Gratitude and General Information

I just logged on to my email and my blog and was overwhelmed with the amount of encouragement that I received in such a short amount of time. It seems that my tears flow easily these days, and right now is no exception. Thank you so much for the emails, the comments, the words of encouragement….but especially, thank you for praying for me.

Today was another long, hard day. I had a lot of necessary, routine appointments being a new “fighter” in this place. I also met for several hours with a therapist, and together we began putting together my treatment plan, which essentially involves tracking my compulsions….how many times I submit or resist, and identifying exposures to start working on. An exposure is a situation in which I will “face my fear” until my anxiety reduces to at least half of my peak anxiety.

My main obsessions and compulsions revolve around contamination; however, I battle with compulsions in the following areas as well: repeating things until they feel “just right” and ordering and arranging. The task of tracking my obsessions and how many times I give in to them is exhausting in and of itself. Just about a month ago, a typical day for me involved upward of 500 obsessions a day, many of which turned into ritualized behavior (or compulsions) and the rest I handled by avoiding situations all together.