Thanks for your help: OCD with Depression
Question:
I have been on a listserv mailing list for OCD for support due to being in a relationship with a wonderful man who suffers from classic OCD. I have a career history of being a master’s level clinician for many years, but ironically never (that I know of ) worked with an OCD patient. I’ve learned more in the last 5 months about OCD that any other disorder. Except of course, my own, Major Depression recurrent. I wanted to respond to your post because I, too, sought info via internet so I could be supportive. Jeff is immensely supportive of my depressive/anxiety/mood disorder symptoms (not to mention adult attention deficit). He has gone from being 95% dysfunctional - e.g., unable to work in his profession as an attorney, unable to to out except at night, only able to shop at certain stores, many of which are an hour away, and OF COURSE the hand washing (though not severe), checking, ordering, questioning repetetively, inability to wear more than one outfit of clothing (anyone else know of this one????), and a tendency to wear the "uniform for weeks without washing it. (He showers 1-2times daily so it doesn’t smell….but still….) Since I’ve known him he has bought new clothing for the first time in 5 years, begun working again for the first time in 5 years, and is now able to shop almost anywhere unless there is a service station, car dealership, paint store, etc. nearby. Anyone familiar with the fear of petroleum related products and the reluctance bordering on determination not to wash clothing. He owns only 2 pairs of pants, two shirts, two suit jackets, one pair of shoes and one pair of boxer that he only washes in the shower. So….(my own ADD makes it difficult not to ramble on)…I wanted to say I, too, am attempting to provide support to a person with OCD, and I’m also curious about the idiosyncratic symtpoms I’ve not found in any of the literature ( clothing, petroleum products phobia). In addition, we married 3 weeks ago, and I’m finding it more difficult to be supportive. I;m finding myself nagging, and don’t want to. $$ is an issue becasue he’s not working enough yet for us to share finances equally. I don’t know where support ends and enabling begins. No amount of psychological training helps when it’s me and mine. Any responses welcome!! Thanks; Kathie
Response:
Oh Cat! He is NOT alone. When I have some more time, I will tell you a story; a story that Rolling Stone magazine printed four years ago. I was diagnosed with anxiety/depression when 17. At 23, OCD came along. My therapist said since I "do not bark like a dog", I do not have Tourette. Well, guess what? I always have had it. A Boston doctor told me within 30 minutes of meeting with him! Doctor shop! I have seen more than most, but I will never give up. All I want is a little relief. A relationship of any kind would help (I’m gay to top it all off; meaning less peole to choose from), but it ALWAYS gets better. Trust me. Take care. Write if you are inclined. Marty ("inclined?" I mean, if you want to. You do not have to be "inclined" That’s like laying down, isn’t it? Just joking. Got to have a sense of humor. Think of all the "normal" folks with NO SENSE of humor. Yikes!)
Response:
Some of you may remember me as the woman who recently posted inquiries about SSRIs for my friend, who was diagnosed with depression and suicidal thoughts, took a short trial of Paxil, quit, and is now more depressed than ever. First, i want to sincerely thank everyone who took time to post in usenet or send me e-mail. I have printed out all messages and sent them to him. Second, thanks especially to the people who sent e-mail saying they thought that he may have been misdiagnosed and that he sounded like he had strong symptoms of OCD. You have helped him immensely without knowing it. Because of what you wrote, i checked out the OCD Foundation web site and the Fairlight OCD web site and learned — among other things — that 2/3 of OCD patients have suffered major depression, and that the same drugs are used to combat both. Also i learned that compulsive nail-biting (which he does) is related to OCD — and i recalled that he had stopped biting his nails while on Paxil and had proudly told me that he had fingernails for the first time in his life — but when he stopped the Paxil, he bit his nails off again. Well, the reason i am posting is that i mailed all of this information to him and then phoned him and we had a long talk — and you all were right: he told me that he had not wanted to talk about his inner difficulties with anyone — even the therapist he saw — but that reading more about all of this made him feel less alond and he thought he could describe his symptoms now. What he told me would have been shocking had i not read all of your posts and gone to those web sites: Since the second grade, right after his father died — in fact, for 40 years! — he has been hearing, day after day, an imaginary voice he calls "The Narrator" telling him that he is "no good, a failure, not going to ever amount to anything, a real fuck-up," etc. — and the only way he can alleviate the distress this critical voice causes is by biting his fingernails to the quick and by imagining killing himself over and over, which he calls "falling into the abyss." On bad days he says the visions of suicide run full-size, superimposed over reality — an endless film loop of him drowning himself, shooting himself, taking lethal doses of sleeping pills. On good days the film loop runs as a little inset image ("like a picture within a picture on a tv set") at the corner bottom of his visual field. He said he knows this is "senseless," but he can’t stop, and the best he can do is "keep it to the level of unpleasant background noise, like a radio tuned to a station that plays bad music." He said that there have been only 4 periods in his entire life when the critical messages and the suicide images did NOT come up at least once a day: When he met me and we became friends (29 years ago), when he met and married his first wife (24 years ago), when he recovered from a life-threatening illness and realized that he didn’t really want to die (he had two small kids at the time) (18 years ago), and when he met his second wife (12 years ago). Each time the remission lasted a couple of years — but aside from those periods, he has never been free of intrusive, unwanted images of suicide ("walking around in the supermarket, on the street, at home"). He knew what OCD is — sort of — but until reading the stuff from the web and the posts and e-mails i collected for him, he associated OCD strictly with hand-washing and ritualized counting and the like, despite the fact that his mother displayed severe OCD-like behaviour (she was a paper hoarder who eventually completely filled a 20-room house with old newspapers and magazines, leaving only little corridors to walk through) and so did his uncle (his mom’s brother). He felt that as long as he didn’t hoard paper like his mom or carry things around in shopping bags like his uncle, he was not "succumbing to the family disease." Until recently he had no idea that everyone else in the world was not "haunted by the abyss" or was in danger of being "eaten for lunch" by repetitious images. He is a brilliant, educated person, but he actually told me that he thoight his suffering was "probably just like what everyone else goes through" and that he had told his therapist that he was "just a little depressed." So the upshot of this is that i want to thank everyone for helping — our talks have finally persuaded him to seek out therapy and medication for OCD AND depression. I will post again once that gets undwerway. In the meantime, if anyone has anything encouraging to say to him, please let me know here or via e-mail — he wants to know he’s not alone. cat catherine yronwode * mailto:c…@luckymojo.com * http://www.luckymojo.com * The Lucky W Amulet Archive: http://www.luckymojo.com/LuckyW.html * * The Sacred Landscape: http://www.luckymojo.com/sacredland.html * * Karezza and Tantra: http://www.luckymojo.com/sacredsex.html * for discussions about folkloric magic, ask your ISP for news:alt.lucky.w
