Something Bad is Going to Happen

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Something bad is going to happen. 

I have said that combination of words to myself countless times over the course of my life – millions of times; more times than there are grains of sand in all the beaches combined – or so it seems. 

Something bad is going to happen… 

And I have spent my whole life, literally every part of everyday some days, attempting to make that bad not happen. 

While I know it is a natural human trait to avoid “bad” and hurt, I’ve lived with the conviction, the belief, that I was capable of making this happen – and it’s all thanks to three letters: O.C.D. 

OCD or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is defined by Google as: a mental health disorder that affects people of all ages and walks of life, and occurs when a person gets caught in a cycle of obsessions and compulsions. Obsessions are unwanted, intrusive thoughts, images, or urges that trigger intensely distressing feelings. 

Personally, I think this definition is pretty good. The words that stand out as particularly accurate are cycle, unwanted, intrusive, trigger, and distressing. Words that I would add however are: companion, control, debilitating, opportunistic, and crafty.

For people who might not know what OCD looks like – and it is crucial to remember that despite what our culture makes us believe and despite what the film “As Good as it Gets” “taught” us, it looks different on everyone. Sure, we all have a touch of OCD and that’s great, but for many this is a life altering disorder that has the ability to take you out at the knees and mercilessly beat you while you’re down on a near constant basis. For some, functioning on the daily is an agonizing, never ending feat, and for others it is all but impossible. So – disclaimer – it’s important to remember that this is a glimpse into what OCD looks like for me and me alone. I claim no expertise and yet my knowledge and understanding of it is intimate. Take from it what you will. 

Before we really get into it, it’s important for me to tell you how I view OCD. I mentioned the words companion and that’s really how I think of it – a counterpart that’s been with me since birth. I can’t remember life without OCD and I can’t separate myself from it. It belongs to me but it’s certainly not all of me. I see it as something attached to and residing in my mind, but it is not part of my heart – my truest essence. You see, the depths of my soul hold no space for this trickster – this betrayer. I only know that it will be with me forever and I know that I am perfectly okay with that. And so that’s how I choose to view it – a Siamese attachment in my mind – a tag along that has formed a true and lasting relationship with me. 

From my earliest memories, what I can recall of them (see previous blog post), I was engaging in “rituals” to try and make things right – to avoid “something bad happening”. For me, the rituals were “small” things – at least they started off that way – things that could be brushed off, chalked up to childish behavior, and even chuckled at. Things like, and yet not limited to: turning on and off a light, looking in a mirror over and over again, putting a shirt on and then taking it off, picking up a book and putting it down again, repeating a “prayer” until it felt “right”, routinely saying the same things to my parents each night as they put me to bed –  “see you tomorrow”… so huge!, had to be said – let me repeat that – had to be said. 

Everyone in my family witnessed these “benign” sacraments and maybe they were curious about them, but mostly these things were part of what made me, me and a part of what living with me looked like. Around fourth grade (apparently fourth grade was a reckoning of some sorts for me – maybe it was Mr. Schields and his “black dot” – but we’ll save that for another post) however, I began to realize that most people didn’t move through life the ways I did and I started to question what I was doing. You see, the rituals I would engage in didn’t feel good and had lots of stress that came along with them. It felt better and “complete” I said “see you tomorrow”, but getting there and the thought of not doing that was fraught with, and accompanied by, quickness of breath, an elevated heart rate, and slight preparation. I needed, nay I had, to to say “see you tomorrow” or you guys… it wouldn’t happen. I couldn’t always name exactly what would happen only that legitimately “something bad would happen”. And anyone who knows anything about anxiety understands what it was I was seeking. I was seeking reassurance and reassurance…? She a lying, backstabbing bitch.

It’s okay to need reassurance, we all do. And most of the time we need it a healthy amount of the time. The problem lies when you need it all the time and you can’t possibly move forward in your life, in your day, in the literal moment without it. And the ultimate problem to that problem is that reassurance doesn’t work. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about – I’ve spent MY ENTIRE LIFE trying to have a productive relationship with reassurance, only to be ghosted buy her over and over again. Reassurance feels great for like .528 seconds but then she nopes out of there and you’re left stunned and speechless, and ultimately needing more. 

It makes me sick to my stomach looking back and tallying how many hours – days – years…? I’ve spent pursuing reassurance only to come upon the realization that it’s a futile quest. And the nut punch is that even when you recognize that fact, you still do it – you keep coming back for more.

Hi, my name is Danielle and I am a reassurance addict. 

Proud to say though, that I am now – truly – in recovery. 

You see, the source of reassurance, the root of all my OCD rituals, of chronic anxiety is fear; the fear that “something bad is going to happen”. And the sadistic lie that I’ve built my whole life around is that there’s actually something I can do to prevent that. 

Going back to fourth grade for a minute. This was the time when I realized that while many of my peers had fear and were scared of bad things happening, they generally weren’t impaired by it to the extent that I was. They could more easily let it go and they definitely didn’t engage in the weird rituals I did on an hourly basis. This is, of course, based on my nine year old observational skills, of which we’ve already established were less than astute, because in reality many of them perhaps did – and in reality, many of them probably tried to hide them, just like I did. So one day I brought it up to my dad. I remember we were sitting on the couch on Davona Drive and I said, “Hey so… when I say my prayers at night sometimes I feel like I have to say them like ten times in order to get them right. Like if I don’t say them just right something bad is going to happen.” My dad looked at me and said something along the lines of: “No, you don’t have to do that. Your prayers are just fine the way you say them the first time. It’s all good. “They” don’t expect them to be a certain way.” 

Looking back I can’t tell you the comfort this memory brings me. My dad, having no idea what was actually at the root of this question, could have said any number of things. He could have said that was silly and that I needed to stop it. He could have said that was weird, or wrong, – but even though he probably didn’t know exactly what to say – and even though it wasn’t exactly what he said but rather how he said it – he came from a place of understanding and support. And looking back at all that’s surrounded my experiences in regards to OCD, those are the words that come to mind when I think about both my parents’ reactions and actions – understanding and support. Beyond this, I have no memory of me continuing to express that I thought something was amiss in my mind… but I guess I was persistent and I know they listened because I ended up with a therapist named Beth – and Beth opened the door of understanding for me.

Beth taught me so much, but most importantly she taught me what OCD was and what was going on in my mind. She helped me to understand it, rationalize it, and overcome. She gave me a safe place during those incredibly formative years of life and I can say without any hesitation that I would not be the person I am today without her. And it’s all because my parents were wise enough to listen and brave enough to act.

To them I say Thank You – from the bottom of my heart. 

Beth ended up relocating far away but as with many things in life, the timing was serendipitous and it felt okay – I felt ready to fly on my own for a while.

As the years passed, OCD as my constant and seemingly faithful companion, I had good moments, bad moments, and staggeringly terrible moments in the throws of this relationship. I succeeded in implementing the strategies that Beth taught me at times and failed miserably and more often in others. But at least I had a basic understanding of what OCD was and was able to live relatively comfortably. However progress, if you can equate that to one’s mental state, was slow and my relationship with OCD became stagnant. We both took comfort in the fact that everything was manageable – safe. OCD was stoked, it had shacked up in a mind that wasn’t challenging it or threatening it in any way – life was chill, easy and it could continue its sly dictatorship in peace. I however, was not as satisfied with how things were going. But like how a marriage can become unsatisfying and unfulfilling, and yet it is still scarier and more risky to shake things up and “leave” than it is to stay where you’re at, I stayed where I was at – for a very long time. 

Enter panic attacks and melanoma. 

I can recall the first panic attack I had when I was kid. It happened because a ritual that I was supposed to complete at the ice skating rink didn’t get resolved. I got a little cocky and decided to chance it and not engage – bad idea (or so I thought at the time). I was sitting on my bed and all of a sudden felt like I was going to pass out. My heart rate spiked, I started to sweat, I became light headed and it felt like – and I cannot emphasize this enough, it felt like I was going to die – right there, right then. 

I called my mom in and told her what I was feeling. She didn’t know what to do and rubbed my back reassuring me that I wasn’t going to die, as I sobbed into the sheets. I eventually choked out that I thought it was due to something that happened at the skating rink and could she please take me back there. 

Now hang on – anyone who knows anything about OCD knows that this is not what you’re “supposed” to do. The work and the overcoming of OCD, anxiety, and rituals all stem from facing the fear and not engaging in what you’re being asked to do. Therapists call it exposure – I call it torture. But the thing is, it actually works – like really works – like it’s the reason OCD took up shop mind so comfortably for so long, because there was little to no exposure practice happening on my part – because why – the ritual is easy to do, familiar – the exposure terrifying and draining.

DISCLAIMER – I mentioned just now that exposure is hard – that is a freaking understatement. Exposure is facing your deepest darkest fear over and over again – it’s facing that “something bad is going to happen” and there’s nothing you can do about it so let’s actually make that bad thing happen in your mind or even, when applicable and safe, in the real world. You should truly seek the help of a therapist when attempting to engage in these practices for the first time; they will give you the tools and the baby steps you need to guide you through this grueling, gut-wrenching process.

Thankfully, moments like that first panic attack were few and far between up until adulthood. 

Then shit got real. 

It wasn’t all of a sudden – more along the lines of OCD slowly getting bolder after years of gorging on my fear and being unchallenged. About a year after I got married, a series of triggers occurred one after the other and I had a panic attack that lasted, no effing joke, for the entire summer. It was near constant, continuous, and relentless anxiety – much of it centered on my mortality. More specifically, I ended up convincing myself that I had a brain tumor and was going to die a horrible death. 

When I think about ways to go, for some reason something going “wrong” in my brain seems like the scariest. I rationalize this by thinking insane things, like how you can live without a limb, or how you can always just get an organ transplant if something goes wrong with any one of those… Yes insane, irrational, but when you’re in the shit, it’s the most realistic and sane thing on the planet. Remember how in my last blog post I talked about knowing yourself to an extent that can’t really be explained? – yeah well, that’s great sometimes and at others, especially when in the midst of a full blown panic attack, it just adds to the certainty – because hello! I know myself so well, so of course I know this about myself too. <Heavy Sigh> My brain feels fatigued just thinking about it. 

So after suffering in a panic driven state for three months and the resulting MRI scan – which revealed nothing of course – things calmed down a bit and I was able to continue life relatively normally, albeit battered, bruised, and scarred from the experience – moving forward, but still dealing with the unresolved trauma of the experience. I thought I was okay…  then came the melanoma.

***Begin Public Service Announcement – GET YOUR SKIN CHECKED BY A DERMATOLOGIST PEOPLE – GET IT DONE NOW – End Public Service Announcement***

Thanks to my mom, I’ve always had my skin checked and throughout my life I’ve had numerous atypical moles removed now and again. It’s always just been a part of my routine – thank god – until I moved to Bishop. We don’t have anyone super reliable here and so most people head up to Carson Dermatology – myself included. But this wasn’t until far too many years had passed and this wasn’t until I became concerned about a spot a couple of millimeters in size. Even then I put it off (facepalm). Skipping ahead, I go and see the lovely Dr. Tack (highly recommend) and even then I almost forgot to ask him about it as it was slightly hidden. Dr. Tack knew it didn’t look great and we biopsied it. He “wasn’t super concerned” but then it came back as melanoma. Now if you know nothing about melanoma – I’ll just say this: it’s one of the fastest spreading and deadliest of cancers – and my anxiety had just won the lottery. Here was the proof! Something bad had happened – anxiety was vindicated – clearly I’d caused this, clearly if I’d just been better about my obsessive compulsive rituals, clearly if I’d just been perfect – I could have done something to prevent this. Clearly I was a failure.

Not to diminish or over exaggerate the experience, it was Melanoma in situ and I was able to have a rather large chunk of flesh removed and the physical treatment ended there – but the damage was done psychologically. I was in complete and total crisis and I could no longer walk the mental health path alone. Enter Nancy. 

My experience with Nancy is hard to put into words. But the following scenario played out in my mind when I tried: I’ve been battling in the arena all day – I’m cold, wet, wrung out – beaten, bruised, and bloody, and then I sit down and sip on a cup of hot tea, while the world’s softest blanket is being gently and lovingly wrapped around my shoulders. She’s that kind of comfort for me. With Nancy, all wounds were tended to. She was my healing salve; the tonic that pulled me back from the brink. She was the most comforting and gentle hug in the world. She got me through melanoma, infertility, panic attacks, shame, OCD, doubt, childhood trauma, pregnancy, perfectionism, loss, marital strife, and becoming a mom. She taught me how to live again – like really live you know? Not just exist like I had been doing for so long – Not just get by – Not just white knuckle it to the end. She helped me let go. She was exactly what I needed, exactly when I needed it and tears stream down my face as I write this. She changed my life for the better and there are no words in any language that will be able to describe the gratitude I hold in my heart for her. 

I won’t get into the nitty gritty of our work, but we’ve done more in four years together – made more progress – than I have during the entirety of my life. And even though we’ve had to end our treatments because of circumstances beyond our control – just like it was with Beth, the end  arrived at the “perfect” time – right after something incredible happened – right after something therapists refer to as a “breakthrough”. 

I recall that it was a pretty uneventful session overall – no major crises to confront… and I was talking about how , if I’m not careful, my OCD rituals more easily get out of hand since becoming a mom – similar to melanoma, being the mom to a human person just opens up a pandora’s box of fresh and new “something bad is going to happen” scenarios for anxiety to feed and get off on. And I said something like, “If I am a good mom, wouldn’t I do ANYTHING to protect my child, no matter how insane it might seem? Wouldn’t I do any ritual OCD is demanding just on the off chance that it could prevent the “something bad is going to happen” from actually happening? Isn’t that really protecting my child? 

Nancy thought for a moment and then said these words to me: 

What if you showed your daughter what it looked like to face fear and overcome it?

Everything just stopped for me at that moment. It was as if I looked into the future and saw the woman that Freyja is going to become. In one reality she is marred by fear – stunted and stagnant, and in another she faces it head on and overcomes – a warrior, shining her light into the world. At that moment there was no question which reality would be hers, because I was going to show her how to do the latter and I was going to start right now.

And I have.

From this a mantra has taken root. Every time I am interrupted by OCD demanding me to perform a ritual I stop, and say the word “fear” out loud. Because what I also learned at that moment was that fear is simply, and beautifully, a feeling. And a feeling can’t hurt you unless you allow it to. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it took my THIRTY-FOUR years to come to the realization that fear can only hurt you if let it. So straightforward, and yet so complex. 

As I’ve already said, it sickens me how much time I’ve lost to fear; to the thought of “something bad is going to happen”. It’s clouded and manipulated every thought I’ve had, decision I’ve made, and action I’ve taken – in some way – and while hindsight is 20/20 and you can’t go back in time, I wouldn’t want to even if I could. Everything that’s happened to me in my life has brought me right where I am now. And right now is right where I am supposed to be. It’s where we are all supposed to be. 

You see in the six months since my “breakthrough” I’ve successfully shut down more ritual behavior than I have in my entire life. I’ve faced more fear. I’ve had less panic attacks. I’ve told myself more truths and held myself more accountable – than I’ve ever dared to dream I would. And even though OCD and I are in this for life, I am now the one in control. Finally. 

Because you see… something bad is going to happen. That is one of the few absolute truths in life. And the question we must come to terms with, the question we must ask ourselves over and over is this:

Are we going to choose courage over comfort?* Bravery over fear?

From here on out I choose courage. 

I choose bravery.

Hear me roar. 

If you’re interested in any of this, in my journey, my story, check back weekly. Much more meandering musings and kuhlhuman thoughts to come. 

Stay savage friends and Get. It. Done.

*Yet again… (eek) Brené Brown comin’ in hot! Paraphrased from “The Tim Ferriss Show” Podcast #100: Brené Brown on Vulnerability and Home Run TED Talks

Also! If you have questions about what I write or even suggestions for future blog posts, feel free to leave a comment below or email me at thekuhlhuman@gmail.com.