Feelings + things . . . (OCD and me thinking)

Because that's the bestest title I can come up with at the moment.

I don't know why but I'm feeling rather...off right now. And I kinda want to write another journal thingy or even a poem but I'm also pretty tired and think I'll be heading off the Internet soon and doing something else to cope instead... but until then, I guess I felt like spending a bit of time just journaling and such. I would like to get myself to work on journals without them needing to be insanely long and just be able to be okay with a short length journal if that is in fact what I come out with. =]

So yeah.
I'm definitely pretty tired. Didn't get much sleep; fell asleep around 12:30a last night, woke at 2:30a to put away all the shit on my bed and turn my light off, and groggily again at 5:30a when I got a half-asleep bloody nose, bleh. Then I slept more until about 8:30a. I was gonna hang out with Alyssa today but she got sick and I haven't been studying so I figured I could go into school early but I was feeling pretty bleh so just went in to Boston around 2p. My mom came to part of my therapy appointment today. It was good.

Today it was raining. So that felt depressing.
I spent a lot of the morning with my OCD, too. So I was actually pretty surprised I could see the rain as rain and not as the snow that was floating down in my mind from the memories of fetal positions and deep depressions over this past winter.

Had a lot of memories today actually. Not all bad, there were some good ones and funny ones, but still, it didn't help overall. Being tired and already feeling a bit down made me more vulnerable, I think, when it came to having more OCD and not doing much to cope. It's exhausting after a while, and you just don't want to fight it or have the energy to do much of anything...

So my morning wasn't very productive. I wanted to write a cool update/art stuff/DA plans journal but I ran out of time.

I still haven't started studying and that doesn't help with making me feel any nicer. =/
I had really vivid images of me studying way ahead, like a week before, but unfortunately they remained only within existence in my imagination than through actual reality... *sigh* I also have the hiccups right now and it's incredibly annoying.

I did some drawing today though. Actually finished a drawing I had as a WIP before. Made an interesting new drawing too.


I don't know if I told you guys or not, but in therapy and later with my mom in that sesh, we spoke about the summer inpatient opportunities. I need to find out more about the programs they offer, their typical durations, what it'd be like and all that stuff. I'll be calling them about it soon, I think. My mom doesn't especially want me to go but like if it'll help get me better or more to myself again than she's supporting the decision. I'd have to stay up at McLean as inpatient because it's too far to get to for a partial hospitalization. And they do specifically treatment targeted at OCD there, the OCDi program thingy. So there's that I can do.

I have to learn about insurance and the payments for what they'd cover for it too. So it looks like that'll be happening this summer.

Other than that, it'd be finding a job, maybe trying to do the ice cream place again but if I get too triggered, I'd quit and find another job instead. Then there would be outpatient therapy still and DA time and some ATP stuff I'd also like to do. And art all day every day of course And hanging out with friends!

I'm really tired, Maybe it's my sleepiness in general actually, but I just feel .... maybe, hollow? I don't want to do anything really, I'd be okay curling up in the fetal position under a blanket and squeezing onto my stuffed animal dog as a search for comfort.


My freakin' wrists have been hurting lately...fuck shitty angles for keyboard and phone puzzles.

The thought of going inpatient to a facility where I'd be there longer for a week makes me almost queasy to think about. I'm pretty sure I'd get homesick after the first week. It'd be rigorous, likely, with groups, individualized therapy, and other stuff. And that....just sounds exhausting and requiring lots of energy. I don't even know if I'm ready for such a big step towards recovery and treatment. I know a lot of these feelings are due to my OCD in the first place - trying to lure me back into its grip, thinking I "need" it even though it's the very thing mucking up my life at the moment. *sigh*

I have my psych final this Th. Then the WPR requirement (a paper to write) is due on June 2nd. I also see my psychiatrist again next Tu. But after the final and the paper, I won't have any more school stuff to be 'focusing' on or doing. Which does make me a bit uneasy, as I thought about it when I turned in my Phil paper last week... but maybe with a job it'd be different. Or the structure of inpatient would make it be different.


I've mentioned it before with my T about how there are times where my OCD is present and I don't even bat an eyelash at it. Then there are times where I do get anxious about it (as was my primary feelings last fall). But more often now I think I get depressed. And I'm just trying to understand this, because so much of my trouble and my struggle is due to my OCD but I also just relentlessly feel misunderstood. Remember a journal back or two, where I spoke as if my OCD gets the "credit" for when I act on a self-harming thought? (not just SI itself but including suicidal ideation things). Vs. it being something that I did? I don't even know if that makes sense but when I hear my OCD getting the blame for things I feel that  I chose  to do, I just get really frustrated.

I wind up feeling like: Well, fuck it, if my OCD is going to get the blame/the "credit" for why I did X, I might as well fucking go do X.

Almost like, if I'm already irrational, and I can't get the blame for that, then I can do whatever the fuck I want to. I think that's essentially one of my points there

I guess, further, it's like if I act on X thought, because my OCD will get the blame for it (the cause as to why I did X or the reason why I did X) then I can't be held responsible (because I was under the influence of OCD which distorts reality and thus my irrationality is taking the place of rationality and one cannot expect to be behave rationally when thinking irrationally).

Complicated much?

But yeah, I just, it bugs me that so much of the time I hear OCD triggering anxious feelings but I don't hear of it triggering depressed feelings. Because then I feel misunderstood and annoyed because I want to just cross my arms, roll my eyes, and shout "But I'm not anxious! I'm depressed!" There is a difference. I still hold to that claim.


One of the things I've begun to notice and can now put into words as to how the pattern seems to go is this:
Here's some self harm or suicide related intrusive/obsessive thoughts or images >> here's me feeling depressed or down/sad/disappointed, or additionally having been already feeling down prior to this moment or even involving some lack of sleep/eating >> here's more and more and more thoughts of self harm or suicide intrusive/obsessive thoughts or images >> here's me getting hopeless as I project images and unlikely realities into the future of this never getting better or me still suffering in mental illnesses for years >> now there's me getting upset, crying is likely, feeling helpless, desperate, like my throat is choking up, my perspective may be collapsing >> here OCD continues to push, pull and blow holes into my skull >> now fuck it, I can't take this shitty way of living anymore and I will do anything to make it stop / insert acting on the obsessive thoughts of either self harm or attempting suicide.

So damn complicated....
You know, it took me a few months into this ordeal before I realized that sitting in a room and looking and calculating for things you could use to hurt yourself is NOT OCD (although it can be, with different pieces at play) but rather suicidal ideation. Whoops. XD

I feel as though I can be pretty certain at tweezing out if what I'm thinking or feeling is originating from my OCD vs my suicidal ideation but at the same time, it just winds up feeling like it ALWAYS comes back to the OCD, even or maybe BECAUSE I don't believe it is or could be my OCD.


.... In other words still, I think the problem I'm having is that I'm not able to understand myself or my own mental illnesses. And that is particularly upsetting to me. In my mind, if I can't see the enemy, how can I fight against it? (Fight is a poor choice of word for OCD since just letting the moment be is far more helpful and therapeutic than just trying to argue, resist or comply with the thoughts). How will I know when things are getting better vs when they're just gearing up to another crisis? And because I feel like I don't understand these things, I feel that I may not be coming across in explaining them to others and having them understand my predicament.

Sometimes when I hear that my OCD is the one at fault for the intensity of self harm thoughts, I get pissed off and I REALLY want to self harm. Which makes so little sense!! It's as if I'm saying: "Oh, that does NOT make me anxious. I have no problem doing that, see? *SI's*" except I haven't actually self harmed in 11 weeks (which is a seriously wicked length of being free from that for me since I began here and there with it last October).

Again, I feel as though I have to be proving to myself and others that my OCD isn't the only thing bouncing around in my brain. That there's something else going on (maybe like depression? ) But it really just makes me mad. I think it may also be because I don't feel as though I'm getting the recognition that I am the one choosing to NOT injure myself versus it being ultimately decided by some unseen source in my brain called OCD if I did self harm.


Ultimately it's a genuine question of WHAT it is I'm trying to achieve as a response to the intention I have behind an action. And it's not easy to figure out.... Is it that I'm trying to stop the thoughts that I'm having about self harm or suicide by acting on those to try and relieve their pressure? Or is it that my life is so terrible, and I feel so hopeless and awful that I think self harm or suicide is what I should be acting on to get to some kind of end (or make the pain stop)? The former is OCD, the latter is depression. Of course, there can always be both at play too.... minddddd you do NOT make things easy, god!

Lastly, what makes this difficult is that what I would say or feel or do when I am feeling like myself or even just having plain old OCD without feeling upset by it in a saddening manner, is NOT the same as what I would say or feel or do when I'm in a desperate crisis. It makes far less sense and is tailed with a red blinking flag of "you know when's a great time to act on this? NOW! Yeah! Woot!"


And, just to add one last thing to this journal before I depart... One of the things that I'm worried about for its potential existence is the waitlist that may existence with hospitalization for McLean. And also me discussing my OCD, because I'm terribly confused. I think this is due to when I spoke with someone at MGH over the winter break, didn't explain my OCD well at all (because for a while I genuinely could not describe what my OCD was because I couldn't recall it precisely or more so, recognize its new transformation), and before I got my current T, so that MGH didn't have any people who could see me at their hospital and I had already wound up attempting suicide by that next reveal and everything was just so everywhere that I didn't know what to do at all.

Simply put: if there's a waitlist for McLean I'm worried that I'll be in another hospitalization for safety purposes because I won't be able to make it until the day I can go into McLean. But that's a lot of thinking ahead and a bit of needless worrying.

One other thing that popped in my mind as relevant to the current topic is: how my OCD is now is a lot different than how it was in last year's Fall semester (2014). Of course, it's still VERY much the same, but with depression and suicidal ideation, it gets harder to tell what's what, when I'm in a crisis and if I genuinely will not act on a thought because it's some useless OCD junk or if I genuinely feel that I WILL act on a thought, which is likely still OCD junk, but I'm actually a genuine danger to myself....


Anywho, that's it for this journal!! I'm utterly confused now. I'm just trying to understand (or maybe god it's my OCD all over again) so I know how to handle myself and what would be a more appropriate and best response action to be taking in place of that thing. Whatever.


I'll be on here and there tomorrow. If there's no new updates, you'll see me again on Friday!
Have a less confusing and better rest of the week, my friends!!!


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