, I’ve had to make some adjustments just to survive, and so I’ve actually learned that my “clean-to-unclean” scale isn’t hardwired and it even has a slightly adjustable default setting. And during times when I’m under less stress, that spectrum can get pretty darn generous!
In fact, during times like these, I can actually allow my foot to come into contact with all kinds of “friendly germs” — which are germs that might come from people I already believe are very clean, or who I like enough to shut off my measuring spectrum for short periods of time. Whenever I can get to this place in my mind, there’s a kind of liberation that comes over me in short spurts because my foot only feels warm — not hot — which is a temperature I can easily live with!
However, if I’m really feeling overwhelmed or like I have zero control over any part of my life, my spectrum settings get down-right wiggy. And, I tend to get completely obsessed inside about the various germs that live and breed inside of the fibers that my feet might accidentally touch! And…please don’t even get me started on the possibilities that could be living and breeding on the floors of a public restroom!! Even on my very best days, using a public restroom is quite stressful for me — and for my feet and my hands…
“So…why am I sharing all of this with you?” you may be asking yourself right about now.
It’s obviously not flattering stuff to admit.
Especially because by admitting all of this on my blog, it only proves to you that things are often extra intense inside of my tidy mind, and it’s blatantly obvious to you now that my world view has some real areas where I’m quite narrow and a bit complicated! And, if you’re one of my friends?! Oh boy. Now you’ll likely never want me to come to your home or spend any time with me in this dangerous, cootie-filled world of ours! And while I hate that admitting my struggles this way may have that effect on my relationships, I guess I want to believe it’s worth it to out myself this way because my struggles with OCD have finally provided me with something…sincere to work with in my life.
You see, very recently, most of my personal journal entries about my OCD reactions have been surprising me — in a good way. And because I’m in a generous kind of mood with myself at this moment in time, I might even be able to call these journal insights a “breakthrough.” Of course, I really don’t want to overstate things here… But let me just say that I’m in a surprisingly open personal headspace at that moment — and, when you get right down to it, this “open headspace” is one that I really don’t deserve to be in.
I’m currently in an intense season of my life where I have almost zero control over anything whatsoever. I’ve been here before, of course, but there have been times in my life where I can’t even journal about my inner feelings because of this acute type of emotional pressure inside of me. The fact is, I’ve been in some version of this kind of “season” in my life now since 2008 — so…perhaps it’s not really a season anymore, but rather, this is just my bleak and uninspiring reality, I suppose!
But I think repeatedly coming to the edge of all of my thoughts this way, and trying to accept that this is all I am…and this is all I have is rather upsetting in a way, and so it’s probably normal for me to feel the kind of stress I’ve been experiencing for the past few weeks. Holding out for so long for something to change or shift in my life has worn me thin, but when I add the stress of a reality I simply can’t control or even understand into the mix of my thoughts, clean hands and feet typically become something I obsess about in a truly manic way.
Yet at this very moment, my OCD is slightly more in check than it usually is — which is kind of awesome news! And while I know my husband still has to endure some incredibly annoying rituals and protections in our home environment, and most of my friends have probably noticed my obvious avoidance of using public restrooms — and that I’m a little freaky about washing my hands lately — I feel like I’m holding steadier than ever when it comes to my internal settings. I’m not totally panicking or falling to pieces inside like I typically do during times like these, and, I’m witnessing my inner monologue from outside of my own madness, versus from the inside where my thoughts tend to wreck me the most.
And this newfound ability to at least temporarily step outside of my mental mania when it comes to my OCD has given me a different way to think about other things in my midst, too. And I seem to have discovered that being wired the way I am offers up a unique way to think about all kinds of things and to orient myself to other realities in the larger context of the life around me that I can’t control either. Things like politics, religion, and other polarizing topics seem to be entering into the workings of my wonky mind, and I can see things differently and with more understanding than I usually can.
Now, I realize all of that’s a pretty loaded premise, but I’m hoping that this short blog series I’ve entitled, An Girl’s OCD Field Guide to Modern Life will help me unpack some of my thoughts in a way that will be useful to me — and, of course, to my readers, too!
But the only way we can find out if I’m right about that is if I start! And at the moment, my hands and feet are clean and ready, and my heart and mind are open and sincere. So let’s see what I come up with for PART 2!
Just so you know, the OCD part of me is sitting on the sidelines of my mind right now with a dubious look on her face and aggressively folded arms, wondering what in the heck I have to say that could be useful in this world — especially because every single thing in my life and all around it seems completely out of control. But for once, the part of me that tries to control things when I feel the most out of control is not in charge of anything at all…and that feels kind of awesome!
