Hey there fear, I’ve seen you here before

(breakthrough–Britt Nicole)

This is a show that I was alerted to by a couple other bloggers: 71 & sunny and ocdtalk .

Obsessive compulsive disorder is one of my research and/or internet entertainment interest areas, so I have seen a LOT of videos featuring OCD, and while many of them are well done, there are also some that make me cringe, not because they are showing things that are triggering for me, but because they are so poorly done, and others are SO boring, like okay, I get it, sometimes people wash their hands a little too often…you need more than that fact and someone washing their hands without narration or any editing to make a successful video…so I was pleased that a channel I associate with news actually had a pretty good video. It was called Children that Break Away, and followed one girl with OCD, kind of spot-followed another girl, mentioned a boy with OCD, and mentioned the big name in OCD, Liz McIngvale (okay, so this was one thing I felt should have been left out simply because she barely was even mentioned in the show, and it seemed that she was truly only mentioned due to the fact that she is a big name that could win some viewership…I am not a fan of their using a big name to pull people in without actually doing justice to that piece they are pulling in).

What I did appreciate was that this video did not minimize or make fun of the distress that OCD can cause, but it allowed the OCD’ers to retain their dignity–it showed them upset but did not film when completely falling apart. I appreciate that they could respect that these are real people with real feelings. I also really appreciated on this show that everyone on the show was in general very patient and supportive of the person with OCD. This is not to say that they were enabling or babying and not letting the person have a chance to try, rather, they were pushing but they were doing it gently and carefully. They could recognize the need to tread lightly, and generally asked permission before doing anything. They started small, but didn’t stop at the first sign of distress. They had a realistic concept of success, realizing that the OCD’ers may not be able to face the situation the way a neurotypical individual may approach the situation, but praising and taking joy and encouraging pride in successive approximations. I loved that even when a goal was not immediately met that any tiny sign of moving towards the goal was not minimized as no where close to enough, but rather was praised as if it were the goal itself.

I would be remiss if I did not also note that I liked that they focused on contamination fears, but didn’t make the show about hand washing…My guess is that it is very easy to script a movie about handwashing, but I am sure it is more difficult to understand and then to prepare a movie about the side of contamination that is not spent in front of the sink. So many times OCD is pushed off as “the handwashing disease,” but if it were really only about handwashing I really doubt it would bother me enough to continue to get help. It would be pretty manageable if it were just about washing my hands, but there is so much more to OCD than just a couple extra minutes in front of the sink.

All in all, I was satisfied with this video. I would have liked to go a little more in depth in places, and there were some things that seemed a bit unnecessary, but it was certainly not a bad video by any means. There were only one or two lines in the whole approximately hour long video that I disagreed with, and it wasn’t anything major, so if you are at all interested in the topic, I would recommend this video.

So let the ashes fall wherever they land

(Who You Are-Unspoken)

So yeah, I was watching a video on youtube about this yesterday, and I have therefore been thinking about labeling again. This is a topic that I really don’t understand why it has become so polarized. Some people seem to get their panties in a wad over parts of speech, and I don’t understand why it is such a big debate topic…

Because the video used autism as an example that is what I will use here…No, I am not autism, but it is possible that I might be autistic, which would mean that I would have autism. Some people seem to find it extremely negative to use the adjective form of diseases. I do not understand that. If you prefer using the noun form then go for it, but don’t force anyone else to…What I have seen is that people who actually have a particular disease or are really close to someone who does have it tend to use the adjective form, but people who are outside that group tend to use the noun form…

The “noun-ers” reasoning is that we do not call a person diabetes or hypertension…which is true, but we also do not call people autism. We can call a person diabetic or hypertensive and in the same we it is perfectly acceptable in my opinion to call a person autistic. It isn’t negative; it is just the way that particular person is. They may be able to manage it to make it less noticeable and have less of an impact on their life, but that doesn’t mean that it is not a part of who they are while the symptoms are present.

I have also heard that in the hospital we don’t usually refer to people as the diabetic in room 203 or the asthmatic in room 401, but I have two major objections to that argument. Firstly, when we do not refer to them in that way it is most definitely not because we are calling them the patient with diabetes or the patient with asthma in those rooms, rather it is because we are using their names, and when we use their names the diagnosis whether in adjective or noun form is a non-issue. Secondly, it is not true. Sometimes we do use that terminology. For example, a group of people may not have memorized every patient’s name can quickly get everyone on the same page about what they are talking about by explaining they are talking about the diabetic in room 203, because this quickly lets everyone involved know exactly whom they are talking about and gives a refresher on the disease state they are working with.

Sometimes it gets very awkward and cumbersome to use the noun form, and using the words as a noun instead doesn’t change the meaning of the word. A diabetic and someone with diabetes are both someone who without treatment have a fasting plasma glucose of greater than 126mg/dL, an OGTT greater than 200mg/dL or an A1c greater than 6.5% on two occasions or one of those things on one occasion with a previous diagnosis of pre-diabetes, or a random plasma glucose of greater than 200mg/dL with classic hyperglycemia symptoms. Making it a noun did not change the diagnostic criteria nor did it change the treatment strategy for the patient meeting the criteria. Also, I just feel like the noun form is just awkward sounding a lot of the time…To take it out of the realm of illness, are you happy or do you have happiness? Are you excited or do you have excitement? Are you sad or do you have sadness? Are you angry or do you have anger? Most of the time we use the adjective forms of the words because it is more concise and conveys the same message. There is an occasional time or place that the noun form may be used, but in general there is nothing wrong with using the adjective forms of the word…

How Not to Blog Successfully…a tutorial by me

So if you would like to see how not to blog, exhibit A is my blog…

I am a lousy blogger…Sorry…I am not giving up though…I am doing a lot better than my last attempt though…My other personal blog has nearly 150 total views, but nearly all of them are me…and I only posted about 7 posts over the course of a little over three years, so it was not a very successful attempt…

I was looking recently at a blog post about how to start a successful blog…yeah, I did it all wrong…apparently you are supposed to have 50 posts ready before you even let the blog go live…I made the blog live before I ever had any idea what exactly I intended to write about and when I started writing I only had about three posts sort of swimming in my head, much less typed out ready to hit post on…

Another tip for success is to make meaningful comments on blogs similar to your own…umm yeah, another failure…for one thing I do not comment on anything very often because while it is one of the forms of communication I am most comfortable with, it still is communication which still can be difficult for me and still requires me to translate what I am thinking and feeling into coherent words…and many of the blogs I read are very different from my own…I write about my own life: college, OCD, social issues…I tend to read mommy blogs and Christian blogs by adults…some audience may overlap, but not a whole lot probably…and my writing doesn’t seem to be good enough that I actually retain the readers I manage to attract…

The other tip that I actually remember is to write about current events…umm, anyone who knows me very well could tell you there is no way I could be successful at that…if it does not affect me then I probably won’t know about it…the very little news that I know comes from yahoo news which is mostly funny stories more than it is news…and I get a teeny little bit of news as I walk past the TV at school and if people are talking about things…so yeah…

I don’t have to be good at everything, and there are a lot worse things to be lousy at than blogging…and I am not really good at much, so just because I am bad at it doesn’t mean I have any intention of quitting any time in the near future…

Don’t you think I care

(Don’t even try–Children 18:3)

This is probably something that I should not admit, but I kind of decided today that when I grow up I am giving myself permission to kind of be a hoarder…

Having stuff everywhere may not look attractive, but it makes me feel safe, and ultimately if I am living on my own it makes sense to do what makes me feel safest.

As much as I would like to make my room and apartment look presentable, it is hard because I like the way it feels to have my things all around me. Also, especially at home, but also at school, I have way more stuff than it is even really possible to put away nicely…right now my parents have pretty much given up on my room since there is so much college stuff that doesn’t really have a place to go, but I do need it to be clean enough to make it from the bed to the door and be able to locate my clothing along the way. My apartment has similar requirements of being able to get around, and also since you can see the whole apartment upon entering, if anyone is ever going to come over there needs to be some level of cleaned up even if the majority of the time my clothes are covering the floor and my papers are spread out in the section of floor space not taken over by my clothes or the path between the bed, bathroom, and door…

If and/or when I move into an apartment or house with a separate bedroom, that is when I will have grown up enough to be a hoarder…then I can fill up my bedroom and if I can barely get in that is okay, because there will be another room to sleep on the floor in on the days I can’t find enough space on the bed and if people come over I can just close the bedroom door and no one needs to know how I make myself feel safe…

yeah, it might not be such a conventional approach to home-making, but if it makes life easier and isn’t hurting anything I don’t see any reason why I can’t be a hoarder if I wanna…

Thoughts of a Girl Adjusting to a Cross-Country Move…Again

…cross-country moves continue to be the story of my life as I attend college a few states away from where I grew up and keep coming back to my house twice a year…

It is really hard picking up my life and moving so many times every year, which is why although there was the real issues of things like what to do with my stuff and y’know, practical issues with moving back into the res hall at school, and there was the problem of my germ issues which could make life nearly impossible should the wrong chain of events occur, and the social issues that make it very easy for me to be taken advantage of in any situation which makes me wary of a roommate situation, especially with people I may not really know, but probably the real reason I was not interested in moving back into the res hall despite how many things about it I love (convenience, being able to study where I want when I want, a private always available quiet place to calm down and be myself on campus, being around for events but easily able to leave when overwhelmed), was that living in the res hall forces me home for spring break…Having one more move in the middle of the year, especially one that necessitates going to the airport (another fear-filled setting), was not appealing to me…Honestly as much as I hated moving off campus, the part that excited me and made it okay was the fact that I would no longer have to deal with the airport multiple times per year…First year my friend caught me crying one day as I was preparing for spring break, because just going to the airport was a terrifying experience for me, and then my counselor wanted me to try talking to at least one person while there and I was so overwhelmed because the airport was such a hard situation for me already and she wanted me to make it even harder and I could barely get through it trying to make it as easy as possible…so yeah, avoidance of the airport is the benefit to living off-campus…

So anyway, yeah, it is really hard to adjust. Because there was a storm last summer, some of the houses in my neighborhood are the “wrong” color now because when they got new siding they picked a new color. At my house the lights outside are wrong and the decorative shutters are wrong. On the inside my parents got a new clock that makes noise every 15 minutes and I just want to make it shut up and stop. The basement has been reorganized and stuff…and then there is the TV situation that was messed up when I got home from winter break…luckily my room is my own and it mostly doesn’t change so I still have a comfortable place to stay, although as I accumulate more and more things it becomes more and more cramped in my room…

There are a lot of things that I have multiples of to minimize the amount of stuff that needs to travel with me…but because of routine and comfort there are a lot of things I have multiples of that I still end up bringing back and forth because sometimes it is easier to pack a few more things and be able to keep using the same bag for church for example than to leave one bag at home and one at school and have to have more changes when I move…

There are some things that stay one place or the other though. I have lotion, toothpaste, shampoo, soap, conditioner, deodorant both places, I have brushes, combs, mirrors both places, I have aromatherapy, body spray, bubbles both places…I carry two pencil bags back and forth but have extra pens and pencils both places…I have a flute both places, bedding, towels, tennis shoes, boots both places…and at the end of the summer I plan to leave some t-shirts behind so that is one more thing that doesn’t have to go back and forth with me…some favorites/security items will likely still come back and forth with me and whatever is dirty at school will probably come home for washing, but I foresee this greatly decreasing the amount of packing I need to do, especially since even in the winter I tend to wear t-shirts a lot…

Changing location obviously also greatly changes my routines…no longer do I get up, shower, hang out, pack up, and go to school in the morning…and no longer will I see friends/acquaintances six days every week…the lack of structure is kind of challenging…also I want to eat all the time, and I want to eat meals at the times I’ve always eaten them, but dinnertime at my house has been pushed back a lot…

If I could just have a week off in between semesters (and just be able to go to the library to check out my books for the semester instead of needing time to buy them) I would gladly continue going to school year round, finish school a little earlier, and avoid all the transitions in my life.

We chase the wind this gold can’t validate

(Real Thing–Remedy Drive)

so I was just thinking about gift cards today…or like a month or so ago when I planned this post…and can mostly no longer remember what I planned it to be about…

But anyway, gift cards always say “treat this card like cash” on the back, but gift cards are not cash. Money can be spent anywhere or put in the bank. A gift card is only worth anything if you can go to a specific location and present it…so for me a gift card to some places just isn’t going to do anything for me…I have made a lot of progress socially, but there are still things that just are really hard for me…For example, almost two years ago I won a gift card to this specialty candy store…well that is great, except that I was too scared to go there…and then my dad went with me when he came to pick me up from school at the end of the year, and I made it in, but was quickly overwhelmed and left without using the card…yeah, so that wasn’t going to be useful for me…if it had been a significant amount of money I might have tried harder, but even so I do have gift cards to multiple restaurants that have been carried back and forth for years because I just don’t really go out to eat…This is not to say I don’t appreciate when I get gift cards; I do really appreciate it, and sometimes it is really great as a way to push myself to go somewhere, but sometimes it just is so difficult for me that it is not really money for me…

Also, this reminds me about one year we gave out coupons for free ice cream at Halloween and one little girl cried because she was to young to understand that the coupon would give her ice cream, and was really upset because you are supposed to give me candy, not paper!

Sorry that was kind of random…

So Dry Your eyes of Angel Blue, Trust the One who Died for You

(Even the darkness is light to him–Michael Card)

At church the pastor said something really good and here is the best I can recall it based on how I wrote it in my notes: God sees the injustice. He sees the hard things, the teachers giving you a bad grade, the underserved pain. He knows. He’s guiding it and you can trust him.

I really want to be able to trust God with my grades, but it is so hard to believe that it can be okay to get bad grades. I hate it. I need at least an 94% to get an A in patho, but it didn’t go very well. There is one question in particular that was word for word copied from another exam…I really did look over said other exam…however I answered the exact same wrong answer again…

There were so many useful important things that I could have totally answered correctly…however a lot of things they actually asked about I totally spaced on…I could draw the entire page around that piece of information, but that little section was blank…so frustrating…I just feel so stupid…I just can’t do it. I am so frustrated…but crying and getting more upset about it now will not change my grade. It is all things that I cannot take back.

Hold Me Gently

(Hold me Gently–Michael Card)

So the title has very little to do with this post besides the fact that I have been listening to that song on repeat almost all week (there was a short break for some veggie tales and for don’t even try, but other than that and sleeping/being in class it’s been all Hold Me Gently all the time…it’s just what works best for me sometimes to pick one song and keep listening to it…I do not need, nor do I even always want variety…

So this is going to be a quick post since I really ought to be studying, but I have been so anxious that my studying ahs been so ineffective that I figure if I waste a little time on blogging that I won’t really have made a difference anyway…

So yeah, I had the strangest dream last night…the part that sticks out the most to me is that someone put Velcro on a bed and told me to lay on the Velcro and the bed seemed dirty but I couldn’t tell anyone so I got on the bed but touching the Velcro was not the position I wanted to be in so I laid in a similar position but not on the Velcro as a compromise, but my mom was there and forced me to lay on the Velcro and got people to hold me down while I screamed and tried to wriggle my way out of their hold…kind of funny how ridiculous but extremely accurate that dream was…I do sometimes have certain positions that I want to be in and others I don’t, which at my house can lead to some fights when I NEED to have my knees hugged to my chest while I eat and my mom wants my feet on the floor and will not accept a compromise of one knee up and the other almost down…and it may surprise some people, but if I am just around my family I can and do scream sometimes when I am really upset…and I do have to be held down sometimes…I think it was when I was in about 8th grade when I stopped needing to be held down to get vaccinations…it wasn’t that I suddenly matured though…it was just that my mom threatened to take away privileges if I didn’t start behaving…although I still remember screaming the entire ride home in like 11th grade when I wanted a bandaid and for some reason my mom didn’t want me to be wearing one…and I just kept finding them and outing them on and she’d take them away…not gonna lie though, I scream because I am too upset to do anything else, but from a developmental/behavioral point of view it kind of makes sense that I haven’t grown out of it, because like with that bandaid incident my mom bought me my own box of bandaids when I calmed down…and there are definitely other times it didn’t necessarily give me what I wanted but gave me something better than I had before I started screaming…

Prayer appreciated

Well I am aware this isn’t the greatest channel for this considering it is sorta public but at the same time kinda deserted, but if anyone actually sees this, it would be awesome if you could pray for me…it is finals time and I am very overwhelmed. Last semester I didn’t do very well and I wanted to fix it this semester but this semester went worse and I am really struggling with that and crashing pretty hard…as in crying when a staff member at school asked if I would mind studying somewhere else for a while so they could use that space for something that she couldn’t tell me about…(I started packing up but the request was relinquished when I couldn’t stop crying)…and I’m kinda still crying now but have slowed down a little…