No Wonder...

You can always tell how my week is going by the amount of curse words I say in my post. I apologize now, it has been a potty mouth kind of week......

I am trying really hard not to obsess.
I am trying my best and not succeeding.
I wish this was easier.

I often wonder how people go through life and receive worrying news, or news of any kind, and just put it out of their minds. I mean, how on earth does that work? How nice would it be to have such a magnificent ability? To just not think, and worry, and over analyze every damn thing would be mind boggling. These people have no idea how lucky they are to have such a gift.

As I write this, I am forcing myself to redo my living room to make it the way that I want it. Not because I have nothing better to do, but because two of my beloved family members are going through something stressful, hopefully it is nothing big. This in turn is freaking me out which then kicks in my OCD medical fears. Because my OCD works by taking my stress about other things and other people and then turns it into medical fears about myself, I am trying to shut it down before things get out of hand. I really don't fancy spending another night crying myself to sleep over some imagined ailment my mind makes up for me. My OCD tries to save me from my worry of my loved ones by giving me more unneeded worry about myself. It distracts me but with a negative distraction. It thinks it is helping....when it is, in fact, making things worse.

Example: If someone I love gets pneumonia, I get worried about them. My OCD brain shuts off that worry about them because I can not deal with the stress of it or the fear of losing them.  In turn, it turns my thoughts into an obsession that I may have a blood clot in my leg.

 Because I can not deal with stress well, my OCD seeks to distract me with some ridiculous bullshit obsession that I know is completely false but yet am still unable to completely ignore. Then all of that bad, negative, terrifying worry that I have for my loved one  just becomes a bad, negative, terrifying worry about myself. It sounds selfish but really my mind can not process the stress in a helpful way nor can it simply turn it off. It is simply distracting itself to save me from the anxiety of what my loved one is going through. It is just doing so in a way that creates an equal or larger amount of stress about something completely unrelated. Which I really don't need on top of every fucking thing else. Because I am still worried about that person just not to the point of breaking down because I am already breaking down by the worries my OCD mind has conveniently created for me about myself. Like an extremely fucked up self preservation tactic that is broken. If this was my only defense while traipsing through the wild, I would be eaten.


 It is a no wonder why I have an ulcer.


The only way for me to deal with this is to distract myself from such bullshit by forcing myself into obsessing about things I either want to do or like to think about. Like redoing my living room, or planting a new garden, or  planning a family trip. Something positive to fill the negative void of terror my OCD is creating. It is exhausting to constantly try and stuff this black hole of worry and doubt with happy or less scary thoughts but this is how I cope with my amazingly screwed up coping mechanism. Thanks OCD, you are such a little gem. (sarcasm)

I am  really trying not to obsess. I know that it doesn't help to worry about stuff. I know that distraction is something I need to do right now to keep myself healthy and above the fray of the OCD nonsense. I know what works best for me when things get like this. I know....but it is still hard.

So, I think tonight I am just going to go wash my face, put on my face moisturizer that I secretly think makes my face even more dry and has the wrinkle reducing properties of rubbing dry paper on my face (despite it's lofty claims) , and look at my laptop until my eyelids get heavy and I fall asleep....

I realize that at thirty six years old my life is about as exciting as a bottle of ketchup to some people, but when you have a mind that makes up shit to worry about over top of actual shit that needs to be worried about.....I don't really need any extra excitement. I got that part covered already. What I really need is an hour or two of Pintrest and a good night's sleep....and maybe some new face cream.

But hey, tomorrow has got to better than today and depending on how stressful my week is going to be, my living room is going to look fantastic....

Neurotic Nelly