For thirty-six years, I had no idea I had been battling #anxiety and #OCD. I always thought I was self-aware and introspective. I wonder how many others wrestle in similar ways and lack the language and skills necessary to break the bonds of anxiety. There is a stigma around #MentalHealth, and stories help break the stigma. Stories also help people like me who might not be able to see their own struggles clearly. For these reasons, here is the story of my spiraling bedtime routine which woke me up to the reality that I struggle with OCD.
Waking Up to OCD
“The tape downstairs keeps the cabinet door shut better,” I said to myself.
Sighing, I walked downstairs, tore off a piece, and brought it back up to put over the cabinet door.
“Why don’t you just bring that tape upstairs?” I asked, annoyed.
Irritated, I continued my internal, and mostly wordless dialogue, “I don’t want to make this easier. If I bring it upstairs, I’m accepting that this is okay. I need hope that I’m not going to be doing this forever.”
Ashamed, I stuck the tape around the corner of the cabinet door and went to bed.
Nearly three years ago, I sat in the emptiness of my dulling experience of God and I felt compelled to apply for a master’s degree program in Spiritual Formation. It seemed absurd. My husband was about to begin his own intensive master’s program, and I had a full-time job and a family. Adding a degree program seemed foolish to me. I tried to shrug it off, but the idea kept tugging at me.
I applied, was accepted, began the program, and it was a good fit.
I had not yet recognized the pattern and grip of anxiety and OCD on my life, but for the first time in many months I was able to cut back my compulsive bedtime routine. I felt more peace, joy, contentment, and hope than I could remember experiencing in more than ten years.
I believed this move into peace was permanent – my new mode of being. But as is the common pattern of life, this phase did not last.
The glisten began to wear off within months, and by the beginning of the second year in the program I was exhausted, low on motivation, and spiritually dull. My final project was turned in just one week after directing an emotionally and physically grueling Vacation Bible School. My final project seemed to take all I had left. It was a strong finish to a wonderful program, but I was empty.
I do not remember when I started hiding the knife again.
It started innocently enough. I would place our large kitchen knife behind the faucet, believing that action created a mental block protecting my family. At first, that was enough. On the internet I learned there had been at least one incident of someone harming another person while sleepwalking which was enough to fully justify my fear and subsequent protective actions.
I had always meticulously checked the doors and the stove and prayed over my children before bed, so for a while, my routine was simple: place the knife behind the faucet, check the doors and the stove, and pray over my children.
One day, the message changed.
"Do you really think placing that behind the faucet is enough?" my feelings communicated with a sense of foreboding.
"Just to be safe, better put that out of sight where it would require more effort to obtain," my inner warning bells continued.
Placing the knife in the cabinet, behind the plates, where I could not see it and where it is more difficult for me to reach did not really take much more time than putting it behind the faucet, so I did it. "Besides," I told myself in unformed words, "it is for the protection of my family." That settled the matter. The knife now belonged out of sight, higher than I could easily reach.
At some point it became necessary to place a plate or cutting board over our garbage disposal. I had seen a television show where a woman died from getting an article of clothing stuck in the disposal, and that along with my on and off fears that I could be capable of doing something horrible (like putting my hand in a disposal) just to see if I could (a common OCD fear), was enough to justify blocking the disposal from my sleepwalking view (though I have not walked in my sleep since childhood).
Part of the way through my degree program, one of our assigned readings warned against prayers that were superstitious in nature. Because I did not yet have language to understand the way fear, anxiety, obsessions, and compulsions work in my life, I began to suspect the way I prayed over my children was superstitious.
I sat in the darkness of night, both my children asleep in their beds and me sitting between them. Hands extended out, one toward each child, tightening the muscles in my hands willing the energy of God's power to be channeled from me to them, covering them in the best protection available.
"Mercy. Mercy. Mercy. Mercy. God, have mercy," such words flowed through me in defeat and in hope. Defeat because I knew I was not doing it right, and a sliver of hope that maybe, just maybe, my actions were not the point.
Mercy was my only hope, and theirs.
Since the primary motive for these prayers was to protect my children, I began to fear such prayers may be ineffective at protecting my children since my motive in praying should be to connect with God rather than to protect my children. I feared God would not honor such selfish prayers, and if I did not pray with the correct motive, my children would come to harm. It was my job after all as their mother to cover them thoroughly in prayer.
What if I was failing?
Feeling guilty for praying with such an ulterior motive, this nightly prayer practice became even more exhausting and manipulative. I tried to shield myself from my actual motive by acting as if these prayers were an attempt to connect with God and help connect my children with God. Each night I would attempt to properly center myself, purify my motives, force a connection with God through sheer concentration, pray, and physically sign the Celtic cross over each child.
If it did not feel sufficient, I would repeat it.
When I replay these actions in my head now, I can still feel the tightness in my chest I felt during those times of prayer.
Sometime after I completed my master’s program, I began standing in the hallway each night, staring up at our smoke detector until I saw the red indicator light blink. This grew physically uncomfortable and I began to feel irritation. I would thank God when the light would blink after only a few seconds.
Soon, I realized it was also important for me to check the basement smoke detector in the same manner. After all, if a fire began in our furnace, the downstairs detector would be the first to go off.
One night, it occurred to me our side door could be an easy entrance if someone wanted to break-in in the middle of the night. Our doorknob has a bar which you turn horizontally to lock the knob itself while the bolted lock above requires a key. The upper half of our side door has glass panels, and I realized it would be quite easy to break the glass and open the door.
I began to use the key to lock the deadbolt at night, but I was uneasy about this solution. What if we needed to get out that side door quickly due to fire and I could not find the key in the darkness? Images of us panicking, unable to find the key, and trapped in our house drove me to seek another solution.
One evening I spent close to an hour sitting at our side door thinking through a perfect solution. First, I left the key in the lock so that we would not have to look for the key in the event of a fire. However, this defeated the purpose because if a person looked through the glass in our door, they could see the key in the lock, break the glass, and enter our house. I tried to reassure myself that I (the extremely light sleeper I have become) would hear the breaking glass and be able to get our family to safety, but this reassurance did not leave me satisfied.
I finally landed on taping a piece of paper next to the key (left in the bolt) to obscure the view of the key from the glass in the door. That way, when a person pushed on the door and realized it was dead-bolted, and unable to see the key, they would not bother to break the glass, unaware a key was in the lock.
As a fear spiral tightens, good logic goes out the window, and my spiral was tightening.
Soon after, I began to be particular about where I would place my wedding rings and Fitbit at night. I would always place these on top of the books on our mantel before bed, but one day a strong feeling of foreboding urged me not to leave my rings and Fitbit on the top of books who had been authored by deceased individuals, so I started to place these items on the books of living authors.
It did not stop there.
My brain was so tired from academic reading after completing my degree that I began reading Agatha Christie mysteries one after another in rapid succession. Our youngest daughter was struggling with sleep issues during this time and I found myself regularly sleeping in their room. I would read my mystery novel right before bed, and one night as I went to put down my book, I noticed my daughter's stuffed animal nearby.
My chest tightened and my protective instincts insisted, "Do you really want to place a book about murder next to something that belongs to your daughter?"
I moved the stuffed animal away to create a safe spot for my book.
Before I woke up to my reality of anxiety and OCD, my night-time spiral tightened twice more. First, I began putting taping on the front of the cabinet door which hid my large kitchen knife thinking, "Surely my sleepwalking conscious would pull on the cabinet door and when it did not immediately open, I will be jarred awake." Part of me knew I could always just take off the tape in my sleep, but I refused to acknowledge the possibility.
Most of the time, I put the tape on after my husband was in bed and took it off before he woke. One day, he saw the tape and asked me about it. Filled with shame I could not bring myself to answer and simply walked away.
This was the first time I was forced to consider my actions from an outside perspective.
I began to realize something was off. Deep inside, I knew my behavior was not entirely logical, but I felt trapped and the idea that I could stop these routines seemed impossible and downright dangerous – after all, I was doing these things to protect my family.
The spiral tightened just a little more before I woke up.
A few nights before everything changed, I felt urged to cover the entrance to our kitchen with chairs and stools, hoping such obstacles would cause me to stumble in the night, waking me before I could harm anyone. I looked at the blocked entrance, my chest tight with fear, and wondered “what if that isn’t enough?” Sleep became increasingly difficult.
On two consecutive nights, at the end of 2019, I sat on the edge of my bed. Covered in a prayer shawl with three candles lit, I sat in the emptiness.
In a moment that could perhaps be described as peaceful, I gave up. Unsure of God, tired of having nothing to offer this God I could not remember, and lacking the strength to even sit upright, I laid down and went to sleep.
Two weeks later I began to see my behavior, as if for the very first time, and a thought whispered on the recesses of my conscious - a thought I had never considered with any seriousness.
Maybe you have OCD…
This story will continue. This is just the beginning (a beginning also like an ending). Until next time, may God hold us close, in darkness and in light,
Jen
The stories and meanings here are my own stories and my own experiences. While I do hope they help you on your own journey, they are not therapy or a replacement for therapy. I am not a therapist, and nothing here should be used as a replacement for professional services.
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