A major backslide

    Does everyone know the board game Chutes and Ladders?  Where you manuever your way through the game, sometimes climbing a ladder and getting closer to the finish line faster.  But sometimes you occasionally land on a chute, which sends you plummeting close down to the bottom of the board again.  That's what I feel like COVID has done to me, and probably many of you others that suffer with contamination OCD.  I haven't posted for awhile, because in all honesty things have just been horrible with my OCD.  I don't even know where to start, so this may just be a jumble of everything that's happened.  But I've always kept it real on this blog...and I'm not gonna lie.  Where I once had been improving and doing so much better, I am getting closer back to square one, and I'm drowning in OCD.

      Two of my biggest personal triggers are illness (specifically flu season) and my husband in general (that is a constant trigger).  I had been doing so much better the last few years, except for when flu season hits.  Then I usually hunker down and become somewhat of a hermit until the season settles down, and then I get back out again and would say I didn't regress much during each flu season.  I just avoided going out much during that time.  Once COVID hit, everything changed.  I became extremely agorophobic and avoidant of everything and everywhere.  This huge panic hit within me about an unknown illness, and I decided I would be housebound as much as possible.  I do a weekly grocery pick up still, and have been to only a handful of medical appointments.  I haven't seen my parents since March, I haven't associated with my neighbors (except for a couple of accidental interactions which really spiked my anxiety), haven't been inside of a store or any public setting otherwise.  I haven't even walked outside of my house for exercise purposes.  I only am outside in the front yard to get my mail or take the trash out, or to get in/out of my car in the garage.  I go into our backyard multiple times per day with my dogs to let them out (I feel much more comfortable back there).  I am suffering hugely.  I am a mental wreck right now.  My dogs haven't been walked since March because of this, and I feel a horrible sense of guilt over this (we used to walk up to 3-4 times per day).  Their emotional and physical health is certainly suffering too as a result.  They are keyed up at home cooped up inside most of the day, and it shows in their behavior.  I'm not sure I'll ever be able to walk them again in the neighborhood until the threat of COVID has passed.  People don't pay attention to the recommendations anymore, and I've found a lot of people don't care.  I had a neighbor walk up to me the other day as I was bringing groceries in and he came over to my yard (actually stepped up onto my front porch) and tried to have a conversation with me (no mask) from 5 feet away.  I have absolute panic at the thought of a human interaction.  I won't even take my trash out if there are people outside, across the street (because I still feel it's too close to me).  So the thought of walking through my neighborhood where multiple interactions could potentially happen each time, isn't even a possibility.  We have so many kids on my street alone and hardly anyone on my street is careful.  Also my dogs are kid magnets and I cannot take the possibility of kids coming up to me every day wanting to pet my dogs.  I want to be around no one really, unless absolutely necessary.  I have taken them out to the country to walk a few times, but it's not an easy process with two 60 pound dogs.  Amazon Prime has become my new best friend.  I order everything...EVERYTHING...off of Amazon.  Every single thing that comes into my house feels eternally contaminated, unless it can be washed (for example clothes), so my handwashing has skyrocketed.  While a lot of of people disinfect their groceries, I can't bring myself to do this.  I feel it is unsafe to wash your groceries down with chemicals, so I refuse to start this habit.  But a drawback is that now I feel all my groceries are contaminated.  There is no way to keep track of what is old vs. what is new in my pantry/fridge, so everything feels dirty.  I wash my hands basically after I touch anything in my pantry.  I wash my hands after I touch basically anything in my house anymore, unless it's my computer or phone, which are "safe" items (but if they become contaminated, I'll wipe them down).  I bet I wash my hands three times as much as I used to.  My handwashing was so bad 7ish years ago that I developed warts all over my hands (it seriously looked like bubble wrap on my hands) and it took years for those warts to resolve and go away.  The other day I noticed several small warts festering underneath my skin, and I feel like soon I'll be at the point where these pop out and become noticeable again.  

    The other huge issue I've been having is with my husband.  He has always been a trigger for me, and things feel 1,000 times worse now during COVID.  It used to be manageable to some extent, as he was gone at work everyday and spent a lot of his free time gone on the weekends or evenings.  I was usually here by myself during the day, able to come and go, do my laundry, baking, etc. without him here.  He is literally here now all the time, and our relationship and my mental health is tanking because of it.  I've become worried about so many things I've never been worried about before.  I have nothing to focus on really at this point other than the fact he is here and what he is possibly contaminating.  He is feeling more contaminated to me every day.  I had been managing *fairly* well at the beginning of COVID, but I have really backslid significantly.  I can see huge setbacks even in the past few weeks, and feel myself sinking into a depression again (which I have not had for a long time).  Basically everything my OCD is telling me in regard to him, I'm giving in to.  And when you give into your OCD fully, you drown in it.  When you lose the ability to fight back, you surrender to OCD.  You let it win.  I know that every time I give in to it, I'm getting worse.  But I can't stop anymore.  I told myself whatever I have to do to get through this pandemic and time together, I will do.  And it's hurting me big time.  My clothing, my couch, and food are the 3 biggest issues I'm having living with him right now.  My clothes have become an insurmountable problem.  I've tried to do a lot of reflecting on why this is and I think it comes down to the fact that my safe space is my only space right now and all my effort goes into maintaining those spaces.  Before COVID, I went out daily for one reason or another.  I wore my "outside clothes" the majority of the day and lived in the "outside world" and functioned fairly well to most outsiders.  I got groceries, went to appointments, walked outside, talked to neighbors, took my daughter to and from school.  I didn't spend every moment inside in my safe spaces.  And now I do, and that is the only thing to focus on.  I've been finding the combination of my husband and my dogs is presenting a huge challenge for me.  My husband is still not showering super frequently and doesn't change his clothes a lot.  My dogs are always climbing all over him and his clothes and his furniture, and I feel their fur becomes contaminated as a result of that.  So every time one of my dogs brushes their tail against me walking past me or backs up into me, I feel I have to change my clothes.  Even moreso I've noticed I'm giving into the OCD when I'm pretty sure they didn't brush up against me, but cant be positive...so I give in and change my clothes anyway.  What I want to do is throw them away, but I know I can't resort to that.  I can't throw away that many clothes. I've been throwing away more than I want to already again.  Way more.  So I change frequently, sometimes multiple times a day, which creates massive amounts of laundry.  My husband himself presents challenges to me in regard to my clothing as well.  I truly can't be closer than about 10 feet to him, or my OCD feels that he is right on top of me, contaminating me.  If he walks past me or comes up from behind me and I'm not aware of his positioning to me, I become almost frantic and fearful.  I change my clothes often because of that (and I'll also admit I've thrown some things away because I couldn't convince myself that he didn't somehow brush up against me).  Even just walking behind his couch (which unfortunately is the only path from the living room to the kitchen--my two main areas)--if he stretches his arms out for example, which weirdly happens ALL THE TIME anymore, I am worried his fingertips grazed my clothes.  These are things that used to happen very seldomly prior to COVID, but are now happening daily and I just can't manage anymore.  I can't handle the stress and what will inevitability happen--worry--if I get too close to him.  I've found myself paralyzed standing in the kitchen, because his arm is hanging over the couch and I can't take the chance of coming back to the kitchen in case somehow his fingers touch me as he is stretching.  Or knowing that he didn't actually touch me, but not able to accept that, and changing my clothes anyway to move on with my day.  I find that I do best if I just sit on my couch, where there is no chance he can contaminate me or come close to me.  I have my couch gated off from our dogs so they can't come back either (that's been set up like that even before COVID) but it that where I feel safest and most comfortable.  Where nothing will contaminate my clothing.  Even things that I would never in a million years have worried about prior to COVID, I find myself fixating on now.  The way he blows on his phone to get dust off, or the way he sighs super loudly.  I feel that massive amounts of germs from his lungs are coming out and contaminating the air.  Obviously I can't decontaminate the air, but I do decontaminate what I can control--which is my clothes and my couch.  I've reverted back to washing my couch again super often, which is something I was able to pretty much extinguish previously.   Even him talking while eating 7 feet away from me on the next couch over bothers me, because I envision food participles coming out of his mouth, somehow spewing on to me.  I've started purposely eating my meals and trying to finish them, before he comes up to eat, so I don't feel he is contaminating my food when he is sitting semi-close by.  I've also started ignoring him when he talks with food in his mouth, which upsets him too.  But I find that if I don't engage in conversation, he stops talking, and then the obsessing quiets down too.  I am even finding that his mere presence in a room makes me feel contaminated.  Even if he's sitting at the kitchen table doing something and I walk through the kitchen--I rationally know there is no way he could have touched me, but I find myself changing my clothes.  It is literally a mental torture chamber.  I feel like all I do with my days is trying to avoid coming into any contact with him at all.  It his horrific.

    Which brings me to the food topic, another huge newer issue I've been dealing with.  Again, some of this is hard to judge because it had been a problem prior to COVID, but it happened so infrequently that it didn't seem to affect my life much.  Now this is happening frequently, and it's become very problematic.  I like to cook/bake and I spend a fair amount of time in the kitchen.  I don't feel comfortable cooking/baking anymore when he is around, because I don't want him passing through the kitchen, because then I have to make myself hyperaware of where he is in relation to both me and the food, and it becomes a very stressful process.  The other night I made some Mexican food for dinner (which I had really been looking forward to) and I had the leftovers sitting on the oven with some foil wrap over them (I did this in case he went through the kitchen, that way the food wasn't exposed when it was cooling and he couldn't breathe over it or what not).  I didn't even expect him to go through the kitchen after dinner, but he did and he walked over by the oven.  I, of course, couldn't see what he was doing over the kitchen island, and everything looked the same with the foil cover when he left, but my OCD kept screaming at me that he might have touched the food, or taken the foil off.  I sat there and tried to reinact several times where he was standing and I would take the foil off the food to see what kind of sound it made to convince myself I would have heard it if he had taken the foil off.  And I literally couldn't even handle that one in a zillion chance, so I ended up throwing our leftovers away, which made me really angry at myself.  And also angry at him, even though he probably in reality hadn't done anything.  A similar situation happened today.  He had left for a couple of hours, so I made some muffins for our breakfasts for this week. I really only try to cook when I am certain he won't be coming through the kitchen.  I made the muffins and left them on the stovetop to cool.  I  hadn't expected him to come home for a little while longer, but I heard the garage door and I panicked.  I ran as fast as I could to take the cookie sheet of muffins and I went back and put them in my bedroom, and returned back to my couch before he came inside.  I am 100% sure that the muffins were safe and put away before he came inside, but my OCD started badgering me, "what if you don't remember it right?  what if he did come in and touch the muffins?  He hasn't washed his hands, he's been out hunting, your muffins could be contaminated".  I tried 2 hours to fight those thoughts and my anxiety just wouldn't come down.  So I took 12 jumbo muffins and threw them in the trash.  I figured it would be easier to remake them tomorrow and be "certain" that they were put away safely, rather than take a chance (even though it may be more difficult to do tomorrow since he will be here working).  I know, this all sounds bizarre and ridiculous and is just further proof of how bad I'm really doing.  Having to hide my food in my bedroom has caused so many additional problems.  I can't leave anything out on the counters now that I make, so everything goes back to a table in my room until it cools down and can be stored away.  The other day I had some taco meat on my bedroom table and it spilled all over the carpet.  Which then entailed a huge involved process of cleaning that stain out of the carpet, which just felt unnecessary and I was mad I even had to put it back there to begin with.  Back before COVID, I never had to worry about this stuff.  He was rarely here, and I never felt a need to "protect" my food most of the time.  And if something did happen, it was very random and out of the blue.  Now it's all the time.  On top of this, I feel like I have to watch him like a hawk.  There is never peace or relaxing.  When a package comes, I have to remind him to wash his hands after handling it.  When he touches the trash can outside, I have to remind him to wash his hands.  He is generally not good about washing his hands anyway, I hear him go to the bathroom and flush the toilet multiple times a day as he is working, and he never washes his hands after he flushes the toilet.  I have to watch every move he makes upstairs--so that I can decide if I need to change my clothes or wipe off the couch when he leaves.  I can't sit there and relax and watch TV or even read.  If he is out here, my entire focus is on him.  Sometimes he looks at his phone for hours, and I am literally just watching him for hours, incapable of doing anything else.  I can't leave him alone out here in my safe space either, because I literally have to know what is going on.  I've become a prisoner to my couch cushion, and that is literally where I spent almost every moment of the day (other than cooking, sleeping and showering).  If he leaves (which occasionally he will go out to his farm or go hunting), that is the only time I feel a period of peace and can breathe and relax.  I literally feel sick to my stomach being around him most of the time.  I am completely on edge and completely overwhelmed.

    I know my health has suffered through all of this too.  I have lost more weight after years of finally getting back to an ideal healthy weight.  The fatigue is unbearable.  I've been getting more headaches too.  I have been having heart palpitations for a few months now.  My fibromyalgia has flared up significantly, and I am getting very frequent flare ups of that. I feel like crap every day.  I feel stressed, I feel crazy at times.  I have so much anger and frustration inside of me, I just snap for any reason.  It's like I have no control over my emotions anymore, and part of me doesn't even care most of the time.  I am so done dealing with this COVID.  I have done everything I possibly can and everything we are recommended to do.  And I see so many people not following guidelines and not caring about any of this, and it is so disheartening.  I have lost faith in a lot of people.  I am so angry at people for not doing what they should be.  Those of us with mental health issues have suffered even more than our "normal" during all of this and we suffer so much in our daily lives to begin with.  We certainly don't need to backslide and suffer furthermore.  Certainly the rates of anxiety/depression are greatly increasing amongst those who didn't have it previously.  I don't think I've ever been so stressed out in my life.  I have never felt so anxious, so out of control, so overwhelmed.  I feel so depressed, I don't even know how to dig myself out anymore.  It feels like COVID will never end.  Every day the cases continue to climb.  We are in the red zone here.  Hospitals are being filled to capacity and our medical doctors in the community are urging citizens to be careful.  Half of the people don't listen, and our state governor isn't really doing anything to help.  We have a city wide mask mandate currently (thanks to our mayor!), but the governor isn't really doing what I feel is necessary statewide to help control this.  I am growing weary, and I am becoming very fearful for what life looks like down the road.  I had worked so hard to get out of my OCD, and I feel like I've gone back to square one (probably even worse).  If I can't even fathom the thought of going into a grocery store right now with a mask, how am I ever going to feel comfortable again going without a mask when the threat of COVID is over?  Some experts believe that COVID could be around for years.  That is such a depressing and daunting thought.  Confined in a house 24/7, still buying groceries online a few years down the road.  Not walking or exercising outside the house for YEARS?!!!??  Not feeling comfortable being outside around neighbors?  Not seeing my parents, who are getting older now?  Not being able to just go into a store and browse for years?!  Not going on an excursion to the zoo or eating out or seeing a movie for years?!  My dogs being holed up for a significant portion of their life?  My husband working from home for several more years?  Having to have hyperawareness of everything going on around me at every single moment?  I can't even handle this anymore.  

    I know that many of you are also struggling, and my heart goes out to you. This is a very difficult time for everyone, but I believe even moreso for those of that have mental health issues.  If you read this through to the end, thank you!!  Just kind of a briefish update of the main issues and what's been going since this pandemic started.  The threat of actually getting COVID seems pretty low when I'm barely  leaving my house and I never have a close interaction with anyone unmasked.  Everything I do is essential at this point (grocery pick ups and only necessary medical appointments).  It's pretty ironic because I would think I would feel safe to some degree at home, and my compulsions/handwashing/cleaning/decontamination would actually be better (since I'm not out in the outside world much).  But it's become so much worse.  Our anxiety will latch onto anything, and it knows that we can handle it.  So it just keeps dumping more and more on us to worry about.  Because we always seem to manage and find a way to deal with it.  In my case now, it's just creating more worry about my safe spaces.  Because my OCD wants to give me something to worry about.   And if I can't worry about the contaminated world so much anymore, it will focus more on maintaining my safe world.

    I hope that you all are well during this time, and managing the best you can.  If anyone wants to reach out to me, please do.  I welcome all comments and would love to interact/talk with anyone who is also struggling or having similar issues.  Be well and stay safe and healthy!