I was thinking about how lately I haven’t thought too much about my OCD. It isn’t that I don’t have the obsessive thoughts or compulsions; it is just that I live with them every day. They are my reality. Sometimes, I don’t realize that I am having them because they are so normal to me and I forget that everyone else doesn’t experience the same things that I do.
My husband and I recently took a trip on an airplane. I have no idea what everyone else was thinking about while we were sitting in the plane waiting for it to take off, but I do know what my OCD mind had come up with. I was imagining what would it be like if the plane crashed. Not just if the plane crashed, but what the aftermath would be like. I imagined trying to find my way out of the wreckage. Then, having to spend time in the hospital. I then imagined trying to get back home to Texas, collect my dogs from the dog sitter, get back to work, and put my life back together after such a traumatic event. I saw every horrific detail of months of struggle and sorrow in my mind’s eye within just a few minutes. There wasn’t anything I could do to stop my mind from going there, I just had to sit there like I was on some horrible roller coaster ride through my worst nightmare.
Then today, I was supposed to go to see my doctor. It was just a simple doctor’s appointment; nothing special. That fact didn’t stop my OCD mind. I found myself imagining being in a car wreck on the way to the doctor. Having the car spin around and around several times before it came to a stop. The driver’s side door being smashed in and the driver’s side window smashing from the impact and the glass falling all around my head and face cutting and scaping me all over. Then, I could see people trying to help me get out of my car and my wanting my purse and cell phone so that I could call the doctor and explain why I was late for my appointment. I could see it in my mind over and over again. I even though about driving with my cell phone in my purse just in case it really happened so that my phone wouldn’t get lost in the wreck.
It’s weird, but I have these living nightmares every day. Sometimes when I am at home working, I see someone breaking into the house. I can see myself turning around from my computer and being totally surprised to see someone standing in my kitchen. The only thing I can think of doing is running into the bedroom and grabbing the baseball bat in the corner and coming out and yelling at the top of my lungs for the person to leave me and my dogs alone. Then, I can see myself leaving and running to the neighbor’s house for help.
It is the living nightmare of worst-case scenarios. These obsessive thoughts that go through my mind daily in great detail that it is almost like seeing a movie in my mind’s eye. Once it starts, it is like having to sit and watch it almost like that guy in “The Clockwork Orange”; I can’t look away. I can’t turn off my mind.
I used to fear that these thoughts make me some kind of horrible person or worse insane, but then, I learned that I just have OCD and a very good imagination. It’s normal for me to get a thought stuck in my head and then for my mind to just keep thinking about it over and over again in great nightmarish detail. The ironic part is if I tried to fight it that would only make it worse. It would make me more anxious, and it would make the thought stick in my head longer. Instead just sitting back and letting it be works better.
That’s where faith comes into all of this. God accepts me as I am. He teaches me to let it be and put my worries in His hands. When I don’t do that, my OCD gets worse. I’ve learned to accept who I am the way God accepts me. I’ve learn to let it be and put my life in God’s hands. I still see nightmares in my mind’s eye, but they are constant and sometimes I don’t really even notice them anymore.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
