phineas gage
New member
Hey guys,
So I've been doing pretty well with OCD for a while, but I hit a wall recently. It's funny how OCD is so insidious. You're doing well, then you cave in and wash your hands one day, then the next day, and it becomes a slippery slope until WHAM, suddenly you're just as bad as ever. It's really never over. It's a constant battle and you can't let up for a second or you just get buried again. Anyway, so as I said I had been doing well for a while, but then yesterday things sort of tanked. All my obsessions/compulsions center around brain damage. I constantly worry about getting brain damage somehow that will make me less intelligent/funny/witty, etc., you name it. And what this contributes to is lower self confidence. My inner dialogue goes like this: "Well, I can't go talk to that girl I'm attracted to at the party [I'm a male college student] because I've got brain damage from [insert any conceivable but farfetched source of brain damage here]." So my friends always wonder why I don't get girls, why I don't even try to get with girls, and that's largely the reason. This OCD really saps my confidence, and confidence is so hugely important in this world. It sucks knowing that I should be out having a healthy social life, that I have all the tools needed to have healthy social life, but I'm haunted by these thoughts and these insecurities that make it so tough to get out there and be outgoing. So I stay in my comfort zone and just drink heavily when I go out, hoping that I can drink myself to a point that the OCD doesn't bother me anymore, that I can drink to a point where the voice that says "Well what if you have brain damage because of this, or because of this, or maybe this..." won't bother me anymore, won't even be there anymore because I've drowned it in cheap beer. But it never works like that. There's a limit. You get more outgoing with drink, but only to a point. No amount of drink can make OCD go away.
So anyway, my current scenario is this. The source of brain damage I'm currently obsessing about is aluminum (I've read about the dangers of aluminum poisoning, how it may or may not contribute to Alzheimers, etc.). So apparently, according to certain sources, aluminum has a whole bunch of harmful side effects if ingested. Things like stuttering, Alzheimers, and impaired intellect can all result from high levels of aluminum in the bloodstream. Aluminum is a commonly occuring metal that everyone ingests to a certain extent and that the body excretes through urine on a daily basis, but it can be toxic in higher concentrations. So, with these lovely facts in mind, I've started obsessing about aluminum. For instance, the aluminum or foil that seals the lids of vitamin containers. I bought some Advil, opened up the top, and punched my thumb through the foil seal (I'm assuming its aluminum, it could not be). But of course, the aluminum seal is still there, it just has a jagged whole in it, and this worries me. I think about the Advil tablets coming into contact with the aluminum as I dish them out into my hand, and then they have traces of aluminum on that, and then I ingest that and BOOM - impaired intellect. I know, extremely rational. So anyway, I'm stressing about the fact that the foil is still covering the top of the bottle/Advil container, so I start tearing at with my fingers to get all the foil off. I'm determined to get it off. But there's not much foil left, so I'm digging at these little strips of foil still stuck to the rim of the container, and I'm careful to set the little pieces aside as I do so. One falls by the side of the futon in my room, but I can't find it when I search for it (that also stresses me out). I start worrying that maybe one of these little pieces of foil I'm tearing off might fall into the Advil container, get absorbed into the Advil, and then I'm ingesting more aluminum. I poor a bunch of Advil into my hand and inspect them, and I can't see any specks of foil, but you never know, one could be in there just waiting for me. Also, at one point I had a little piece of foil sitting on the edge of my thumb, right by the bottom of the nail. It may or may not have even come into contact with the front of my nail bed, right under the tip of my nail, and I'm thinking that if it did, I probably absorbed some aluminum into my bloodstream. There might even be tiny pieces of aluminum around the room from one I tore the seal off that I will still come in contact with, poisoning me further. So either that or I might be ingesting some every time I go to take Advil now if any of the little flakes I was pealing off fell into the container. Conveniently, after this whole ordeal finished I went to the library and promptly ran into this girl I'm crushing on, who wanted to exchange some flirtatious comments but I was too wound up from my OCD episode to participate really, so I ended up making some dumb comment that inadvertenly came across as rude and then walking away. Perfect.
I guess I've gone on a bit of a rant here. But I had to get that off my chest. I haven't been down like this in a while though, and I'm not quite sure what to do with myself except ride it out.
So I've been doing pretty well with OCD for a while, but I hit a wall recently. It's funny how OCD is so insidious. You're doing well, then you cave in and wash your hands one day, then the next day, and it becomes a slippery slope until WHAM, suddenly you're just as bad as ever. It's really never over. It's a constant battle and you can't let up for a second or you just get buried again. Anyway, so as I said I had been doing well for a while, but then yesterday things sort of tanked. All my obsessions/compulsions center around brain damage. I constantly worry about getting brain damage somehow that will make me less intelligent/funny/witty, etc., you name it. And what this contributes to is lower self confidence. My inner dialogue goes like this: "Well, I can't go talk to that girl I'm attracted to at the party [I'm a male college student] because I've got brain damage from [insert any conceivable but farfetched source of brain damage here]." So my friends always wonder why I don't get girls, why I don't even try to get with girls, and that's largely the reason. This OCD really saps my confidence, and confidence is so hugely important in this world. It sucks knowing that I should be out having a healthy social life, that I have all the tools needed to have healthy social life, but I'm haunted by these thoughts and these insecurities that make it so tough to get out there and be outgoing. So I stay in my comfort zone and just drink heavily when I go out, hoping that I can drink myself to a point that the OCD doesn't bother me anymore, that I can drink to a point where the voice that says "Well what if you have brain damage because of this, or because of this, or maybe this..." won't bother me anymore, won't even be there anymore because I've drowned it in cheap beer. But it never works like that. There's a limit. You get more outgoing with drink, but only to a point. No amount of drink can make OCD go away.
So anyway, my current scenario is this. The source of brain damage I'm currently obsessing about is aluminum (I've read about the dangers of aluminum poisoning, how it may or may not contribute to Alzheimers, etc.). So apparently, according to certain sources, aluminum has a whole bunch of harmful side effects if ingested. Things like stuttering, Alzheimers, and impaired intellect can all result from high levels of aluminum in the bloodstream. Aluminum is a commonly occuring metal that everyone ingests to a certain extent and that the body excretes through urine on a daily basis, but it can be toxic in higher concentrations. So, with these lovely facts in mind, I've started obsessing about aluminum. For instance, the aluminum or foil that seals the lids of vitamin containers. I bought some Advil, opened up the top, and punched my thumb through the foil seal (I'm assuming its aluminum, it could not be). But of course, the aluminum seal is still there, it just has a jagged whole in it, and this worries me. I think about the Advil tablets coming into contact with the aluminum as I dish them out into my hand, and then they have traces of aluminum on that, and then I ingest that and BOOM - impaired intellect. I know, extremely rational. So anyway, I'm stressing about the fact that the foil is still covering the top of the bottle/Advil container, so I start tearing at with my fingers to get all the foil off. I'm determined to get it off. But there's not much foil left, so I'm digging at these little strips of foil still stuck to the rim of the container, and I'm careful to set the little pieces aside as I do so. One falls by the side of the futon in my room, but I can't find it when I search for it (that also stresses me out). I start worrying that maybe one of these little pieces of foil I'm tearing off might fall into the Advil container, get absorbed into the Advil, and then I'm ingesting more aluminum. I poor a bunch of Advil into my hand and inspect them, and I can't see any specks of foil, but you never know, one could be in there just waiting for me. Also, at one point I had a little piece of foil sitting on the edge of my thumb, right by the bottom of the nail. It may or may not have even come into contact with the front of my nail bed, right under the tip of my nail, and I'm thinking that if it did, I probably absorbed some aluminum into my bloodstream. There might even be tiny pieces of aluminum around the room from one I tore the seal off that I will still come in contact with, poisoning me further. So either that or I might be ingesting some every time I go to take Advil now if any of the little flakes I was pealing off fell into the container. Conveniently, after this whole ordeal finished I went to the library and promptly ran into this girl I'm crushing on, who wanted to exchange some flirtatious comments but I was too wound up from my OCD episode to participate really, so I ended up making some dumb comment that inadvertenly came across as rude and then walking away. Perfect.
I guess I've gone on a bit of a rant here. But I had to get that off my chest. I haven't been down like this in a while though, and I'm not quite sure what to do with myself except ride it out.
