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A young man with OCD so bad it makes Howard Hughes look like a laid back dude. Well maybe not. Similar sort of seclusion, unwashed life, defecating in zip lock bags and bottles, but in this story we get to see the thoughts that drove these habits and thus understand the torture of illogical thoughts that a person with OCD must struggle to overcome meanwhile also understanding how illogical he must look to others. And it never really goes away so the cure is based in learning how to manage the compulsiveness.
The trauma that kicked off the OCD for Ed Zine is revealed early on to the reader, but it was not understood until much later by his family. The path to healing begins with an unusually dedicated doctor who earns the trust of his patient and proceeds to try everything, every drug, every therapy that he, as an expert, has used. This makes the story quite a page turner as it is not clear what is going to work, what is going to turn this around and we simply must know because it is an untenable life. We do know by the pictures that he does come out okay which makes it even more compelling to know. An experiential book.
A good read for those needing an "I thought I had it bad" kind of book. Does have the hokiness of a hero story overcoming extreme odds, but it doesn't take away from the unusual intelligence that finally brings the disease to heal and it is a well constructed telling with in depth character studies.
Spoiler Alert:
The doctor does not actually find the treatment, but his despair at not being able to find the right path inspires Ed to see his OCD as the enemy and begin to fight the compulsive rituals he has been practicing in order to stop time. The trauma of having heard his mother's dying breath at the age of 11 (of cancer), coupled with his father's emotional cruelty, forever compels him to attempt to stop time in order to keep anyone else he loves from dying. Like controlling a movie by rewinding it backward and watching it again, he learns to "rewind" his life. By memorizing every step and movement he takes he rewinds the action and retraces his steps backward in order to stop time. Everything must be done in multiples that come out even so as not to move time forward. It makes sense in a parallel universe sort of way.
Obsession with first Star Wars movie, the last movie he saw before his mother's death. In fighting to get well, Ed enlists the help of a postmaster during the period when he cannot leave his basement room in his father's house. He begins to correspond with Star Wars costume maker to get back to the feeling he had when he was okay.
He also meets a young woman who falls in love with him and helps him by being his advocate and having patience. There is definitely a compelling quality about this man that gives his OCD a heroic aspect. He has to come to terms with it and reach out for help. The postmaster encourages him to reduce his repetitions thus enlisting techniques of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT); his girlfriend motivates him to expose himself to his fears by going outside. This is called exposure and response prevention (ERP).
The key to treatment is to only accommodate the OCD minimally. The patient needs reassurance and wants desperately to feel comfortable, but fulfilling this need only feeds the OCD. Patient needs to face his discomfort and work through it in order to learn to "survive" it. I learned to push one of my OCD clients into accepting loss. I cut up old credit cards with glee and smashed empty Kleenex boxes. When she asked me why I smashed them, I said I have to have some fun on this job. And she seemed okay with it and seemed to trust me more for having expressed myself authentically. But then the following week she remembered what she used the empty Kleenex boxes for so we had a conversation about that and I probably won't get to smash anymore, just the empty toilet rolls, but another authority backed me up so we all survived.
This book is required reading for a certificate that will qualify me as a hoarding specialist. In studying for this certificate and for the one in chronic disorganization I am being affirmed that everything I learned to do with clients is actually perfectly viable. My clients taught me. This was one of the reasons I never bothered to do all the teleclasses to get the "degree" and because the classes conflicted with my karate class, but now that I have my black belt I have room for this goal.
People associate OCD with excessive cleaning, checking your doors are locked etc. That does affect a lot of people but there is a whole host of other weird shit the human brain can confront the OCD sufferer with. Here is a picture of some coins. You are probably thinking “ah yes, one of them is out of line”. Well symmetry and exactness is another common perception of OCD sufferers. Whilst I do generally like things lined up right I wouldn’t say it’s a huge issue. What I can have a fascination/obsession (delete as appropriate) is coins. Here are some of the odd things I do with coins (weird but not perverted!)
1 In times of stress I can find it quite cathartic to put all my coins in neat piles and count them.
2 When spending them or receiving them I like to look at the date on the coin and make a mental picture of me doing something that year (new pound coin has buggered this one up somewhat).
3 I really like to separate all coins so I know where I got them from. So in one pocket it’s the change from the corner shop, in pocket 2 it’s the ones I got from the pub near work etc etc. I don’t like mixing them up.
4 I take a lot of pleasure if I move I spend a coin quite a long way from where I got it from. So I try and take home with me any change that I get on a trip away. In 2015 I went to Lands End and kept a coin that I received in change. I put it in a special bag. Then last year we went to the Scottish Highlands. I worked out of all our wanderings where I would be the furthest away from Lands End and deliberately spent it in the nearest shop! As you can imagine the Euro has provided a load of opportunities for this. I worked out the furthest distance you could move a Euro was from the Southern tip of Spain to the far North of Finland. Maybe one day!!
5 When going abroad I really, really don’t like bringing home coins that I can’t spend at home, I feel its like “killing” a coin because it can’t be used again. So at airports on the way home I can’t relax until I have found one of those big charity thingies where you dump your spare currency. Once I saw one, and was about to do it and the kids distracted me with something and then I forgot to do it. I remembered on the plane and was annoyed about it all the way home. I have since discovered that Bolton Hospital has a special charity foreign currency box so it’s a good back up plan.
6 Likewise I don’t like “killing” coins by dropping them. So if one goes down the back of some furniture (no matter how small the value is) , that coin is coming back even if I have do rip up the room. Likewise if I see one in the pavements, its getting picked up, even if its only 1p. It makes me look like a miser but I don’t really care!
7 Imagine the fun I get at seaside amusement arcades, particularly on the penny falls games. Any coins that come out of these (or other machines) have to come home with me and get their special place in the house.
I have always done this stuff since childhood. In a cycle of OCD max there might be piles of coins all over the place. My family will ask me, if they can use any of them and which piles they are allowed to take from. Now I had never told anyone about all this until I went to the priory. There I met another patient who had the same coin obsession. He had to keep all his coins divided up by denomination and he carried around large bags of change with him. He works in a shop and once they were desperately short of change and they pleaded with him to let them use some of his, eventually he relented but it caused him so much anxiety that he had to leave the room whilst they used his coins. It was the first time either of us had met anyone who has a thing about coins!
I figure half the things like this that I see on the Interwebs are fake, but I saw this in real life, in a men's restroom at Disney's California Adventure theme park.
In case you do not know what's going on, you're supposed to find the misplaced tile. (For all I know there could be more than one. But there's definitely at least one.)
I'm going to obsessively annotate this, just for fun. and yeah, it's not strictly philosophy. Some of that is my liberal categorization, and some is sloppy shelving since I just moved and haven't had a chance to organize it properly.
OK, I admit it. I'm kinda OCD. Everybody jokes about my maniacal quest for precision. I know it's nuts, but this is how I amuse myself. This series of pics show how I make the faces of my drop-outs parallel. Most DOs don't need this treatment, but the ones I use are horrible, so I give them a once over on my surface grinder... Save watching the video until you have a night when you can't fall asleep...
YES, the Dining table has to be centered under the Chandelier and the Chandelier has to be centered under the Rafter. What a silly question! What do you mean, OCD?? You say that like it's a bad thing . . .
Bit annoyed that I didn't manage to get this bang on central! Going to have to go back for another go now...
Free hangers, sorted by number, and hung in the opposite direction of hangers currently in use. Wait until you see my information encoding scheme in shirt buttons.
Second batch, day two of the OCD cruise.
Grey start at Channel View campsite, then onto nearby Lynton for the day, a walk along the headland, the odd clouds on top of the cliffs, and the famous fish and chips.
Then onto our second campsite at Lee Meadow, camping in the clouds, and a hog roast!
These are my 2005 resolutions.
I mean, WTF is wrong with me?
It may seem obsessive, but I've managed to get through January making monumental leaps in certain areas of my life, and I think it has to do with my constant tinkering and attention to this map. (i.e. as part of the weekly review)
This map will constantly be in flux. It's not right, now, nor will I know if it's ever the right set of goals. I think incremental "Release early / often" is the way to go here... Things like core values, life mission, roles/responsibilities, horizon / someday goals are handled elsewhere... this map becomes largely tactical and also is seeming to serve an archival purpose as a grouping of accomplishments. This will be great to see at the end of the year as I can spin around the map and feel proud for each area of improvement.
In the coin picture I referred to “weird shit” that the human mind can throw at you, this is beyond the more well known obsessions (cleaning, aligning, checking your doors locked) etc. Most of these are kept hidden by the OCD sufferer usually because of shame or embarrassment. People have said to me “we can’t tell your OCD because there is few outward signs”.
In fact there is one that people have commented on and laughed about (don’t worry if you have, I have never been offended and now I often think its quite funny myself), and that is that I frequently wear toe socks.
Why is this? Well, a lesser known obsession in the OCD world belong to what is called “Sensorimotor Obessions”. It’s not a well known term and I actually explained it once to my GP. It's when overawareness of a particular part of your body sticks in your mind. It becomes over sensitive and likened to the “Princess and the Pea” and you can be over aware of what is doing, what is feeling, on bad days this could be what you are thinking about for most of the day.
During my OCD “episodes” I’ve had a few of these and one of them involves my feet. I had to really get my feet in the “right” position (however you define what that is, it just had to feel right). This could be quite a lengthy process having to constantly adjust. Eventually it may reach a point where the feet are ok, but then you have to get up for something and its back to square one. There was a particular sensitivity around the toes. It got to the point where I really did not like the thought of my toes touching each other. It didn’t cause any physical pain it just felt “wrong”. I’d be aware of all the gaps between the toes, sometimes hiding random small objects there to make sure they were kept apart.
When you are having issues like this it’s a lot easier to tell people you are anxious and depressed in general than it is to say “I’m obsessed with my toes”! However one day it was all too much and it was really upsetting me so I confided to my wife. I really had to pluck up the courage for this, (and that’s for my own wife!) and I just blurted it out. “I really really don’t like my toes touching each other”. Anyway rather than laugh or look astounded (the latter is unfortunately a reaction I have had from professionals with stuff like this) she just bought me some toe socks!. The relief was wonderful! Now its nothing like the issue it was and I don’t always wear them. Having said that I got so used to having them and they made me feel so good that I have positive associations with them and generally wear them now just because I like them not because I get into a flap if I don’t. It’s only a problem if you get too reliant on them and get into a state if they are all in the wash!
Panoramic shot of the small car cleaning collection.
Click here to see the full size view of the colletion.. www.flickr.com/photos/hipwellphotography/5807888949/sizes...
Also hover over the image to see the image notes to find out what each item is.
4 shot panorama photomerged and edited in photoshop, taken with Canon EOS 40D with 17-85mm f/4-5.6 kit lens.
You have no idea how long it took me to get this shot, i have loads of sky shots, and blury balloon shots. I initally started with throwing toy aeroplanes in the sky, but stopped that promply after one landed on my head.
OCD in the air
20221207 The Solemn Profession of Sr. Jacqueline of Jesus and Mary, OCD. Mass celebrated by His Eminence Cardinal William Goh. Photo by Ben Cho of VITA Images
This is inside a photo frame, so I can write on it with a dry-erase marker and wipe it down each Sunday.
An up arrow means to do it in the morning, and a down arrow means to do it at night.
cardstock: stampin' up basic black, strathmore watercolor
stamps: latina crafter ocd
ink: ranger archival black, fresh ink refill/cocoa
other: a jillian vance design/chalkboard backdrop die, sizzix tim holtz embossing folder
tsurutadesigns.blogspot.com/2015/08/latina-crafter-blog-h...
The lot next to me isn't even mine but I had so much pent up energy I cleaned mine and theirs mostly so my grass keeps growing into it for them...
In an effort to prevent people absconding with the Sharpies and Pilot Rolling Ball pens I bring from home, I have resorted to subterfuge: keeping them (pens, not people) in an extra travel mug. A decoy pen holder with office-supplied pens (number and types counted) is provided as a distraction.
This drastic move came on Friday, when I discovered the big black Sharpie I had brought from home was missing. If you see one with the dimple on the end filled in with silver, it's mine. Please give it back.
Now, though, I'm set, as long as no one steals my extra travel mug. If anyone knows where they sell lockable pen holders, please let me know.