PMS...a premenstrual syndrome or poisen mental shower?????

So, I had a crappy case of insomnia last night due probably to my upcoming .  I'm laying in bed dead-eyeing our clock with the green numbers bouncing off the screen taunting me, my heat is racing, I've read, I've done breathing, read more, did more breathing, and read some more but I could not fall asleep.  Then, the poisen began to pour upon me and I pondered the crisis it presented with everything I had except ACCEPTANCE so, of course, that notion being my one and only umbrella I was soaked in agony.  First, I began to become excited about a recent purchase I had made and my husband and I had been working on diligently before going to bed....SHRINKY DINKS!!!!  (I found them after 20 plus years of missing them).  I couldn't wait to put them in the oven and watch them curl and shrink!!  Then I thought, this would be fun to do with Aubrey someday too like my mom used to do with me....then I went to enjoying a moment and then I went to OVEN!!! What if I stuck Aubrey in the oven and made her stay in there at 325 deg?????  Oh my God!!! This thought broke my heart over and over again, I know I could never do that to her but I decided that instead of letting this idea pounce my soul I would expose myself right now, I would come up with a long drawn out terrifying scenario of me doing this horrific act to my sweet baby girl until I didn't not feel any more pain (I tried to neutralize it in my head with by doing an exposure which sounds more like a compulsion with a mask.... The Joker wearing a Batman Suit if you will....)  And boy did it backfire, each time I tried to have an internal exposure with this scenario, it did not get any better, I felt terrible, I think almost to the point that my mind couldn't handle anymore (my mind in these moments is like a person with Dissociative Identity Disorder, with just two personalities....bully (OCD) and unbelievably wimpy kid (not OCD....mother, wife, human, child, innocence.....)  so I thought "Man I must be getting my period soon because this feels like PMS (and I know I am) but then I thought....wait, should I be getting it soon????  Did I miss it????? Why can't I be more organized and write this stuff on a calender??????? WHAT IF I'M PREGNANT????!!!!!!!!! but, my husband and I use protection because we are not ready for another little one yet......WHAT IF I'M PREGNANT FROM A SEXUAL ENCOUNTER WITH SOMEONE ELSE WHERE I WASN'T USING PROTECTION AND I JUST DON'T REMEMBER THE ENCOUNTER!!!???????????  A few weeks ago, I had a girls night with my friends, we had a few drinks but I remember most of the night.....but I don't remember every detail????  What if I was more intoxicated than I thought I was?????  What if I took a stranger in a closet at a club and had sex with him and I don't remember.....What if someone drugged my drink too????? and it happened so quickly (the sex) that my friends didn't even remember me being gone for a significant amount of time???????????  Oh crap!! I'm pregnant with a child that is not mine and my poor innocent husband sleeping beside me, he's going to divorce me....how will I support myself and Aubrey, will I lose custody because I'm a drunk mother who has sex with strangers in bathrooms and gets pregnant?????  How will I figure out who this baby's father is????  Will I secretly resent the child because it reminds me of a mistake I made and don't remember that tore apart my family?????  What if I got an abortion, OH MY GOD am I really contemplating that....(5 minutes of rationalizing why I know I wouldn't have an abortion, including an Albert Einstein reference....)  on and on and on.  I know I shouldn't have done this but I did anyways, I knew I had a pregnancy test in our bathroom so I decided instead of me lying here in bed trying to accept this traumatizing scenario along with what I just attempted to do in terms of exposure where I purposely harm/burn my daughter (writing this is really exposing too because CPS could be contacted due to this thought that I am now manifesting in written text on the INTERNET)  while at the same moment I think about how terrible of a mother I am going to be tomarrow when I got no sleep and won't be present for our daughter (it was 3 a.m. by this time....my daughter gets up around 6:30 a.m.) I thought my best bet for getting to sleep was to take the test...so I did....not pregnant!!!  Luckily I have a therapy appointment tomarrow :) and I'll learn a better way to cope with pms (spike ocd symptoms) and I must say I went through the day not beating myself up about my night....which I rarely do so I am proud of myself for that.

Shine!

Potential Loop Tape

I have done loop tapes in the past, I am thinking about doing another one with everyday worries that dance/prance/stomp around in my mind on a daily basis

Aubrey may choke and I will fail to save her because I was unable to perform an adequate emergency response

I might give her something that is a chokeable item by mistake when it is time for her to eat

Aubrey might be exposed to germs that I failed to erradicate

These germs that I failed to erradicate could cause serious bodily damage or kill her

Aubrey might become a victim of a medical mistake causing brain damage and mental retardation because I brought her in for a treatment that I could have avoided

I could miss something that my instinct tells me because I think it's OCD and fail to save my daughter as a result

I will do selfish things today despite Aubrey's reliance on my presence as her mother

I may cause a car accident because of my lack of focus causing the death of Aubrey

Aubrey may have or develop cancer

My exposures could cause Aubrey harm, especially the ones where I imagine something bad happening to her because my mind might be powerful enough to create that reality

just ocd...

Since my last blog/exposure I have been feeling more empowered but the past two days, I have noticed some worries trying to make themselves louder in the back of my head so I thought I'd take note of them and see where I can do some exposure. 
Tuesday was our daughter's first birthday and we had a wonderful day all and all, but I am slightly bitter that in the back of my head I was thinking about "what if she died on her birthday????, how traumatic that would be....." I began responding to that "what if" with...."ya that wouldn't be something that I would be joyous about...." and left the notion at that.

Today, I am getting ready for a sleepover we are having tom. with a family friend's daughter whom I adore but, the last time we had her over, (she is 7) she was sick and our daughter got her illness times 1000 (the croup when she was in the hospital) so I'm worrying about her spreading germs and if I made the right decision in exposing Aubrey to her even though it will be after a school day so, she probably will have some germs......(when I do my exposures, I have to keep in mind that yes, these exposure put Aubrey at risk but paradoxically I do them for her because I need to be a mother that let's my daughter live in the world and not in a bubble that is quarantined by my ocd) So....I am choosing to have Kayla over for a sleepover, I will probably be worrying about germs the majority of the night, it might be an unhealthy decision for Aubrey and she may get sick and....I am NOT going to Lysol everything that I think might get her sick from the night because ultimately I can't lysol everything I am going to be particular about certain things that are triggered so really I can't be completely germ free for the night 100% so, I'm not going to brake my back trying to have control over 10% that doesn't make any sense. 

Also, my husband and I are going to a wedding in Cleveland without Aubrey and she is staying with family friends because my parents are going to the wedding to.  We will be away from her for 24 plus hours yikkkkeeeesssssss!!!!!!!  and it's 2 hours away ahaahahahahah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   So, naturally, I think that because I am selfish and am excited about going to this wedding even though I am not leaving Aubrey with family, that she is going to die.  The friends she is staying with are very close to me and they are celebrating Thanksgiving that day with more family so, they are going to take Aubrey with them, in a car to someone's house I don't know...my initial reaction was "how incredible, Aubrey gets to have Thanksgiving with my best friend and her family" and then OCD set in....she is going to die in a car on the way home or she is going to choke on food that someone at the Thanksgiving gives her...either way she's dead and my selfish ass went to a wedding....still contemplating how to exposre myself to this.  I am almost convinced that she's not going to live past next weekend (this is when we are going) so, each day is seemingly getting heavier....I need to work on an exposure to this. 

okay a few more....

maybe i will tell the new and proud parents i think their baby is ugly
maybe i will become brainwashed and join a cult
maybe i will scream "fire" in a crowded area
maybe a significant amount of people think that my opinion is worthless because i am so painfully idiotic
maybe there really is a shark in the deep end of the pool that is after me

On a slightly lighter note

Since I last blogged about horrific scenarios that rummage my mind everyday day, every hour, every minute, I thought I would also do the "maybe..." on some lighter and more comical worries

maybe i do have romantic feelings toward our dog
maybe heaven really is acutely exclusive
maybe i will make a racist comment to a person that is not my race
maybe i will fall in love with a 12 year old boy because i'm convinced he's my soulmate
maybe i am walking around the grocery store with a poop stain on my tight white pants
maybe i smell like poop
maybe i will impulsively shave my eyebrows off
mabye i will trip that waitress in the busy restaurant
maybe i will make out with someone impulsively in a professional situation
maybe i will walk into church while mass is going on and the priest completely stops talking, points at me and says that satan has just entered the building
maybe i will close my eyes while driving
maybe i will forget how to swallow
maybe i am having a secret affair...so secret in fact that i don't know i'm doing it
maybe the hospital did give me the wrong baby and her real parents are going to call and want to switch
maybe i will get plastic surgery that completely changes the way i look even though i'm content with my natural features
maybe i will object at a wedding for no reason
maybe i will laugh when i am back to working as a therapist when a new client discloses something personal and private
maybe i will egg our neighbors house because i just want to be mean even though they are the sweetest people
maybe i will flip off a cop when driving past him
the worries could go on and on....but it helps when you have a sense of humor ;)

Where did all of my Courage Go?????

On Thursday, my mom and I attended a monthly support group for OCD and I felt confident about my exposure abilities and potential.  On Friday, I was even beginning to feel like a normal mom because I exposed myself so much with an inner dialogue (changing a "what if" into a "possibly" or "maybe" and also that " I have NO certainty about anything" ) I had really been pleased with myself all through the weekend and then today, I feel like garbage :( 
I had a stressful morning so this could be in part why and also, we took our daughter for her One Year pictures and there were triggers there, and it's Sunday and Sunday usually is difficult for me, it always has been, I think because it reminds me of endings...end of the week....end of life (such an obvious comparison right?)

I know a pretty chunky amount of effective exposure therapy techniques (easier to help others do, harder to do on yourself) as I have been using therapy and doing hard work since I was 14 but sitting here right now, knowing what I am about to write to expose myself and be vulnerable on the INTERNET is making me feel like I am going to throw up (which is a likely possibility as I just ate a steak sandwich and I know it's just balled up in my stomach right now....ew), my heart race, my palms sweat, the screen irritatingly bright, the sound of the fish tank screaming in my ear, clenching my jaw, biting my lip....it's endless what is going on in my body and mind right now and it's chaotic! but, I am going to do this, I have to...unveil to breathe.  I am going to write a stream of fears in this blog replacing "what if" with "maybe" and see what comes out and read it back to myself, what's hardest for me is to do this on the Internet because it's "out there" instead of safe and confined in a notebook or saved on my computer, Oh God (saying this is exposure, "lord's name in Vain...but is it in Vain???? lol, irrelevant!)  here I go....
Maybe someone from Children and Youth Services will see this and think I'm an unfit mother because I suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, remove my daughter from her home into a foster home where she will be mistreated and they will use therapy tools on her that are not empirically sound and traumatizing like Holding Therapy, all because I was so selfish as to expose myself through a blog in order to REALLY REALLY make it a powerful exposure
Maybe a Haulocaust will happen here and I'll experience an evil I couldn't even imagine but worse my daughter will experience it too....and maybe I am slightly responsible for our suffering because I failed to finish The Diary of Ann Frank, maybe writing this will make it happen, create an energy force in that direction
Maybe there is a prowler who watches me and my family and is going to stab me at any minute in our home as I am taking care of our daughter, I'll lay on the floor bleeding and unable to move as this person grabs my crying baby and takes her away and I can't rescue her because I'm immobilized from the wounds, maybe they might even harm her in some horrific way in front of me because she is taken away and I have to watch because I can't move (ooooh, shaking and crying now....)
Maybe I don't appreciate our daughter enough and because of my lack of appreciation and affection I'll somehow lose her
Maybe she does have cancer and I fail to identify the symptoms in time for her to receive treatment that would have been effective if her cancer had not progressed
Maybe I don't keep our house clean enough and she is exposed to germs that make her very very sick but I let her crawl on the floor when it wasn't spotless because she wanted to and I didn't want to agravate her by not letting her do it
Maybe I'm spoiling our daughter when I have moments that I give in to something she wants like crawling around on a floor that is not spotless which makes me a selfish and lazy mother
Maybe I will give her gingivitus if I don't floss my teeth daily and then I kiss her or let her eat something off of my fork
Maybe I will accidently give her something to eat that she chokes on and I can't perform the necessary emergency reponses because I haven't practiced them or studied them enough
Maybe I will be wrongfully accused of a homocide and sent to jail for life unable to be there for my daughter
Maybe I will die of cancer that I caused because I did not practice enough healthy habits or because I worried so much of developing a cancer, I die and my husband remarries a woman who despises our daughter and she is cruel and damaging to her (Cinderella???????)
Maybe I will develop paranoid schizophrenia
Maybe I will miss an important detail in our home that causes a fire/explosion to errupt and kills our daughter in the night
Maybe a rat will enter her room because we have an opened bag of dogfood in our garage and eat her alive in her sleep
Maybe a mosquito will bite her and give her Malaria
Maybe her flu vaccine will kill her and I did not do enough medical research to have prevented this
Maybe her pediatricians do think I'm a bad mother....maybe they even have a reason to think that I have Munchausan by Proxy
Maybe I will get investigated for putting this in a blog on the internet, I don't have a good feeling, it might be a gut instinct telling me to erase this.......POST!

Not Going to Check or Rationalize!!!!!

So, returning back from a trip to K-Mart for something to do this morning...my daughter fell asleep in the car, whew, because she was Cranky and I really was not feeling up to rocking her upstairs when we got back because I'm tired, I only got 3 choppy hours of sleep last night.  I feel inclined to explain why so that people don't question my parental techniques in terms of a sleeping baby but...I'll refrain and let you think what you want, whatever that may be.
When we got back, I carried her upstairs to her bedroom in her carseat with her jacket on and I was so tired and so worried about waking her up, I snuck back downstairs as quickly as I could and then descended further away from her into our basement/den area to curl up on the couch and read.  So, then I began obsessing about whether she would overheat with her jacket on strapped in her carseat because she does tend to sweat and get hot when that happens and then I went into she will overheat and die and whose fault would that be MINE! So, my immediate inclination is to swiftly tiptoe back upstairs to the emergency at hand unbutton her coat and if I'm lucky leave her sleeping still (fat chance she'll stay asleep from that) relieve my anxiety so I can relax and read.  But, I'm not going to do this, I am going to leave her up there even she is warm let me rephrase that.....OVERHEATING!  And yes, there is a chance that she may die as a result of this but I am choosing to stay down here anyways.  The thing with exposure work is I always think "yes sounds good but...this could be the .1% that doing an exposure could result in negligence and harm to my daughter and so on this particular scenario, I need to fullfill the need to check and "make better."  And the answer to that "what if" is....right, this could be the .1% that happens and I'm still choosing to do the exposure, even though right now that's really really really really HARD!

The Rehearsal

This post is not OCD related.  This evening, my mother, grandmother and I went to visit my Aunt Cindy who is in the hospital today.  She is suffering from a degenerative disorder of her cerebellum and today she experienced an incident that the doctors are currently trying to determine were the result of a stroke or seizure.  She was lucid and fine one minute and then the next minute she was "gone" in the sense that she doesn't remember what happened I couldn't think of a better description than "black out" (even though I hate that term, I think because of my connotation with it and someone blacking out because they are drunk which she def was not....ne ways) and when she came to, she had no idea where she was and who she was with (her caretaker Maria) so understandably so, this scared her.  A few minutes passed, slowly as it would when you have no idea who you are and where you are and why you are where you are....and she "came back" or "came to."  As a result of this, her caretaker took her to the ER and the doctors decided to keep her and run some CT scans on her to determine what is going on.  It seems that this is just a further progression into the degeneration, this "leaving and coming back" and that is hard to accept :(  But, I am also beginning to feel, believe and have faith in that maybe, this "short exit and re-entry" is her soul rehearsing where is needs to go next and something deep inside me ignites when this concept arises and I feel it's truth so in those moments, I am no longer fearful for her but I feel peace as her soul rehearses her to peace.

clenching through the day with a vengence...

Well, let me start off my saying that I am totally PMSing right now, so, any stressor that comes my way already gets an amp of plus ten!!!!! 
Today:  6:00 a.m. my husband violently vomits in our bathroom :(  We have all gotten a horrible stomach virus and he seems to be having the most difficulty overcoming it, Sunday morning at 3:00, all three of us celebrated Halloween via violent pukefest!  The terms of a virus roaming around our home and causing our daughter suffering are unvbelievably tormenting factoring in that I myself feel like absolute hell and can't comfort her as I give myself whiplash over anything with a drain for the entire day but...in the words of Jay-Z on with the next one...which is a continuation of today, Tuesday)
10:30:  Our family friend who cleans our house comes to clean the house, I'm relieved because this will help me in the quest to disinfect our house of all the germs from the virus which my m.i.l. so kindly reminded me over the phone the same Sunday that we were all sick that...."these germs stay in your house to, you have to disinfect everything or else you'll get it again" which of course I, having OCD...REMEMBER!!!!!!! I took this as I am totally totally responsible for disnfecting all of my house ASAP because if my daughter gets sick again, it's my fault, so I lay in bed with that all Sunday but, continuing on....so relieved to answer the door to have help cleaning and disinfecting the mean germs in my household when I see her daughter behind her who is SICK, vomitting, coughing up blood....."she is just going to stay here while I clean, I was contemplating taking her to the hospital but, I'll just keep an eye on her here" was the explanation I received, to which my reply was of course and please please take the hint...."oh that's awful, if you need to take her to the ER, I totally understand, you can come back another day, we were all very sick with this bug too and we are just getting over it" her response" oh no we'll, stay she's just going to lay down"  (AWSOME....) my response: "she can lay down on the coach downstairs and watch TV (I hadn't disinfected that yet), she comes back with: "well, I was just going to have her lay down in your room" (WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!, I had just disinfected that room and washed all the sheets and comforter!!!!!!!!!, how is this not processing??????)
So, my daughter and I leave, all the while I'm obsessing about how terrible of a parent I am for not being more assertive and allowing these germs BACK into our HOME after I was getting the house DISINFECTED now, I have to do it again and more, and again, I'm an awful awful mother for my need to please over my daughter's health/life :( 
My mother in law was also at our house shortly to share some good news and she called my husband to tell him that there was a sick girl in our bed understandably so....on her part, so I get a phone call from him, agitated that this happened, feeling even worse for not sticking up for our helpless daughter and the threat of infection, he calls our friend and asks her if she can come clean another day....so now of course I feel badly about that too, she's going to think I told, even though I should have not let this happen in the first place so I might as well have told or done something more than I did because my need to please didn't get fullfilled anyways ughghghg, all through my head, I'm a horrible horrible mom, the inner critic just having a wonderful song and dance in my conscience :(
So, when my daughter and I get back to our home I am prepared with Lysol I bought that day to disinfect which I am so nervous about doing because I try to disinfect organically with non-toxic products because reading information about chemicals having an impact on your baby and her environment when you have OCD is tormenting!!!!  but, that's the best I knew to do with viruses, I did not see any organic made product that said "kills 99.9 % of virus and bacteria" so I had to to do, so I spray the areas of the house that my daughter will not be in presently like crazy, open windows even though it's freezing outsite and now as she sleeps, of course I am obsessing about toxic particles coming into the airs and infiltrating her small lungs!!!!!
Oh and...to top it off...it's election day and some of the candidates have had pretty cruel campaign motives so....if someone advocating for them says one thing to me while I'm in line to vote......let's just hope people notice the steam shooting out of my ears as I stand in line at the booths because if not...they are going to experience a wrath of .....oh wait, nothing, I'll just experience it all because I have a need to please!!!!!