Members, It's nice to see you all finding commonality with each other and lending support accordingly! If any of you need help with anxiety management, please do keep working through the sessions as it is tackled in Session 12. If you need more immediate aid, please visit www.paniccenter.net It has a great program also! Danielle, Bilingual Support Specialist

DL ... the blinking clock would be so unsettling to me that I would never be able to sit and have coffee where I could see it. Things like that really do send the anxiety skyrocketing. Odd that you mentioned the blinking clock since that is one of my biggest things. I've actually got to the point where I allow the timer on the coffee maker to be set wrong, even though it drives me crazy, but it doesn't blink. Wildcat ... thank you. Hearing what others go through and being able to identify with it is more comfort than I can express. I'm still learning about the OCD stuff (or TOCque :) ) so hearing your experiences is such a help. Sometimes I feel cracked as grandma's china ... like I'm going totally nuts. Logic doesn't begin to sort out the feelings and I've spent years feeling so out of control. Hearing that others do the same things and feel the same way helps so much. "I need it on hand and I need to know" ... I so relate to that. My current project is to not bring any flyers up to the apartment. When I check the mail, I throw the junk mail into the recycle bin there and then. The one thing I allow myself is the Ikea catalogue, but everything else goes. I've got to the point where the anxiety is almost gone doing that. I can drop stuff into the recycle without even looking at it ... most days. :) Now if I could just part with the stuff I've collected before that rule was applied. ~sigh~ One thing at a time, I guess.

hi Lulu, it is good to "know" another "TOCqué" - the french initials for OCD with the suffix for a decription.. I check... I check the calanderSS on my desk 100 times a day. I check the people circulating in my area. I check what I have done 2,3,4, times for 10, 15,16,18,25 minutes. I accumulate old flyers, paper with all sorts of different information, books, newspapers, I need the right answer and I need it always on hand and I need it now. Never mind if it is time for sleep... I can keep my percious info on a bureau, on the floor next to me... at the end of my bed (and a few things have found their way under my pillow). i thought I was crazy (like my father and his father - all three of us in the same house made for A LOT OF STUFF!). and when I hit a new floor in 2005 I learned what i was doing. I was relieving my anxiety. I have personality traits of OCD and OCD-Anxiety disorder. If was soooo go to know that others live with the same struggles and know it is possible to learn new behaviors. It is possible to become less sensitive to anxiety and not jump into old patterns. I have a great support group on Monday night and a whole gang on another forum to share the disappointments and triumphs with! So do not be too hard on yourself. and if need be.. remember that we are here for you to vent and proclaim to!

I just realized after reading your posts that a friend of mine can attribute most of her anxiety to a touch of OCD... I just moved into this new apartment and I bought a stove with a digital clock which blinks on and off because I haven't figured out how to set it... well, she went crazy when she came to visit; she stood over the stove for ten minutes pushing and fiddling with the timer buttons and kept babbling about how she "hated" this. I almost had to lead her away from the stove to sit down and have a coffee... even then she had a hard time taking her eyes off the blinking clock... what a feeling to be 'trapped' by something so seemingly insignificant...

Thanks, Brenna. Truth is that there are a lot of times I have to pep talk myself into the attitude. Often, these days. :confuse: I had to learn the difference between being a jerk to myself with negative self talk and self recrimination and being firm with myself. Keeping the inner talk positive while pushing myself to do the small steps is what works for me. I know that's not how everyone does it, but I found I either held a whip over my own head constantly or totally indulged myself in dispair. Learning when to apply self discipline, when to just do things and learning when I need to be indulgent, is my biggest battle. The more depressed I feel, the more mixed up those two things become for me. I dunno if that makes sense or not. I'm still new to understanding the OCD aspect of my life. It's been something I've done as long as I can remember -- from early childhood. It's just part of who I am, I thought. Identifying when I'm acting out of OCD is still sometimes surprising to me. Being in that "aha!" stage does help, I must admit. I can't change something if I can't identify it. At the same time, though, I realize I'm a three ring circus mentally. Yi. Some days it looks like a very huge mountain to climb. lol ... Ok, I've read this over three times so it's ok to pusth the reply button. OCD? Who, me?

Lulu, What a great attitude you have about coping with your OCD. It is so important to realize that you have not become this way overnight and it will not change overnight. Now keep on setting those goals for yourself to accomplish and you house will soon be free of clutter. Please do keep us posted. Brenna, Bilingual Support Specialist

As part of my commitment to this board, I've decided to post something every day that I can. Today I need to talk about my OCD. I have two kinds ... counting (drives me batsh*t!), and hoarding (drives both Shell and I nuts). It's odd, but I can be going along, thinking I'm having a good day, then I realize I'm counting everything. Steps. Brush strokes. Breaths. Items. When that happens, I have finally learned to stop, sit quietly and figure out what's going on. Invariably I've got something lurking around under the surface and stressing me out. The more stressed, the greater the need to count. If I don't count, I feel this sense of doom. It's not like I have any consequence in mind (usually), but just a general sense of something bad about to happen. And sometimes that all goes on unconsciously until I realize that I'm doing it. Today I'm tackling a bit of my hoarding. I've learned that doing anything big is out of the question. I get paralyzed and am unable to make the smallest decisions. Now I go at it one small area at a time. Today it will be the bathroom. And when I break things down into small bits, I am able to be ruthless about throwing stuff away and experience a minimum of anxiety. Little steps. That goes against my nature as well. I'm the type who usually goes at anything I do like I'm killing snakes. It's all or nothing. That thinking has led me to the clutter I live in. If I can't do the whole house in one go, I don't do anything. I watched some talk show and the suggestion of breaking things down into either areas or time units was the one most valuable thing I took away. I also have finally come to the realization that I'm not just a slob. The truth is I love a clean house. I love a clutter free world. It does bother me a great deal ... especially since I have a thing about germs in any area I eat. Hoarding is not my fault, but it is my responsibility. I do have control. I can choose to let it continue to run my life, make my home so embarrassing I won't allow anyone in, make me feel bad about myself -- or I can start tackling it a little at a time. I didn't get this way overnight. I'm not going to get better overnight either. I will clear the clutter the same way I collected it, and there's some kind of balance to that thought. It's not so much like "fixing" myself as growing out of something that doesn't work for me anymore. Ok ... 'nuff ranting for today. :) Knowing there are folks here who get what I'm talking about is unexpectedly soothing. I've been to tons of therapists -- good ones! -- but have never been involved in a group where others truly understand. This is new to me and I love it.