Updates

I’m basically surviving in the same mental state as I was in the hell house. The main limitation for 18 months has been a particularly consuming OCD compulsion. Everything else (including blogging) depends on overcoming that, which I am able to do for variable periods. I’ve said this before. Once I can do that, everything else is possible, and accomplishment builds accomplishment since the very obvious dopamine boosts give me further resilience to the obsessions. I am either doing a lot or nothing. And of course the days of doing nothing mess up my sleep since I don’t get tired and then I wake up less motivated.

So for the last 18 months most of my blogging was about urgent stuff, when the strain of writing was worth the personal, selfish benefit to doing it. It hasn’t been a recreational thing for a while, as with cooking, reading, shopping or anything else. It’s all last-minute necessity.

I started seeing a therapist two weeks ago with the idea that I would change therapist immediately if I didn’t think they were suitable. It’s a compromise between suitability and cost, since OCD is specialist knowledge which is rare. And let’s face it I’m a complex person. I know that I already benefit a lot from discussing traumatic experiences (of which the OCD is mostly a side-effect) in addition to me implementing ERP at home. The therapy/counselling gives a lot of added resilience in order to do the ERP. But I’m pretty sure tomorrow will be the last session since there’s been an issue over assigning meaning to specific OCD compulsions (and other red flags). Assigning meaning to OCD is really the worst thing you can do. It’s a difficult situation when you are more knowledgeable about OCD (and how you personally experience it) than a therapist who doesn’t understand the fundamentals. It’s wasted time/money and effort. And unbelievably frustrating 🥵.

There was even a weird discussion over confidentiality of sessions since I mentioned the blogging, and they asked if I was writing about the sessions/the therapist themselves on my blog (even seemed quite defensive), and felt the need to over-emphasise the specific confidentiality of therapy…I’m not sure that even makes sense, since the big confidentiality aspect of therapy is mainly for the benefit of the patient…? The rest is general good practice, keeping names out of writing/conversations, which I immediately said. Nobody knows who my therapist is lol. My mental health is mine alone 😆. Anyway, I’ve really pushed myself to have this one final session, just to see what happens. Then I’ll have to look for another one.

Now that I’ve written all that I’m not even going to bother going…I’ll just let them know I wish to stop.

🌪