ocd

This blog is about what I have discovered to work for me in treating my OCD. I hope in sharing my story and what I have found to help, I can help others in pain.

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Natural Approaches to Treating Mental Illness 

I really can’t paint the picture enough to show just how severe my OCD was. People meet me today and say how “normal” I seem, and tell me they just can’t imagine another version. It wasn’t overnight, and not always easy, but my journey certainly was my own.  I did almost everything they said. Well, not really, but I did start with therapy. I was impressed with the statistics I found on ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) and CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy). But I was lucky; I had good health insurance and access to a therapist who I liked, who was taking new patients, and who was familiar with my condition. This is not often the case. I never tried SSRIs, though if my progress after therapy had regressed, I may have considered it. Diminished libido and weight gain were two side effects that dettered me. But really, those are the options most of the time… therapy and medication. I knew there had to be more, and there is. 

The thing is, mental health issues are often a combination of psychological inflexibility and physiological causes. Hormone imbalance, nutrient deficiency, genetics, traumatic brain injuries, chronic inflammation, infection and other diseases can all trigger or inflate psychological symptoms. Behavioral symptoms can then manifest including insomnia, eating disorders and addiction. Psychotherapy can truly do an incredible job at addressing not only stress reduction, but teaching self compassion and instilling invaluable skills to handle “spikes” in symptoms when they arise. Other ways to reduce stress include yoga and meditation. 

Now, to target the other piece of the puzzle, we need to find out what else is happening in the body. Testing and proper diagnosis of any underlying condition is important. Some of these tests can be ordered by a “regular” doctor, but a naturopathic doctor would be the one to order more specialty tests such as neurotransmitter analysis. This underlying condition (or physiological cause), if there is one, and/or chronic stress can contribute to neurochemical imbalance like low serotonin and dopamine.  Luckily, there are options for correcting these imbalances such as neurofeedback, targeted amino acid therapy, nutrition and botanical/herbal medicine. I’ll break down some of these options. 

Neurofeedback is a type of biofeedback that uses EEG to get real time display of brain activity with the goal being to teach self regulation of brain function. Leads are placed on the scalp and a computer screen shows brain waves. The individual then can learn to slow down or speed up brain waves. It’s kind of like learning to be aware and regulate your breathing. Pretty cool, right? It can be useful for ADHD, anxiety, depression, autism, OCD, PTSD and epilepsy. 

Targeted Amino Acid Therapy is based on Pfeiffers Law which states that If a drug can be found to do the job of medical healing, a nutrient can be found to do the same job. Amino acids are the building blocks of neurotransmitters and neurotransmitters are what become imbalanced with psychological inflexibility and a multitude of biological causes. Even gut issues can contribute to neurotransmitter imbalance because GABA and serotonin are made in the gut. Any condition that causes nutrient depletion can interfere with the production of neurotransmitters as well.  What is important to know is that this therapy must be tailored and targeted to the individual because neurotransmitter imbalance can look differently in everyone. For example, if we lined up 100 people with low tryptophan (the amino acid precursor of serotonin), we would see people with conditions including aggression, alcoholism, anorexia, ADD, insomnia, sexual dysfunction, and sleep disorders. 

Nutrition is one of the most foundational areas to look at when supporting someone’s mental health. I read a study many years ago, conducted in Australia. A link was found between sugar and anxiety! Makes sense, sugar is a stimulant and can even act as a hormone in the body. Food sensitivities and allergies also flare up psychological symptoms. 

There are many options available and the beauty is that when one thing gets better, often the rest follows. It sounds overwhelming, but I like to look at like an orchestra; when a few adjustments are made, the whole symphony sounds new. A tweak here and there, and we get brand new music! The journey looks different for everyone, but there is always hope and progress to be made. Essentially the goal is to increase one’s ability to tolerate psychological discomfort, address the biological contributors to the symptoms, and to alleviate as much stress and reduce triggers as much as possible to allow the person to heal tolerably and gently. 

Not everyone will respond to the same treatment because not everyone has the same factors contributing to the manifestation of their symptoms. The key is to embrace your own healing journey; to know there are more options out there than what was once traditionally prescribed and to not give up.

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Why stay in therapy – Peeling back the layers

I haven’t written in so long due to fear.  But fear aside, I’m ready to share the truth.

My OCD is all but alleviated.  I am reminded rarely, but abruptly every so often when I have an “OCD” moment at how life used to be.  I am shocked by these occurrences at how I used to feel every day for years.  It’s easy to forget the mental torture, because really, why would I want to remember?  But, I do in some ways because I’ll never really fit in completely, and I need to know why.  However, I am in the best place I can be for the next part of my life which is to help other people get better and finally become friends with their bullying minds.

On to the fear part of this.  After the OCD was taken out of my brain, there was a shadow of where it was, and my sense of self was shaken.  I self-harmed more than ever and acted out in many self-destructive ways.  I got back into therapy, wondering what the point was of peeling back these layers of my mind only to find more problems underneath.  Here is why I keep going:

  • Whatever issues I currently face, I am more equipped to handle now that I have gotten over OCD
  • There will always be challenges in life
  • The problems I have at this point are not as bad as my OCD

So, while I struggle with a whole new set of cards, I would’t trade them in for my past.  As I have said before, we all have a story that will fluctuate with joys and disappointments and we must commit to not quitting and that commitment doesn’t stop no matter how tough or easy things get.  Keep writing your story, and stay strong.

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How “Should” Messes Everything Up

We say “should” all the time, but rarely at the appropriate time.  “Should” indicates responsibility in usually a critical way, and with anxiety disorders and depression, this occurs a lot.

“My life shouldn’t be like this.”

This statement hurts because what it really means is that life and who I am are not ok as they are.  I know OCD doesn’t feel ok, but hear me out. It’s that “I’m wrong and that if I made a different choice or acted another way, than everything would be as it should“.  “Should” makes us feel like we messed up, and what’s worse, if we truly have no or little control, then we are beating ourselves up for a crime we didn’t commit.

When I said this, my therapist asked me how my life should be.  Through the tears, I explained how I never thought I’d be this person.  He asked when I made the choice to get OCD, and I said it wasn’t my choice, and he said “exactly.”  He explained how “Should” was a trap.  Who decides what should and should’t be?  It’s when we feel like things should be a certain way, that we fall into it.

Next time you say “should”, think if it’s really appropriate.  It hurt less to say “I want my life to be different.” because this stems from a real emotion, and begs the question, “how can I improve my emotional state?”

Language can really cause us emotional downs, and here’s another:

“I don’t deserve to be happy”

“Deserve” means you have done something worthy enough to receive something else like happiness, for example.  O no.  I’t’s impossible for a psychologist to talk me out of this one.  They always respond to with “but, everyone deserves to be happy.”  Instinctively I know this is not true.  Evil people don’t deserve happiness, while kind people do, right?  What about people who go through insane trauma; did they not deserve happiness?

In short, no, I don’t deserve to be happy, nor do I deserve to be unhappy.

Wait!

The truth is that sometimes I will feel happy and sometimes I won’t, but that doesn’t reflect who I am.  Most of us strive to be descent people and happiness is not a reward system. Happiness is an emotion that stops by sometimes, and though I feel like it’s unfair that I feel anxious more than I want, it doesn’t mean that I deserve to be unhappy and I shouldn’t believe that it does? 😉

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OCD and Addiction

OCD is a monster. One that we feel we must constantly keep pacified out of fear that the next spike will be unbearable. My OCD is mostly gone, save a few bad days and irritating moments, but I kind of appreciate those moments because they never let me take for granted what I now have. The OCD is mostly in remission, but the habits I developed to deal with it are still around. In my desperate attempts to escape, I developed a problem with addiction, which is now the new monster I am fighting.

Drugs is a controversial topic and one I have been shying away from, but many of us know the unpleasant stigma of mental illness and I think the only way we can get rid of that is to speak the truth. I know there are many others out there struggling with their OCD and hiding their addictions, which is why I am also choosing to discuss this; because it is when we suffer alone that we truly suffer.

I began to treat myself before I knew I had OCD. I was not diagnosed until I was 21. In my teen years I developed an eating disorder. It had nothing to do with body image, but entirely about control and escaping my emotional discomfort. I think the most important thing a lot of people misunderstand about eating disorders like Anorexia and Bulimia is that they are anxiety disorders, not issues concerning low self-esteem.

I deprived myself of food to induce stomach aches which would distract me from my racing and obsessive thoughts. After it was getting out of hand, I started smoking weed. Every night, it put me to sleep, for years. Then, one fateful day in hte hospital, I was prescribed Ativan for my rapid heartbeat, which I explained was normal due to my anxiety. I started taking the drug every day because it made me feel “normal”, but I became dependent on it and the side effects were so awful I decided to get off of it. I did this safely.

I replaced Ativan with narcotics, sex, drinking and cutting. To me, it didn’t matter what the vice was, as long as it was something that changed how I felt. The one thing all these vices had in common was that they all altered my mental state, but lead me to a crash the following day.

I had gotten so used to escaping my feelings and running at the first sight of OCD or discomfort, I stopped feeling anything… anything bad, anything good. And trust me, the thought of feeling numb sounded pretty fucking good, but it wasn’t numb, it was just kinda down all the time. No joy, no color, no vibrance, just gloom.

Therapy has helped me tremendously to learn how to not only tolerate my emotions, but to accept them. I realized that my use of drugs and such was because I didn’t know any coping skills for feeling emotions, and feeling emotions was and still is scary.

Drugs still have a place in my life, like once in a great while when I am really anxious because of traveling or something, then I do take an anxiety pill, but other than that I am learning to deal with my emotions and such without self medicating.

The complication for me was that my need to compulse and need to use drugs or alcohol got intertwined (like when I cut) sometimes I felt like stopping, but my OCD brain felt like the number of times I cut was wrong, so I would cut more than I wanted to. It was weird to lose control doing what I started to do because I thought it gave me a sense of control.

The addiction monster and OCD monster can feel the same, but what I’ve discovered to help both is learning to accept myself and learning how to deal with emotions. I have also learned that when the need to cut or use comes up or the need to compulse comes up, I take a deep breath, remember what I learned in therapy like journaling, and most of the time I get through it, and the more times I get through it, the more I learn I can get through it.

If you struggle with addiction or OCD or both, you are not alone. Please seek help if you want it, because you can get through both if you want to. Stay strong.