Tomorrow

(please read prayer request on below post.)

Dr. Mind and I have been going easy of late.  I can't handle much more.  We were doing something very intense stuff during my sobbing period but haven't gone near that again, I assume to avoid getting me focused on painful things before I'm stable.

Tomorrow we're going to talk about something we have but not in enough detail.  That's because I am just now realizing (his favorite term) that I have a bigger issue than I understood.  Dr. Mind has said for years that I have OCD traits.  I am not diagnosed with OCD, but I do have traits of it.  Mostly it is in how I worry or obsess about things that generally are not important.  During these last months the Neurontin triggered a lot of crazy thinking for me.  Mostly it made me anxious to the point of paranoia. Dr. Brain and I tried to reconstruct what it did because it was awful yet putting it as an allergy is not good since it seems likely I could get akasthesia again.  I didn't remember well enough, but the good old blog produced a list that defined it pretty well.  Anyway, with that anxiety I had several things going on, but it was the first time I was aware of actual obsessiveness.  I am fighting this right now still; when I put water into a cup with ice I can use 4 and only 4 ice cubes.  When I stayed at my mom's and had to use her ice which is made by an auto thing and 4 cubes isn't much I STILL had to use 4.  Now I can do 3 or 5, but it bugs me.  A lot.

As I said earlier I am tyring to increase the sensory input in my world a bit to prepare for back to work.  Since I don't have TV that means movies.  Yet I find myself realizing "hmmm".  I have certain movies that are the only ones I watch.  I have certain sitcoms that are the only ones I watch.  I avoid music in general but I do have some music that doesn't bug me.  It's not the music styles, it's music that I know and can anticipate my way through.  I have issues with music I don't know well enough to do that "sticking in my head" but for like 2-3 weeks of repeating one phrase in my head over and over and over.  I don't do things I thought were required for OCD like checking locks, although I guess I really do as I will check paperwork, mine and assistants', repeatedly.  One thing wrong when I'm cosigning stymies me.  I know that while I do not create patterns (although I bet without bipolar I would) patterns that aren't right annoy me.  The pattern on the semi-Oriental style rug in Dr. Mind's office drives me crazy.  It also drives me crazy when the fringer gets caught under his desk chair and isn't in place.  I'm struggling right now because the agency just bought new furniture and rearranged the waiting rooms.  They put a couch where "my chair" used to sit.  I tried the couch but then people touch me.  So, no couch.  The funny thing is that they moved a chair from the other waiting room that used to be "my chair" over there yet I've been forcing myself to sit there.  I guess that 5.5 years of not changing wasn't good.  I did that in college too; I actually would get to all classes early to ensure that I sat on the left hand of the room, first chair in the 2nd row.  I'd forgotten that.  Oh, and the um, 40some hats I made while sick.......that was to stop thinking.

All of this is making sense.  I took one of those "might I have" tests and flunked it almost as severely as i did the anxiety test for my sleep study (aka badly).  This changes nothing.  Except I am anxious (ha) to know how much of Dr. Mind knows already.  I keep telling him after my birthday and the stressful season ends that it is time for anxiety review time.  We may be starting sooner than I thought.

Again, it changes nothing.  I doubt it will be a formal diagnosis, partly because some of the others kind of cover it and because it's not really treatable via meds because of interactions.  But it will maybe make anxiety reduction part ten million to have some different focus.