The month of June has been an interesting one for me. In a sense, I have lived two parallel lives – that of 30 years ago and today. Reading old journal entries has been eye-opening and healing. I have been able to forgive that younger version and welcome her into my integrated Self. My professional training and experience have enabled me to process those ‘ancient’ experiences – a bit like an archaeologist on a dig site, I imagine. 😊 In particular, I was able to unpack my (back then) undiagnosed OCD – its roots and raison d’être.
I discovered my OCD serves a few different functions that interweave with the same or similar roots. The first observation was that my OCD provided an external locus of control (or sense of self) where my internalized one was lacking. In particular, my obsessive-compulsive religious beliefs and practices. I dedicated my life to God based upon the conviction of the interplay between God’s Sovereignty and Barb’s submission. This was reinforced in my home life but with inconsistent results. I was to claim fealty to my stepmother’s sovereignty with my unwavering submission and unquestioning obedience. This transferred to my understanding of and relationship with God. The irony is that the same faith that exacerbated my mental illnesses also kept me alive – gave me a somewhat consistent external locus of control. Emphasis on the word consistent. Without it, I might have veered into much more severe symptoms that would’ve compromised my “high functioning.” Another irony. If my functioning had become more noticeably compromised, what would’ve happened? My birth mother’s experience very likely would’ve repeated itself. Hence, having a spiritual experience and faith in a Transcendent Other remains important to me, but looks vastly different from my youth.
In a complicated side note, this correlates with having a trauma bond with God based upon my experience of a trauma bond with both my parents. Technically, a deeper layer of the obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviours that developed to fill the void where my sense of self should’ve been. Once again, we wade into the weeds of unmet attachment needs. To review, an ideal childhood is one of consistency, safety, and security – a place or family dynamic in which we gain a healthy sense of self in order to go out and explore the world, only to come back to our centre, regroup, and go out again. The purpose of this process is to develop a sense of “I’m okay.” Instead, I developed a sense of “there’s something wrong with me.” As do all children of unstable or chaotic home environments. We develop a core belief of insufficiency and incompetence which generates a need to constantly seek external validation – our locus of control or sense of self is externalized and thus very vulnerable to the whims of others.
The second function my OCD serves is an attempt to protect me from experiencing embarrassment and humiliation. A bit ironic given it uses internal shame to prevent external shame. Best I can figure is that the Inner Critic is preferable to external criticism, shame, and judgement. Punish myself, push myself to be perfect before someone else figures out there’s something wrong with me and I have to deal with consequences and repercussions – which is related to preventing punishment and leads us to another function.
A meme helped make the connection between OCD and preventing anger – a compulsion to be perfect to prevent my parents (or teachers, etc.) from getting angry with me. In this month’s journal I noted: “The root of my OCD. I don’t recall the OCD starting until we moved to the Graysville area. And it just kept getting worse as family tensions did. But it was so gradual. My OCD doesn’t just try to prevent shaming – it also tried to prevent anger. I think that is lessening; but I still don’t want anyone to be disappointed with me – whether it’s clients, friends, or family.” Or authority figures! Hence my angst about my traffic ticket and the next function of my OCD.
A fourth purpose of my OCD is to help manage the chaos (both external and internal). From my journal this month: “Believing in the delusion of sovereignty & submission kept me in a perpetual state of angst; but it also provided a framework or mechanism to manage shame. And my OCD helped manage the chaos. As long as I kept my ducks in a row, I might be spared criticism, judgement, and shame. That external locus of control. Keep everyone plus God happy, and all will be “well” – meaning peaceful. I had no comprehension of wellness – just the absence of angst. And the angst was always my fault. I did something wrong – that’s why I didn’t have peace. If only I had known it was faulty wiring.” It is worth noting I have also been a compulsive organizer since I was 7 years old. But it was considered one of my quirks rather a symptom or coping mechanism.
Fifthly, my OCD was a way to fill the void – that emptiness where my sense of “I’m okay” should’ve been. From my journal: “I credited my restlessness as being out of God’s will – not getting something right – when the crazy thinking was simply triggered OCD with cPTSD. I wanted to fill the emptiness. And OCD did a great job! And to avoid the emptiness, I over-analyzed everything. The emptiness meant I had failed somehow – when it was my parents who had failed to meet my attachment needs” and develop a sense of “I’m okay.”
Similar to all of the above, OCD also tries to protect me from the pain of disappointment and getting hurt. If my brain can over-analyze every option or possible outcome, then maybe it can prevent bad things from happening – whether from my own mistakes and missteps or from others.
The most significant discovery was that my OCD serves as a way to manage waiting and uncertainty/ambiguity. At one point this past month, I was feeling a familiar restlessness and listlessness – a sense of being in limbo – waiting for something to happen – which I connected to my father wound. From my journal:
“Always waiting for dad’s attention, approval, protection. Those three things are quite significant – it is also what I waited for in my marriage. To fill the void, the emptiness, the sense of “something wrong with me” – I would overthink, over-analyze, obsess. I don’t need to do that anymore: obsess to fill the void or manage the restlessness. While certain interactions remind me of that old dynamic, I can choose different responses, different coping strategies (rather than default mechanisms). I can calm and reassure my inner child: let her know she is loved and cared for. She is okay – nothing wrong with her core, her flame, her light. Her brain and nervous system have some glitches to be worked out, but they do not define her or her worthiness. I deserved so much more as a little girl. More than what my parents were capable of giving. I need to let that shit go. I need to love with detachment. Complete detachment – in that I won’t allow the mistreatment to land on me. I observe and relinquish it. I do not accept it. I let it fall at my feet – to be stepped over or walked away from. It is not mine to pick up or clean up or destroy. Let it lie there to rot on its own. It will take a lot more recovery before I can do that well…And this talk of waiting for approval, attention, and protection made me think of waiting in general. I hate waiting – of any kind – because it generates angst. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for punishment. Waiting for bread crumbs. Waiting for peace & joy. Waiting for healing. Waiting, as a child, to be loved and cared for. That hits a chord – all waiting reminds me of that last one. To be loved and cared for. Hence why ambiguity in romantic relationships drove me to OCD responses. I couldn’t handle the angst of that emptiness – the void of the father wound. So while I was unloved as a child, that is no longer the case. I love that inner little girl deeply and passionately…Deep inside, she was a wonderful little girl who learned it was safest not to express herself. And now I have the opportunity to release the OCD – at least as it relates to the father wound. I am okay. I am loved ‘as is’…Another connection to waiting: my 5-yr-old self waiting for mom to come home – and/or waiting for my “new” mom to show up. Waiting to be taken care of and loved. Waiting always triggers that longing, even if what I’m waiting for isn’t related to love and belonging and basic attachment needs.”
My journal entry continues with a conversation with my amygdala about what waiting is and isn’t (this ‘reprogramming’ or rewiring will take repetition and persistence). “I don’t need to worry about waiting anymore. I am loved and taken care of by my True Self and the entire Universe.”
The last function of OCD that I observed is also related to waiting: to stop the hemorrhaging of the original father wound. From my journal: “In 1994, it appears my fixations transferred from one fellow to the next. Once that wound was opened, it hemorrhaged until I shoved the gauze of yet another potential mate into it…My OCD needed to put something in the open wound to stop the bleeding. And I had no comprehension of intrusive/racing thoughts at that time.” I think this imagery speaks for itself; but if you need me to unpack this further, feel free to send me a message. I was surprised to read in my September 1994 journal that I had made a connection between obsessing about male attention and the apparent unconcern I felt from my father – but I had no way to unpack or process that observation. I know I kept seeking his approval for another two decades. And my marriage, instead of staunching the flow, only added to it – as noted earlier.
My concluding thoughts of this very long blog: it reminded me of writing a research paper. I combed through my June journal entries for references to OCD and made the discovery of its multi-purpose-ness. Hopefully my effort to make sense of it has made it relatable and/or helpful to my readers. Healing is a long journey – one I will be on until I take my last breath. As a therapist, I am honoured to come alongside fellow travellers on their own healing journeys. My hope is that we are all just helping each other ‘home’ – to that sense of being okay at our very cores – a place we can explore from, to return to regroup and recenter, only to go out and explore again and again. Like petals on a flower. Happy travels!
May in a nutshell: learning about complex PTSD, working through Your Body Speaks Your Mind, slogging through old journals that eerily parallel my current situation at times, integrating my former selves into my True Self, having myself as a client.
I don’t know why, but April’s blog feels a lifetime ago, not just a month. It’s likely due to the ‘time travelling’ I’ve been doing while working on my book. There are so many parallels between my life experience in 1993/4 and today, that it’s a bit discombobulating (yes, that’s one of my favourite words 😉). I recognize on some level that I am completing the trauma response from 30 years ago. Part of the mind-game is that I didn’t know I was struggling with OCD and complex PTSD way back when. I barely recognized depression and a persistent discontent I referred to as anxiousness. Anxiety as a diagnosis wasn’t in my periphery yet. By early 1994, I considered getting information about depression, but I had no idea where to look. It would be another 3 years before I would receive proper diagnosis and treatment for depression (dysthymia). Anxiety had a much longer wait.
But it was this crazy-making thinking-and-feeling roller coaster that added to the chaos of that time. No matter what I did, it wasn’t enough (part of OCD and cPTSD). I wasn’t enough. Reviewing these old journals is like reaching through a portal to a former version of myself who desperately needs the knowledge and compassion I can offer her now. While I can’t change the circumstances she was struggling with 30 years ago, I can offer her a safe space to process in the present. Like I said, a bit discombobulating. I feel for that younger version of myself much differently than I used to. I read her journal entries, and recognize the thought patterns and emotional upset that are part of the aforementioned diagnoses. I can break the shame-messaging and be gentler with that version of myself.
I can welcome her into my integrated True Self. Still a work in progress. And it is interesting to see how I am handling financial insecurity, work concerns, friendships, relationship issues, and family dynamics in this day and age compared to 30 years ago. The butterfly effect of April’s blog also seems to have shifted some things around in my internal framework. I see my younger self through my current framework/lenses; and she looks much different than how she saw herself back then. I’m not sure what she’d make of her future self. She’d be quite surprised, I’m sure. And she wouldn’t know what to make of the butterfly effect or a fiery Phoenix as it pertains to her sense of self.
It might have helped her to know she had an inner flame – that was hers alone – yet had the ability to attract male attention like moths to a flame. Given her lacking sense of self, male attention caused a lot of consternation. She had no idea she had a flame that could burn or singe. She had no coping strategies for emotional regulation, racing thoughts, obsessive thinking, or compulsive assessment of her existential state as a Christian. Through retrospection, it’s difficult to own and understand that I could’ve suffered less if only I had better mental health strategies and skills. I wonder how my life would’ve turned out differently if only I understood what was going on inside my psyche.
My healing journey didn’t happen that way, though. It took a much more circuitous route. I am still integrating past versions of my Self as I learn more and process what surfaces with new tools. I attended a webinar on complex PTSD that shifted my entire self-understanding. I’ve had the diagnosis of PTSD as long as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, but I didn’t receive any treatment for it. I would soak up whatever I could at every trauma conference and seminar there was to attend. So it wasn’t like I was receiving completely new information at this webinar. It was how it was presented and how I factored into that information. I related far more to the material as a patient than a practitioner; and it redefined my entire life experience.
Ergo, reading my journals through the lens of cPTSD, as well as the usual OCD, dysthymia, and anxiety (I also recognize early signs of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). My blogs about my father wound (Nov & Dec 2023) play heavily into this conception of cPTSD whose defining features are a sense of self that is consistently negative (or I word it as filling the void of no sense of self with negative perceptions because that is what has been mirrored/reflected back) along with never developing a sense of safety (aka trust issues). Previously, my self-esteem and insecurity issues were character flaws – something I had to build up as I went along in life. Now I know the two prominent features of my way of experiencing the world were part of a complex coping mechanism.
So, I am still working through the goo of the cocoon. I hope to emerge soon as a brave butterfly; but I sense more trauma response completion in my future as I continue reviewing my old journals, reaching through the portal to better understand my former self, pulling her through the portal into the safe space of an integrated True Self. If it sounds complicated, it is. I haven’t been my own therapist to this depth and intensity before. Being one’s own client is mind bending, but it is also creating a safe space within myself that was never there before. And the space where my sense of self should be is no longer being filled with only negativity. I am able to see myself for who I really was, behind the symptoms of all those future diagnoses.
I am beginning to see my own buried flame that will, hopefully soon, emerge from the “cocoon goo” as a Phoenix-like butterfly.
I had every intention of writing a blog for the month of March, but suddenly it was April 1st and the joke was on me. 😊 So here I am trying to compose April’s entry before May encroaches too closely on my space. I know, cutting it a bit close. But I wanted to wait until after the Kickass Women’s Day on the 27th before writing something. That has been such a huge event in my mind since I decided months ago to have a table to promote my counselling services. And before I began writing this blog today, I had a traffic ticket from October to contend with via a phone call…only to have it levelled-up to an in-person court date! Yikes! It’s beginning to feel like the never-ending traffic ticket that eludes resolution. This is the same ticket I mentioned in October’s blog.
After the phone call, I composed an opening paragraph for April’s blog that I was pleased with; so I selected the appropriate icons to engage the Save process—only to have my laptop crash while selecting where to save it to. Sigh. While the laptop was rebooting, I made a pot of loose-leaf tea…without the requisite strainer…and proceeded to pour myself a cup before I recalled my error. Only a couple floaties for the first cup, note to self for the second! But at the rate I’m going, I might forget again.
Recognizing I needed a pick-me-up before things got really out-of-control, I started playing my “Be Good To Yourself” music playlist. Scrolling through Facebook with my floaty cup of tea while waiting for my laptop, I see a post with a delightful frog perched upon the classic polka-dotted mushroom declaring: You got this, Fuck Face (not for everyone, but it tickled my fancy). At which point, my music mix was playing Trooper’s “Raise a Little Hell.” Well, who could stay discouraged long with that particular blend of aural and visual stimulation. 😊
And with simply recalling the last hour or so, suddenly I have consumed half the space for a blog when I had so much to say about this month! I suppose I could delete the previous paragraphs, but then you would miss a little of what it’s like to have a “Barb moment” 😉 – which actually brings me back to my original blog and what happened yesterday that prompted my busy brain to process. At the risk of “too much information,” I will share a mind-body connection that I know I am not alone in experiencing.
I have been in a lot of pain since helping my parents move into a senior’s apartment in their small town, three hours from mine. My brother drove out from Saskatoon, so I was looking forward to spending some time with him. He arrived before me as I had a 4-hour, multi-person, work-related meeting in the city on Sunday; and knew I would need Monday to recuperate. He spent Monday and Tuesday with the parents; and I showed up around suppertime Tuesday after the volunteer movers and shakers had left. Good timing, eh? 😊 The move continued Wednesday and Thursday also involving unpacking and organizing in the new apartment. Met some wonderful people and had good conversations with my brother and a cousin who came out with her husband to help.
Not unexpectedly, I was very stiff, sore, and exhausted by the time I was home Thursday night—and maybe a little grumpy. 😉 I knew the next few days would be challenging physically, emotionally, and mentally. I was in such rough shape, that I moved my massage appointment from the end of the week up to Monday. But the pain wasn’t letting up, even if my brain and energy were somewhat revived. I spent the week doing as little as possible to help my body recover so that I could reasonably function at the Kickass Women’s Day promoting my counselling services. By Saturday I felt I could manage if I kept everything to a minimum. The day went well, but not life-altering in any obvious way; and I committed Sunday to doing very little.
After walking the dogs Sunday, I journalled a little of what I was experiencing; but felt I was still a little ‘dissociated’ or checked out. Withdrawn into myself. Cocooned. At any rate, I hit upon something as my intestines and colon experienced a thorough cleansing without any indication of tummy ache or indigestion of any sort. As this has happened before, my brain suddenly clued in that something needed releasing – which my body was able to do even if my brain was a little slow on the uptake. The mind-body connection. We are multi-faceted creatures, we humans. It’s all interconnected. So my journalling had hit upon something that prompted a physical release. Now to get my brain on the same page. My persistent back pain also eased up after this cleansing. It worsened again overnight, so I am taking care of my back with heat again and gentle yoga stretches. However, the pain is now localized to one spot making me curious about what that part of the body represents emotionally. I will look into it.
My Facebook scrolling this Monday morning prompted some musing while walking the dogs that built upon yesterday’s concept of cocooning. How to condense 10 pages of journalling into a few paragraphs for a blog? The meme stated: “If the Universe is making you wait…Be prepared to receive much more than what you asked for.” A concept that prompted an internal conflict between excitement and dread. Sitting with the dread generated the multi-page journalling.
It’s no easy task processing what surfaces when you realize you’d rather remain in the messy goo of the cocoon than emerge a beautiful butterfly. (I might have to rewatch “A Bug’s Life” after this. 😊) I will spare you the goo to get to the conclusion: I need to release all the previous negative experiences of being a butterfly and acknowledge that this rebirth as a butterfly will be on my terms, not anyone else’s. I will have “new and improved” self-protection skills and awareness – of myself and those around me. I am not responsible for how others react to my “butterfly-ness” – only for how I react, respond, or disengage from those others.
I have to release those memories of being taken advantage of, admired then discarded, contained in a butterfly cage, swatted away out of annoyance, or had my wings damaged, clipped, or even removed. And I have to rework what it means to “butterfly” this time around. My internal conflict sees the “more” that the Universe is offering as an expectation to do more, be more, try harder, push myself farther. Yet, it is the exact opposite. Emerge. Fly. Go where the wind takes me. Weather the storms. Luxuriate in the sunshine. Rest in calmness. Feed my soul. Share when I have excess. Replenish when running low. There is nothing to accomplish or achieve or prove. Just live one moment at a time as it unfolds.
Breathe. Trust. Relax. Much like a real butterfly. Share and replenish. Repeat. I need to do better at replenishing – which now makes sense of the trend in social memes that have caught my attention lately.
One of the issues that I had to sit with in the goo was that of being caught, captured, constrained as a butterfly. How would I handle that differently? I thought of various actions that seemed insufficient to the task of being overpowered as a fragile butterfly when my mind fixed upon the image of the burning Phoenix. And suddenly I knew how I would protect myself as an exposed butterfly: I would tap in to my fire as a Phoenix forcing the hand that held me to let go. And all that will be left in their hand is ashes.
I am not powerless, even as a fluttering butterfly. May I emerge from this time in the cocoon as beautiful, brilliant, and brave.
