Tag: OCD

Susceptible to Growth

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I’m not scared of relationships, I’m scared of making a shift from friends to more than friends.
I’m not scared of going out to eat, I’m scared of breaking my streak of home cooked meals.
I’m not scared of moving on, I’m scared of re-establishing myself on new ground.

When trying to dissect exactly what it is about change that is so scary I’ve come to a couple of conclusions (all idiosyncratic to my own personality and emotional history- so, as usual, I cannot speak on behalf everyone suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder); but if I had to pinpoint the sole problem I have with change that I think would most resonate with other OCD sufferers then it would be how in a ritualistic mind change can imitate an intrinsic kind of susceptibility.
To physically change my placement or what I surround myself with, to literally and figuratively put myself out there in an unfamiliar situation with unfamiliar factors is to open myself to a universe of possibilities I have no practice in handling. I cannot guarantee I know how my personality will handle new and different experiences and to somebody who is constantly trying to decode the intermingling of their identity with their mental illness this is nothing short of terrifying.

Equating susceptibility on an identity level is developmentally crippling. Any kind of milestone, an experience or event that should be cherished, could easily be seen with a negative connotation (hence the examples of misconception that I’m simply afraid of being in a relationship, eating at a restaurant, or moving out into a new environment). This kind of mindset is not fulfilling and that’s not fair.

In my OCD fight I’m going to consciously equate change with a more positive connotation- one of growth and blooming. One where getting to the next level, transitioning, and graduating into new milestones will be viewed like pouring water on a blooming identity, to further discover what kind of beautiful flower it will be rather than suppressing it to a bud or a stem without its floral crown.

nourishing a blooming identity

Change will nourish you, not hurt you. And unfamiliarity forces you to become more familiar with your identity by shedding light on how you handle certain experiences. Growth helps you become a more complete you. Making your identity susceptible to growth should be seen as making yourself available to a new level of beauty that only life experience can elicit.

Change welcomes susceptibility, but susceptibility welcomes growth.

– Valerie Parente (5-24-16)

The Gargoyle Mindset

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The Gargoyle Mindset by Valerie Parente

Behold the gargoyle mindset
This is an anxiety complex
The result of an artistic process
By a paranoid architect.
A sculpture so grotesque
Created to act as a fortress
A creature against all the darkness
Featured along a flying buttress.
The gargoyle awaits upon his tier
But its purpose has begun to veer
Going from complacent to cavalier
A defense mechanism with a spear.

In the gargoyle mindset
Anxiety is placed with fret
On the outside it sits
For all to witness.
Once designed to protect
Became its own threat
A public display of stress
Notorious in all its ugliness.
Sometimes our minds equate safety with fear
And we get caught up in this superstitious idea
That to scare off the scary coming near
We have to create a scarier peer.

A Gargoyle Named Anxiety

“A Gargoyle Named Anxiety” by Valerie Parente

– Valerie Parente (5-22-16)

Aesthetic & Psychological Tree

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Skeletal Branches

“The beauty in bare tree branches is how they resemble the skeletal roots in which they grow from.” – Valerie Parente (5-14-16)

Obsessive compulsive disorder has taken captive my once free hands in a misguided attempt to protect them. And as I have said before [see Raw Proof] my hands suffer from severe dryness because of frequent and thorough hand washing compulsions. So when I paint a creepy black tree on my hand it is an act of rebellion, not simply because it is a beautifully dark depiction, but because it is my way of liberating the primary physical area that OCD has manipulated. By painting something that is aesthetically pleasing to me on the area which most symbolizes my obsessive compulsive disorder, I have taken that area back and reclaimed it as my own.

OCD can crack and damage my hands all it wants, but at the end of the day my hands belong to me, Valerie, not this mental disorder. And if I want to paint a skeletal tree on my hand because it makes me feel strong in the midst of a crippling mental disorder then you bet I am going to paint a tree.

– Valerie Parente (5-14-16)

Raw Proof

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Obsessive compulsive disorder is a mental disorder, we all know that. But we don’t always treat it like a disorder. A lot of people treat it like it is some handy character trait people have when they organize their folders alphabetically or keep their house nice and tidy. I can’t stress enough how misconstrued that perception is. But as I said, OCD is a mental disorder, and it is hard to perceive something that goes on inside somebody else’s mind. Mental disorders aren’t exactly known for being diseases obvious to human perception. People do not easily see how OCD can be dangerous. People do not easily see how OCD can be painful. People do not easily see how OCD does more harm than good.

So what do people easily see? Their hands. I remember reading some article online about how you see your own hands more than you see anything else in the course of your day and I have no problem believing that to be true. And this idea of the common sight of your own hand reinforces the eerily symbolic relevance behind a concrete outcome of one of the most commonly known OCD compulsions, hand washing.Raw Proof

The ugly results of frequent and vigorous hand washing was the closest thing to a physical side effect of my obsessive compulsive disorder. The arid patches and deep cuts coating my knuckles, palms, and fingers were literally and figuratively raw proof of the OCD. Through a persistent urge to sterilize the skin on my hands, an urge that I still can’t shake to this day, the mental illness going on inside of me had manifested itself on the outside as well. And although I manage it better now, in the thick of my battle with OCD my hands would bleed and burn at the slightest tightening of a grip or bend of a finger. Each bloody fissure carving its way through the sandpaper flesh on my hands was raw proof that OCD is not just some cute quirky habitual personality trait, but actually a very painful and harmful disorder.

– Valerie Parente (5-9-16)

Trust

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Uprooted

Trust is a big issue in people with obsessive compulsive disorder. They have difficulty trusting that the environment is not this inherently dangerous place out to get them. That’s why they design often ridiculous compulsions to ward off what they perceive as constant impending harm. And if, by some miracle, a person with OCD is compelled to oppose their specifically designed safety ritual they once again face this trust issue, because to resist a compulsion is to let go of an insurmountable aching for control and trust that the world will not punish them for giving into the natural order of things– a natural order that they must trust is predominantly benevolent.

– Valerie Parente (5-2-16)

 

Echoes

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Echoes
“Your thoughts are synonymous with echoes,” he tells her.
The carefully constructed sentences, spontaneous words, even fragmented enunciation playing out in her mental script are no more or less compositions of sound waves bouncing back and forth in the maze of her mind. Echoes, reflecting off of walls that are as jagged as those doodled by this daydreaming girl who has been half-listening in class. But half of her half-listening is because the thoughts playing out in her own mental labyrinth are lingering. It is not so much a matter of volume, but of frequency. Her echoes reverberate long past the initial sound has run its course. They repeat, repeat, repeat. She can hear the echoes going on and on, cycle after cycle, aware of their questionable rationality because nobody outside of the maze walls seem to be able to hear what she hears. Not even him.
In an effort to make sense of the auditory world reflecting and bouncing inside her she measures these echoes in the same way she measures the dissonant, yet not so distant, world around her- first by participating in the world, second by dissecting the emotional content that transpires by said participation.
She sits back and listens.
The echoes conduct her. Using her instrument of a body she carries out the actions in demand. And what happens… what happens is strange. Is that… is that harmony that she hears?
The echoes that first caused so much panic were silenced upon obedience. It seems that resonating with the echoes was key in tuning them out. She makes mental note of this auditory pattern.
But what transpires when a mental note is jotted down in a mentally disordered mind?
“Your thoughts are synonymous with echoes,” he tells her.
And so on, a new echo starts. This illusory harmony was none other than noise in disguise, false harmony, proving that the only way to tune out an echo is to incite a new echo, conquer a current obsession with a new obsession. The cycle goes on. A natural frequency, the frequency she most prefers, is not the default for the unnatural maze of a mind. But she knows that she will learn to be okay with this. Because though he cannot hear her echoes, he is receptive enough to acknowledge that she can. And that is true harmony.

Serenade

“Serenade” by Valerie Parente

– Valerie Parente (4-23-16)

You Believe, Then You Perceive.

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I think a key difference between the healthy mind and the obsessive compulsive mind is that the obsessive compulsive mind is programmed to work from the inside-out, rather than the outside-in. You firmly believe from a place within your mind that the world is scary, so you perceive the world as scary. You don’t fear touching a doorknob because you have superhuman vision that allows you to see every microscopic germ on the metal knob. You fear touching a doorknob because there is an inner conviction telling you the doorknob is irrevocably contaminated with germs.

The OCD masters this process where your skewed beliefs from your distorted mind spill out into the real world, subsequently skewing your sense of perception. And you don’t recognize that you are seeing the world at a warped angle because, to you, the outside is in perfect alignment with the inside.

You believe, then you perceive.

-Valerie Parente (4-18-16)

Being the Judge

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To be able to healthily manage obsessive compulsive disorder is to be a constant judge. To incorrectly differentiate which thoughts are skewed projections of anxiety and which are valid fears is to do myself an injustice. And, contrary to common assumption, this job requires an emotionally impartial scrutiny of mental territory that goes beyond fear-based thoughts. Almost every rational thought has an irrational OCD counterpart ready to creep in and mimic sensibility.
Is this paranormal knowledge of “what feels right” the art of sharp intuition, or the convincing trickery of delusion?
Is this opposition a factor of my inborn personality or nurtured disgust?
Is this repetitious daydream an inspired fantasy, or just intrusive imagery?
Is this throbbing adoration love at its truest, or obsession at its sickest?
At the end of each trial, whether the verdict places cognitive guilt on obsessive compulsive disorder or not, this disorder still and always manages to uproot a deep-seeded philosophical conflict within me. If a foreign entity is responsible, even if only occasionally, for my brain’s generated thoughts, then who do I call Valerie? Can the “self” really exist in a mentally ill brain?

– Valerie Parente (4-2-16)