Organized Chaos - Volume 8
How I’m Learning To See the Labyrinth
and Create New Pathways
by Erin Galbraith
A meadow of mysterious walls… interconnected megaliths of stone, winding silently through existence, camouflaged by tangled vines, whose tendrils grab for my flesh and thoughts. Each stone is covered with ancient writing. One tablet is rumored to be legible, but no signs lead to its position within the maze. In fact, it may well rest alone behind the pathways, having followed a hidden route to the exit. A mutinous haze of contemplation and desperation hangs between the parapets, obstructing all paths, save those that lead to the center of the labyrinth. This is the vision and life of a person with obsessive-compulsive disorder, and the following is how I am learning to knock down the barricades that keep me from reality and functional existence beyond my own mind.
I became increasingly self-conscious
Growing up, I could not see the labyrinth of my obsessive thoughts and compulsive acts. Through elementary school I was overly concerned with and upset by asymmetry, incompleteness, and uncertainty. My schoolwork had to be perfect to my standards. I became increasingly self-conscious about every aspect of my life. With each observation about my peers, and my environment, my social skills suffered tremendously. Choices became walls, and I became so anxious that I indulged in anxiety-relieving compulsions. I found myself counting, hitting my head against my knee, and focusing my conversations on cynicism and doubt. I was bullied throughout childhood, and subconsciously introduced myself to a world of pain, fear, bad habits, and deep depression.
I’m now twenty-three years old, and have reached new and dangerous lows. I have been paralyzed by obsessions, anxiety, and fear, and have several OCD-related disorders, such as depression, ADD, Tourette’s syndrome, hoarding, and trichotillomania ( hair-pulling), and skin picking.
I began to pull out hairs from my head
When I was eleven years old, I began to pull out hairs from my head and other body parts. Teachers, friends, parents, and classmates began to notice my disgusting bald spots. I was ashamed and guilty with myself for having a habit that I believed was exclusively mine. The thought never occurred to me that other people would ever disgrace themselves with similar self-mutilating behavior, so I tried to hide my head at all costs. When my head was at its most repulsive, I resorted to nauseating comb-overs, my hair parted level with the top of one ear and over my head toward my second ear. I soon switched to a trucker-sized baseball cap, which wasn’t allowed in the classroom, so I still had the same comb-over. After my hair grew slightly, I realized I could wear it in a half-ponytail, while concealing my bald spots. I either slept with my cap on or with my hair back in a clip, because I was so appalled by the thought of waking up to see what I’d done to myself. Since the up-do was precariously positioned, I could no longer attend sleepovers, ride roller coasters, or go swimming. I stayed home sick on windy days, and helped teachers during recess, so my hair wouldn’t blow out of place.
In high school, I focused solely on my schoolwork
My trichotillomania stifled any chance of having many friends or learning any social skills that I’d need to survive the petty and cruel cliques in middle school. Later, in high school, where I was a commonly labelled “loner,” I focused solely on my schoolwork. Everything had to be perfect. I worked hard in between well-timed burnouts. I graduated with good grades and a full-tuition scholarship. Then my world sank… College in Boston consisted of deep thoughts, which that lead me down further and further until I could no longer communicate with the outside world. I stayed in my dorm room, trapped by obsessions. I went for the better part of three weeks without eating, leaving the room, or sleeping. I was nearly catatonic at some points during this time. I dissociated (disconnected from my body, and lost time) while I thought, until my parents intervened by bringing me back home.
Find help from local psychiatrists and therapists
Housebound, I snatched every ounce of my desperation and worked with local psychiatrists and therapists to find an intensive program designed to help me control my O.C.D. I applied to become a student and patient of Dr. Eda Gorbis at the Westwood Institute for Anxiety Disorders in Los Angeles. The program is based on Exposure and Response Prevention therapy (ERP), an intense mix of both cognitive and behavioral therapy, designed to help patients expose themselves to anxiety-provoking situations. I'm learning to experience and document OCD triggers, and later anxiety levels. This lets me feel the peak of the anxiety in each exposure, and to stifle the urges to act on compulsions, then ride through as the anxiety recedes, over and over until little or no anxiety is present in each situation.
Learning To Accept Myself and Becoming Functional
Along with Exposure and Response Prevention, I have learned to employ several tools to help me organize my chaotic mind, and to focus on the present moments. This allows me to become and remain functional within the realms of socially standardized and understood reality. I’ve identified internal and external triggers for each compulsion, accepted my consciously rapid decisions and the marginality that may come from those choices, and have have externalized which thoughts or actions are due to OCD, and which are part of the real me. I’ve also learned to relinquish control by allowing others to act on their own beliefs, and to accept that there are things in this world over which I have no control. I am now able to expand the boundaries of “right and wrong” by imagining the worst possible circumstances that could be the outcome of my feared situational situations images. I know now that it is common for OCs to live or dwell in the past or future and that I must focus on living in the present and accepting myself as I am in the moment.
In regards to my trichotillomania, and after recent habituation to exposures in front of distorted mirrors, which are meant to trigger and exaggerate my anxiety, leading to the urge to pull my hair out, I will learn to practice and wear new hairstyles. This hair care will replace trichotillomania symptoms, and I will soon place great value on my hair and learn to cope with the urges to pull it out. When taking something away, one must provide an alternative to fill the void. I will be substituting my negative actions with overcorrection of and positive attention to my hair. I should no longer react to my urges, since I’ll be taught how to create novel and original hairstyles instead.
Helping Myself Through Creativity and Writing
I now know that the most empowering tool is to externalize OCD by writing down my exposures, keeping a daily log of my actions, and writing down each compulsion I give into and what triggered it. Personally, my best way to externalize OCD is to use my symptoms, tangential thinking, and synaesthetic tendencies creatively by writing, singing, artwork, or through nighttime dreaming. Awareness ratings have been extremely helpful. Through writing techniques and notations of internal and external triggers, as well as the intertwinement of associations, I have become more mindful.
I’ve acquired tools that help me to be proactive, rather than reactive through Dr. Gorbis’ Institute. I have a combination of techniques to substitute my over-reactivity with activity, and problem solving through awareness training on a moment-by-moment basis throughout the day. I now give accountability to behaviors rather than feelings. Instead of winding my way through a hazy, overgrown labyrinth, I’ve been given a sledgehammer to knock down the stone walls which once kept me within my thoughts. I used to run all over through a maze of walls and vines. Now I can see beyond the labyrinth, smash through its crumbling walls, and grasp what lies ahead. Instead of searching endlessly for that philosopher’s stone, written in English and hidden by thoughts, I can pick out the decisions I must make and the idea for which I came to search within seconds. Now I can project and plan a day, moment-by moment, and LEAVE IT AS IT IS.
