Call for Submissions of Creative Work for OCD Awareness Week 2011: Deadline August 31, 2011

The IOCDF is asking for submissions of art, writing, music and film for OCD Awareness Week 2011. If you have something you would like to share, the deadline is August 31st, 2011 at 12am EST.

What

The International OCD Foundation and its affiliates from across the country will come together to educate their communities and the public as a whole about obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and its treatments. Learn from the nation's leading experts about how they work with those who suffer daily from the debilitating disorder. Have the opportunity to hear testimonials from patients both recovering and just beginning treatment and learn about the different treatments and therapies that help people hold jobs, balance relationships with family and friends, and lead more typical and productive lives.

Why

OCD Awareness Week is presented by the International OCD Foundation as a vehicle for support, advocacy and education to help end the stigma surrounding OCD and encourage sufferers to identify the disorder and / or seek treatment. The national Foundation has enlisted the support of its Affiliates nationwide to join in this education effort.

2011 OCD Awareness Week Event - October 15

In an attempt to raise awareness of OCD and effective treatment the IOCDF will hold a national event in Boston, MA this year. This event will be video-streamed live across the country. Building on last year’s successful story telling event this year we will be broadening the event to “creative expression” of OCD. We will be looking for submissions in four different categories (for more specific information pertaining to each category please click on the desired category below):

Click here for applications in the following categories:
Casestudy/Artwork
Personal Story/Fiction/Poetry
Short Film/Video/Animation
Song/Music

All submissions will be viewed and judged according to the following criteria:

• Overall quality
• How well it ties into the theme of OCD
• How well it ties into a “Dare to Believe…” theme (read more on the "Dare to Believe" campaign)

Submissions will be accepted between August 1 9am EST until August 31 at 12am EST. Up to 5 finalists from each category (determined by a panel of experts through the IOCDF. The decision of the judges will be final.) will then be posted on our website for the public to vote. In mid-September winners will be announced. Winners will have transportation and hotel accommodations paid for by the IOCDF for the October 15th event.

Click here for applications in the following categories:
Casestudy/Artwork
Personal Story/Fiction/Poetry
Short Film/Video/Animation
Song/Music

Free Online Treatment for OCD in Australia

Macquarie University's Centre for Emotional Health in Australia contacted me about passing on information about a free online course they are offering for dealing with OCD. I checked out their About Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) factsheet, and they advocate for Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy, so if you live in Australia, this could be helpful.

Here are some details:
The eCentreClinic OCD Course is a 5-lesson cognitive and behavioural treatment package that delivers remote evidence- based treatment. The treatment includes techniques that would normally be delivered in face to face treatment. The main emphasis is on exposure and response prevention however the Course also includes a strong cognitive component. The OCD Course is delivered over 8 weeks and the participant has bi-weekly telephone contact with a Clinical Psychologist who is experienced in the treatment of OCD. The Course is open to individuals with all subtypes of obsessive compulsive disorder (with the exception of primary hoarding compulsions).

The OCD Course has been tested in one open trial with 20 participants to date. This research has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders. In summary the results from this study showed a high level of acceptability for the Course with 81% of participants completing all the Lessons and 100% of respondents indicating that they would recommend the Course to friends. In terms of clinical outcomes, participants improved significantly on the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale and 52% of participants no longer met criteria for OCD at 3 month follow-up.

Exclusion criteria for the OCD Course include:

- Aged <18

- Primary hoarding compulsions

- Suicidal intent

- History of psychosis

- No access to the internet

- Unstable medication dosage

- Current CBT treatment for OCD

- Residing outside of Australia

For enrollment information, check out The OCD Course.

Anger and OCD

OCD Reflections had a recent post about White Hot Anger that struck a chord with me, about how she usually keeps her frustration to herself, and if she is angry, it must be fully justifiable, and also gets angry at herself for getting angry. I was the girl who quickly learned that anger was a really bad idea in my family. When my father left he told me I had no reason to be angry, but he was the same person, just in a different context. My parents never fought. I can only remember one disagreement articulated, about whether or not a minor cut needs a bandage, or to fresh air.

This aversion to anger got entangled with my OCD, and when I felt anger, I immediately started analyzing it, trying to figure out if I was justified to feel angry, retracing the conversation, attempting to reconstruct every word. By the time I did this gauntlet of compulsing, the anger was even stronger. One of my feared consequences was that I wouldn't survive feeling angry, that it was dangerous. Another fear was that the anger would never dissipate, and I would be stuck with it forever, haunted by it. Ironically, my compulsions made this come true, by intensifying the feeling.

My ERP therapist told me anger wouldn't kill me, which of course sounded crazy and made me angry. My perfectionism latched onto being angry as "wrong" and I would berate myself for having angry feelings. My therapist told me that feelings just are, that they are just there, and not "justifiable" or "unjustifiable." We can control our actions in response to our anger, or how we view our anger, but if the feeling arises, the more we flee from it, the more it lingers, much like any of my other obsessions. Anger can be a sign that something needs to change, that we feel exploited, or taken advantage of, or hurt, and can give us the energy and motivation to make changes.

The more willing I am to just let the anger be there, as uncomfortable as it is, the less intense it gets. I also need to be willing to guess if I'm angry instead of knowing "for certain" that I am angry--I used to spend a lot of time and energy trying to establish if I was truly angry or not. Anger has set off my OCD in the past, as have just about any strong feelings, negative or positive. But anger was also one of the motivators for my seeking treatment for my OCD, anger at how OCD was eroding my left and affecting my relationships. I met someone who had severe OCD as a child, and if someone tried to interfere with her rituals, she was get extremely angry and lash out. She wasn't able to articulate her fears, or what was going on in her head, and was sent away to a residential school, and it was many years until she was diagnosed with OCD and got treatment, and an understanding that she could survive without her rituals.

How does anger interact with your OCD?

Constantly Aware: OCD, the Body and Health Anxiety

This drawing by fisserman that I found in flickr is very true to my experience of the confluence of body sensations and mental awareness of those sensations, and my OCD. This week I've had tension and twinges in my chest, and my mind latched onto the symptoms. I find it very frustrating how certain bits of dialogue will shoot to the surface, like my doctor asking a few weeks ago if I was having any chest pain when I went in for a blood pressure check. What frustrates me is the almost immediate compulsing about whether I answered her question wrong, or that I have made a mistake, or exactly what do the sensations feel like?

And then I feel temptation to assign meaning to the symptom and the phrases both circulating within in me--a sign? a warning? a condemnation? My feared consequences are multiple, from fear of having a heart attack or dying, to fear of being judged harshly if I turn out to have ignored serious symptoms, and finally the fear that the vigilance about how my body feels will accelerate, get worse, and I will be haunted by the obsession, and that the vigilance will make me notice the sensations more, and it will snowball.

My compulsions range from checking my body--poking at my chest, watching how I sit or stand, to mentally checking my narrative of these sensations, ie. when did they start? What do they feel like? Am I really feeling them? I have resisted the impulse to search on the web, which is one reason this hasn't turned into a full blown OCD crisis, but more of a nagging, gnawing presence. What has helped is knowing that I can't establish what will happen in the future, that it's not my responsibility to do that. If the sensations persist or get worse, I will deal with it then. Or that it's too soon to know if the obsession will haunt me, or pervade everything I do and erode my enjoyment of life. I say this with gritted teeth, but it's true.

I am continuing to do things that I had planned to do, rather than retreating to reading, or otherwise freezing my life while trying to figure out the symptoms. I see my therapist on Thursday, so yay for support! Leonard is the first to say that having body sensations adds a layer of intensity to health anxiety OCD. There's something "there" and it intrudes on consciousness. My best guess is that all the time I'm spending bent over my worktable in my art studio is contributing to tightness in my chest muscles. My OCD would really like to know absolutely for sure that it's not a heart attack, and all the old "you are worthless and despicable" stuff gets mixed in as well, like "you'd better diagnose yourself perfectly or you are unredeemable."

I am feeling better the last couple days. I can tell I'm still vigilant--questions like Will the sensations come back? Get worse? but I know this pattern. I've experienced it many times how certain feelings in my body are more likely to trigger obessions than others. When I get a headache I do not usually obsess I have a brain tumor. If you have a desire to reassure me, I can understand that, but I'd rather hear about how you cope with health anxiety, and what has helped you.

Pure O: How do I tell the difference between obsessions and compulsions?

There's been discussions lately on the OCD support lists about how to tell the difference between an obsession and a compulsion, if it's all thoughts, as in "Pure O." My understanding is that the initial thought is the obsession, and the cascade of thoughts afterwards are the compulsion. For me it would be something like, "What if I said the wrong thing?" as the obsession, followed by trying to figure out if I did indeed say the wrong thing, including retracing my words, trying to account for all of them, which is the compulsion.

The irony is that the compulsion is supposed to be what reduces the anxiety produced by the obsessive thought, and yet, when I used to say "I wish I could stop obsessing about this" what I really meant was the whole flood of compulsions. I fly into compulsing so quickly that it seemed quite dubious that the initial thought was causing the anxiety--surely all the retracing, figuring out, analyzing, and research were the obsession right? How could they possibly be a way to lower my anxiety??

But what I learned during exposure therapy was that compulsions only provide short term relief, and in some cases, very very short term, and then they rebound with their own additional suffering, taking up mental space and energy, and that if I challenged myself to refrain from figuring out an obsessive thought, that my anxiety level immediately spiked, and that was a sign that the compulsion was serving its function of a short term hit of relief, even if I couldn't see it as it happened.

My husband had the flu this week, and he gave this analogy--the virus is the obsession, and the immune system response is the compulsion. When we are sick, what makes us feel lousy isn't the virus itself, but the attack of the immune system on the virus. In the case of our bodies, for the flu or other illnesses, we actually want the immune system to attack, but OCD is more like an allergy, where our immune system attacks something harmless like pollen, mistaking it for an invader. I know the things we obsess about don't seem harmless, and that they are often about things important to us, but our full blown compulsions cause us more misery in many cases than the initial obsession.

In the midst of my worst OCD flare ups, I had glimpses of how destructive the compulsions were, but I was so scared by the obsessive thought that I clung to my compulsions. I finally hit a low point with my health anxiety, that even though I was terrified of getting treatment, I knew I couldn't continue on the way I was going and have any kind of life. If you are like me, you probably also spend time trying to figure out if something is an obsession or a compulsion, and wanting to know for sure which it is. Another lovely complication of the OCD! Take your best guess.

My First Dental Filling along with Health Anxiety

I had my dental check up last month, with a new dentist because my old dentist wasn't on the insurance list, and when the dentist called out the number 15 when probing, I knew that couldn't be a good sign. I am in my 40's and never had a cavity. I went home and looked up adult cavities, and stopped after about 10 minutes. In the past I would've searched repeatedly, in hopes of finding the exact answer as to why I had a cavity, and how best to have it filled, so I can tell I've come a long way.

I had it filled yesterday, and there was a whole wave of things to stir up my health anxiety. First, the dentist asks if I want a silver filling or a white filling. I had a moment of "Oh, shit. I have to make a decision. I'm not prepared for this," and I ask what the difference is. He says it's "six of one, half a dozen of the other"--no absolute winner. It's like going to class and discovering a pop quiz and you haven't read the chapter. I picked the silver filling because it was a)cheaper and b)would probably last longer(when I asked which lasted longer the dentist said, "I'm not a fortune teller, but I'd say the silver.") Uncertainty all over the place.

All sorts of tidbits of things I'd heard in the past bubbled up while waiting for the numbing to take effect(what if I'm allergic to novacaine? What if?? What if I chose the wrong thing? What about all those people who are afraid of silver fillings?) I had my knitting which helped, as did thinking of Leonard, and all I've learned from him in Exposure Therapy, and the fact that we really aren't fortune tellers. We take our best guess, and sometimes the outcome sucks.

The sound of the drill wasn't as bad as I thought it would it would be, though it smelled like burning hair. I was pretty calm until I heard the dentist opening and shutting drawers, because he couldn't find something he needed--he's filling in for the regular dentist who is ill, and never used the item he wanted. So I'm listening to him improvising with the dental assistant with whatever they have on hand. The dentist ended by telling me that if I have some sensitivity to heat or cold, it will go away with time. I wanted to say, "I have OCD. My symptoms don't f-ing go away. . ." but I didn't because I know that there is a chance it will actually go away on its own if I let the fear be there, and go on with my life, rather than researching and checking the tooth constantly with my tongue.

I'm proud of myself that I haven't looked up the potential dire consequences of silver fillings, or a lack of cavity varnish. I woke up today wanting to look it all up because I was getting the insistent, "What if you screwed up? What if the sensitivity in your tooth won't go away?" Because, yes, cold water hurts my tooth. Finally I recognized that it's only the day after the dental work. It's too soon to tell. The OCD wants an answer NOW. But if I try to accelerate the answer to tamp down my fear, I will make it worse. If I repeatedly test the tooth with cold water, it is going to bring it to my attention and not give it a chance to get better. It might not. But I am practicing tolerating that uncertainty. That doesn't mean I like it, but I have things I want to do with my life, and probing my tooth will certainly lead to being stuck in compulsions, rather than making art.

Your Thoughts and Prayers Please for Someone Who Has Helped me Heal

Many of you know how much I've healed during my work with Leonard, my Exposure Therapist for my OCD struggles, and now he needs thoughts and prayers for his own healing. I went for my session yesterday, and another therapist came into the waiting room to tell me that Leonard had tried to call all his clients, but that he must not have gotten to me, and that he was in the hospital. He gave everyone a good scare, but it sounds like he's going to be ok and out of the hospital soon, but he has healing ahead of him, and I'm not sure when he'll be back to seeing clients.

I am so grateful for the compassion and skill of this therapist, and saddened that he is going through this hard time. I also feel for his other clients, especially ones who have just started, or who are in OCD crisis. The rapport between therapist and client is an amazing tool for motivation and growth and courage in facing what we fear. Leonard once told me he felt honored that his clients trusted him with their personal thoughts and fears.

Life by its nature is full of the unexpected, pain and suffering, but also contains joy, love and meaning. In the past, my OCD would go into overdrive trying to figure out the suffering, with compulsive analysis, but I am learning that some questions have no answers, and I am able to live in spite of this. I never thought I'd find someone to help me face my OCD, and it feels like a miracle that I did, and I hope for miracles in Leonard's life too.

Edited to add: I saw Leonard for therapy on Tuesday. He is doing much better, and his tests came out negative, so that was a relief! Thanks again for all the thoughts and prayers.