Nine years ago, reeling from having the rug pulled out from
under me, I entered a therapist’s office and asked, “what is wrong with me?”
The same question everyone around me has been asking for
decades.
After years of sorting through my life, there was a
diagnosis: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. The symptoms were there—fear of contamination,
handwashing, checking things over and over again—but every time I tried to challenge
those compulsions, my head filled not with fear, but rage.
Recently, I discovered the reason why treatment wasn’t
working. I don’t have Obsessive
Compulsive Disorder. I have the rarer
and difficult to diagnose Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder.
You know you hit the right disorder…when you read the description
and are flooded with memories that completely match the symptoms. It’s a relief to finally, finally have the
right name for all this discomfort.
Then you realize you have a personality disorder. Like, my personality is so far from normal
that it’s “disordered.” Time to resurrect
that exceptional people book club, huh?
A man who turned his ALS diagnosis into great things...so why can't I?
Less than a week earlier, in response to a birthday text where
a friend asked me how I was doing, I replied, “stuck on hamster wheels and lost
down rabbit holes.” Ironically, it’s a great
description of what living with OCPD is like.
I feel like I’m on a hamster wheel, working so very hard to
get things accomplished and checked off the list, but by the end of the day, having
little to show for my efforts. Even in
these times, when the minutes drag by like hours, the days like weeks, and the
months like years….the to do list seems to be growing instead of shrinking. (Don’t ask about the bank account. Spoiler alert: it’s not growing nearly as fast.)
With OCPD, the organization and procedure for each task is
detailed and precise. Every step in the
process has to be carefully thought out and planned. If my brain even has one molecule of anxiety,
I have to walk away and calm myself down.
And if the task isn’t done perfectly, I have to start from the beginning
and redo it until it is perfect.
I probably look just like that hamster, expending all that
energy with no forward progression.
Pretty much my entire life....via GIPHY
Probably because I’m constantly getting stuck in rabbit holes
I dug for myself. You know when you put
one thing away in the junk drawer, which leads you to organize the junk drawer,
where you find that button that popped off a shirt a couple weeks ago, which
leads you to find the shirt to sew the button, which leads to doing a load of
laundry? Rabbit hole.
Well, I tend to dig a lot of them, and then proceed to get
lost wandering around the resulting maze of tunnels. It starts innocently enough with one task, like
putting an item away in a drawer, but then I notice that the drawer needs to be
cleaned. As I’m taking out one item from
the drawer to clean it, I notice it belongs in another room, but that space needs
to be decontaminated before anything can go into there. I start making a list of how to clean that space,
and well, now that first item won’t get put away until I get that list completed.
Of course, life is what gets in the way of plans, and before
I can finish that list, I have to sort the mail for an important document or
clean out the car or get the laundry room ready for the possibility of
something breaking and needing repair….
As I’m trying to fill up one rabbit hole, another dozen or
so appear.
At least, I keep thinking I do...
For years, I believed the issue was that I was lazy or
disorganized or, dare I say it, stupid, to figure out how to function like a
normal person. I’ve spent a lot of time
trying to fight my brain, which always wins, but now it’s time to figure out a life
that works for how I’m wired.
It’s time to step off the hamster wheels and come out of the
rabbit holes….and start writing the first chapter of the rest of my life.
