This Happened

[Zen]

[akiva]

I was showing my students several newspaper articles tied to what we've been talking about in class. One of the students raised his hand and asked "People still actually read newspapers"?

It's okay if I just fail him, right?

[Phoebe]

[Phoebe]

[Phoebe]

In the ongoing quest to suppress ye olde OCD, the whack-a-mole quest, several moles were destroyed viciously and then new moles popped up. Some people have what I had considered a truly weird OCD problem, where they think they have hit or run over someone or something with their vehicle and have to go back and check. I was like, whew, thank God that doesn't happen to me - I can't imagine that ever happening to me. Indeed, one of the public cases where the woman discusses her problem made it clear that she developed this concern after having a traumatic car accident. Sure, I said, makes sense. Not for me! Wrong. Having blasted away most of my big issues, taking one fearless step after another, I found that the brain is a clever trickster and will try to find other outlets for its inherent high anxiety level. The other day it decided to tell me that I had, in fact, run over some pedestrian who clearly was dying in a ditch now, or had been run over in the road, so I should return and investigate just in case.
Obviously this had NOT occurred, and the "me" part (who knows! lol!) started quickly explaining that I would know if I hit someone, DUH, and even running over a squirrel was a big crisis you could feel under the wheels ( ), and that even on the one in a million odds I did unknowingly hit someone I would at the very least hear about it later and be able to identify myself as the driver.
This just... cannot happen, must not happen. Yet if you obsess about how this is NOT an acceptable symptom, your trickster brain will try to serve it up to you again when least convenient. So now I have to write myself a note that says, it is not impossible that I may run over some innocent pedestrian, squirrel, or dog with my car and maybe, maybe even not realize it at the time. The odds of this are incredibly unlikely, but it's not impossible, and if it happens, well, we will just deal with it like anyone would, because it could happen to anyone. Usually, you know it.

The brain also tried serving up "bad pajamas", which is one of its old favorites, but I beat that down too. Increasingly as I succeed in shutting off the OCD valves, the pressure releases in other areas that I don't know how to fix so easily, like the cheerful activity called "pathological excoriation". My relatives have had this problem and I was like, NEVER will this happen to me, gross, obviously, never! Yet here we are, having to force-stop the process with great effort. The good thing about OCD, as some of you fellow sufferers here know, is that after the initial delight of soothing your anxiety or making you feel in control and productive, OCD quickly turns sour and you can see how bad the thing you're doing is, and doing it won't give you any pleasure. Some relief, maybe, but no pleasure. Excoriation is, by contrast, more like addictions insofar as a straight shot of dopamine hits you when you do it and it is DE LIGHT FUL. I have always delighted in picking and scratching and plucking abject crusts and accruals off of places where they shouldn't be - it's literally the same pleasure involved in running a Clorox wipe over a smutzy surface or windexing your window, or picking a dried crumb of earwax off your kid's ear, or the pinnacle of all such delights: using your one long fingernail to loosen a horrifying dried-snot-seal plugging the nose of a sleeping small child who needs the help, lest it run around all morning thereafter with slimy half-dried snot balls stuck to its face. You HAVE to do it, you're doing a necessary good deed, almost medical because the poor child has a runny nose, and it's just the most dried out, grotesque thing, like an octopus died on the kid's nostril opening, and ahhhhhhhhhhh you have plucked it away and whisked it into a tissue. JOY. I have no idea how to combat the excoriation issue, though at least I have no toddlers and no one who will let me pick and scratch at their abject crusts. You can wear mittens, of course - I casually mentioned it to the Therapist Guy and laughed, and he became very grave. He knows me. PEOPLE HAVE HURT THEMSELVES THIS WAY, he said. Okay, guy, okay. I'm working on it. I recognize that blood means sepsis potential, and I don't like seeing the blood, as sepsis is my enemy.

[Tahlvin]

I'm trying to do the Bates Method (seriously, no masturbating puns, it's named for Dr. William Bates) to improve my eyesight. I've had glasses since freshman year in high school. I've tried contacts a couple times, but cannot wear them long because they irritate the inside of my eyelids too much. And I've considered getting laser eye surgery, but I'm worried about doing any sort of operation on such a vital sensory organ. (Incidentally, a young man that worked with my dad many, many years ago got eye surgery when it was still a very new procedure, and it did not go well. The man ended up quitting his job, blew through all his money over the next 12 months or so, then committed suicide, all because his eyes were irreparably f'd up by the failed surgery. So that's always been rattling around in my head when I think about getting laser eye surgery.) So the idea of being able to improve my vision without resorting to surgery appeals to me. Or at least being able to get my eyes to a point where I won't still need to wear reading glasses if I have the surgery, etc.

One of the ideas with the Bates Method is that glasses are like crutches, and you have to wean yourself off them by using training glasses, that have a weaker prescription. I ordered my first pair of training glasses online, and just received them today. And I must say, I'm surprised how well I am able to see with the weaker prescription. I think I'll actually have to order a new, weaker pair in just a few weeks! Of course, you're also supposed to go without any glasses on as much as possible, so wearing weaker glasses isn't as big of an issue when compared to wearing no glasses at all. But it should be interesting to see how this goes.

[Zen]

[Phoebe]

I'm glad that absent-mindedly failing to wear my glasses most of the time is actually a sophisticated named method. From now on I shall refer to it as such. I think you are right to be a little cautious about the surgeries... sometimes hearing about a negative case or two gives us an unwarranted bias against something that is mostly safe. But the only thing I ever hear about the surgeries is how awesome they are, even though we know that there are cases that go poorly. I wonder what the actual figures are, or how those have changed over time as specific methods used have changed.

[Tahlvin]

I know the surgery is safe enough now that the military approves it for use by pilots. But I'd still like to go without surgery if possible.

And Zen, I'm not sure how bad your vision is, but mine isn't really great starting out, either. I've got a fairly strong astigmatism that causes me to see double, and couldn't really read a stop sign unless I was within 10 feet of it. But it's supposed to be able to help, so I'll see how it goes!

[Zen]

[Phoebe]

Maybe the bionic eye is closer than we think ... or maybe if you develop certain eye conditions they'll go in and fix your eye and a lot will improve. Many of the older people in our family have gone through this and it's a mixed bag - some end up with imperfect solutions and still need glasses or have other unpleasant symptoms, while others ended up with nearly perfect vision and jettisoned the glasses. Very interesting this is even possible now.

The baseball thing is interesting - fly balls are definitely more deceptive anyway, but if you have a stigmatism I would think some are impossible to track against plain sky. Grounders, ok, and it's easier to get right in the path and, eventually, get a better view. I would think hitting pitches would be nearly impossible in that situation too, given how quickly you'd have to process clues about movement.

[Zen]

[akiva]

I'm pretty sure I've posted about this before, but it's still true: nothing like observing colleagues to feel shitty about myself.

[Phoebe]

[akiva]

[Phoebe]

It may not feel that way, but that's just the brain talking out of turn. Shut up, brain. Everyone has their failure and problems, but nice people look at others and see the good.

[akiva]

[Phoebe]

I'm sorry, that sucks. By nice people, I mean you akiva, looking at your colleagues and seeing what's good about them or their work. But it is more difficult to rate ourselves by the same standard, or see the good things, vs. the things we don't like. We don't say things like, hey, I'm the colleague of awesome people and as such, I deserve to be here because I too am awesome in my way. It's easy to turn on the self-criticism, not easy to give yourself a break. You can't avoid the truth that people here consider you smart and interesting!

[akiva]

[quote="Phoebe"It's easy to turn on the self-criticism, not easy to give yourself a break. You can't avoid the truth that people here consider you smart and interesting![/quote]

I wish I could believe that.

[mimekiller]

I kind of have a zen approach to life and treats and snacks, I don't buy them for myself but if they come my way in life I eat them. Guy at gas station was having a birthday and gave me a piece of German chocolate cake with pecans, now I USED to be allergic to these little bastards but its been years. Going to test out my allergy. wish me luck!