obsessive and repetative things I do that I can't stop

[lisamarie]

Hi all, I have never talked about the things I do to myself and what I want to do now. I have always felt dirty and ugly and fat about my body and especially the private areas of my body. I pull hair from those areas as well as my eyelashes. I have gotten infections from this. It is humiliating. I repeatedly pull out the eyelashes in my left eye and every other week, my eye gets infected and I have to use antibiotic ointment. I cannot see my eye doctor because he will see that I pull out my eyelashes. As far as my private areas of my body, I am just so overwhelmed with that...after everything happened between my daughter and son-in-law, my husband told me he did not want to have sex anymore. I don't know if he sees me as dirty and fat and ugly too. I daily fight the urge to cut and burn those areas...from my thighes up to my breasts...areas he doesn't see anymore. I have always had problems concerning the private areas of my body and do repetative things there besides hair pulling. I generally scrub myself raw when I bathe and shower. And then I can't stop drying those areas over and over after I've gotten out of the bath or shower. I know that if I start cutting and burning again, it will cause an infection as it had on my arms in the past. I have scars all over my arms and other places that nobody knows about..thankfully, the scars on my legs and thighs have mostly disappeared, but I will always have cut and burn scars on my arms and wrists. I can't hide them...when my granddaughter noticed them, I told her that I had been scratched badly by an animal. Eventually she will learn the truth if I ever get to see her again. I am just so overwhelmed with all of my feelings about my body and grief and other feelings of self-hatred and just my physical health and weight loss. I gained several lbs. yesterday after being rehydrated and it upset me so badly that I will only drink fluids that contain electrylites, but no sugar. I cannot eat food again at this point. I seriously think that I would rather die of starving myself to death than to feel fat and ugly and dirty. But my health suffers from doing that too. I don't know where to find a balance or how to handle all of these feelings that just keep piling on. I feel as if my head is just above water and I want to go under. My psych doc only knows about these different things because I wrote them down, but have never been able to discuss them because of the humiliation I feel. It is just so out of control. I know that I have developed an eating disorder now. It started when my daughter and her family lived with us. I basically was only eating a small amount three times a week. After they moved out, I raised my calorie intake to 500 calories a day. And then after I kept getting asked by my psych doc about my weight loss, I raised my calorie intake to 700 calories a day. Since I have been ill, I have eaten very little in the last month. Because I gained so much weight yesterday that I know is most likely water weight from the IV fluids, I can't even think about eating at all again. Even though it causes me to feel like I am going to pass out constantly and I feel so drained physically and mentally and emotionally. I cannot function because I am physically depleted of all energy. I was up until 4:30 this morning and got up at 6:00 am because of acid reflux from eating for the first time in awhile and my stomach still feels painful from the intestinal infection when I eat. I went to the store for the first time in a month yesterday and kept falling over and almost passing out. I finally asked my husband for the keys to the truck and went and sat in it until he finished paying for everything. I cannot walk from one end of the house to the other without having to stop and rest or hold on to anything. I just feel so tired and fed up. I don't think my life is ever going to get better. I do believe in God, but I guess I lack so much faith in myself that God cannot work through me or with me in any way other than the one night last week where I felt myself starting to die and heard God say..not in an audible voice...just that it wasn't time yet. I felt my chest and lungs holding my breath involuntarily and then gasping for air...I did not feel any panic at all...I was just floating away as if assending and it just felt so peaceful that I want to die and go back to that place and be out of my pain and everything that I do and want to do to my body. I just don't know how to handle anything anymore. I can't stop myself from doing these things and I can't bring myself to tell my insurance psych doc who prescribes my meds about any of this and although he has communicated with my private psych doc, I don't know what he has been told if anything about these things. Does anyone else do all of these things and how do you handle your feelings and thoughts and urges? I am so tired now and need to go sleep, but I have some cable people coming for my tv soon and I cannot just rest my body and mind until later, and I have to hide my sobbing from my husband...I basically bury myself in my pillow and just sob all of the time. I just laugh when I am at my psych doc appts. because if I start crying, I am afraid I will not stop and the session will be over and I will go home and start doing all of these things that I just feel are so out of control now. Well, my secrets are out here now. You all have heard plenty about other stuff I have dealt with, but never this stuff. It's so humiliating. I hate myself for all of it.

[GuitarGirl]

I wish you would be nicer to yourself. You are a good person and a child of God and you do not deserve this abuse. The rest of the world may never "catch up". But you can, and must, take care of yourself. It's cool that God told you not to die now and cool that you listened. Even crummy times change. You deserve to live.

[donutlover]

I hope that you will find a way to be nicer to yourself. I'm working with that myself. One thing that I have learned is that for me this is a life time behavior/habit that I have continuously reinforced. Sometimes it is so mechanical that I don't even realize I'm beating myself up, but every now and then I see it for what it is. I know you mentioned writing these behaviors down, which is a great step. Do you think you could speak about them? There is a lot of power behind speaking the truth of your struggles.

[lisamarie]

Hi all, I did call my private psych doc and told him about the eating disorder and he already knows about the other stuff. Well, he did call my insurance psych doc who I saw today. He knows about my eating problems and that I hate my body, but I could not talk to him about the other stuff. But he knows...I know that my other psych doc told him. He kept saying that I have been through alot of trauma and it is affecting me still. As far as my private areas go, I don't know if that is what causes it or not. As far as not eating, I guess maybe I feel like the rest of my life is so out of control that I feel maybe that is the only thing I have control over, not to mention that I do feel fat and ugly and hate myself and feel dirty. I have alot to work on, but I have to lose the rest of the weight I want to, and I can't think of any other way of doing so because I am so obsessed with it. It upset me so much if I gain a lb. There are alot of issues there, I'm sure. I don't know how to handle everything that has happened. It just feels like everything is so piled on me that I have no control anymore, no choices, and feel so alone. And so afraid. Well, I'm at least drinking more fluids and am putting in about 500 calories of food into my body. But my last two infusions have also caused really bad migraines and nausea and they don't end and I am having to get them every 2 weeks for the next 6 weeks or so. So, I feel like I am in this endless migraine cycle and can't sleep and can't do anything for them because this month I have already had 2 shots of Toradol, which I normally get when I have severe migraines. And the pain in my neck is non-stop. I may be a pain in the neck, but at least I am not a pain in the butt...lol. Thanks for all of your support.

[Carmichael]

Meditation can really help (I used to have OCD too).

Especially Insight meditation or Vipassana meditation (many, many book on that can be found).

There are also a couple of 12 Step programs for OCD that have really helped me. Avoid the politics in them though (very obsessive).

If you just go for personal recovery they can be really great though.

**I am almost completely free of OCD for years now. Thanks to these great programs and meditation...

Another important point-- OCD is a 'control' problem (a kind of addiction).

Learning to let go of control, and learning everything you can about addiction recovery can also both really help.

[Anis]

I wish you would be nicer to yourself. You are a good person and a child of God and you do not deserve this abuse. The rest of the world may never "catch up". But you can, and must, take care of yourself. It's cool that God told you not to die now and cool that you listened. Even crummy times change. You deserve to live.

I am glad that you have used the best words to appreciate this guy.....
MY all good thoughts are with him .... yeah thats very right that you deserve to live....