A man in a room.

There is a man in a room.

The room is dimly lit and not a nice place to be.

In the wall opposite where the man sits is a door.

This door leads to a better place.

Light creeps through the gaps between the door and the frame,hinting at what the man knows is a better place to be.

The door is not locked.

It never has been.

The man knows this.

The man knows all he has to do is get up, walk across the room, open the door and walk through it.

He's opened the door before.

He's stepped through the door before but somehow ended up back here.

He has paced this floor,getting close to the door but keeps finding himself unable to pass thorough.

The thing that stops him be knows well, but that is not of much help right now.

It's black tendrils, like smoke,flow around him.

The man fights a battle he might not win.

The man is me.

An original piece by me.

Clarity, sweet clarity

For a while now, I've not been myself.

This afternoon I realised that.

Don't worry, my not being myself has hurt nobody other than myself - and that hurt has been emotional but not physical and no lies have been told to anyone.

What's happened has been a symptom of my OCD.

It got under my radar, through my defenses by a back door that I was sure I had locked and barred, and it played a very smart game.... And it nearly won.

But today it lost.

You see, what had happened is that I had, over the last 6-8 months (maybe even longer) I have been obsessively focused on a part of my life that up until then had really been a more minor aspect of my life's interest. That is sport, mostly rugby. 

Now I have always liked sport, especially rugby, and there have been plenty of times in my life that it has played an important role and it has been at the forefront of things.

But never really at the expense of the other interests in my life to this degree (or maybe it has and I've never realised).

Now it is important at this stage to say that what I am writing about here has had no negative impact on my wife and children - they have not been neglected as a result if this. I feel that is very very important - as they are top of my list every single time. :-)

What has happened is that, over time, OCD has used sport has slowly pushed out music and reading (and watching films/tv) out of my day to day life and has replaced it with obsessive action and endless ponderings based around sport. This has lead to a lot of unhappiness as the sports I care about can be quite frustrating in their politics and that has proved to be a massive problem for me.

I just hadn't realised it before today.

I knew I was unhappy but the cause had hidden itself well.

The change started last night, following some news about a rugby team that has always been close to my heart upset me way more than it should.

This set of a thought process that blossomed in to clarity.

The realisation I had was that when I have been at my happiest (within myself - with who I am) is when I have been much less of an ardent sports fan and much more a metal head,a music lover, a reader and a writer (the bit I do) who has an interest in sport.

That is what I'm going back to as of now.

That makes me happy.

That Removes the root of much of my angst and anger and removes the fuel for my self hate.

Of course, first and foremost, I am a husband, father and a friend - it's just that the stuff that sits below those is getting out back in proper order.

\m/ 

A bit of an explanation...

My last few posts might seem a strange thing to share.

I wanted to share my thought process when I'm having a lapse in my OCD management to try and show what it's like in my head - horrible.

It's helped me, I hope it might help someone else.

I hope you who read them haven't lost any respect for me.

Now I'm feeling great and messing with some Norsk coz I can :-)

Scrupulosity - my ongoing battle

This post may not come as a surprise if you've read some of my previous posts or indeed follow me on twitter (@garethdawson), but in any case here it is.

I have OCD. I've had it all my life, in hindsight, and I live with it rather than suffer with it but it's not always easy (although there are many others out there who have it worse than me).

One aspect of my OCD that I struggle with the most is scrupulosity.
There is plenty of good information out there on the finer detail of what scrupulosity is, so for now I'll stick with the following: It's a OCD specturm disorder which causes the sufferer to suffer from religious and/or moral guilt/doubt.

With me it's more religious other than moral (although the moral side of it does come into things every now and then) and it comes in the form of doubt.

A bit of background:I wasn't raised in a deeply religious household, I had no religious ideology forced upon me and I never had.
In my teenage years I found Christianity at odds in life as I was experiencing it and began reading about other religions. I found the pre-christian religions of Northern Europe fascinating and within them found an approach to life, and an explanation for day to day life, that fit.
At that point I became a pagan, I suppose. I have always read widely on the subject of faith, and atheism, and I've always been a bit of a agnostic theist more than a died in the wool pagan of any particular flavour - although Heathenism ticked a lot of my boxes. It still does.
It is worth saying that all that time I still held a fondness for liberal christianity and find churches fantastic places to spend some time (and it might be the Welshman in me, but I love a good hymn!). But I find the theology/dogma too exclusive for me to be able to subscribe to.

For a quite a while this contradictory approach caused me no problem at all, although the scrupulous side of my ocd was always there niggling away.

It was a few years ago now when it became a real issue for me, and it has been that way pretty much ever since.

The way the scrupulosity manifests itself is often like this:
1. It pushes me to make a choice between two clearly different beliefs.
2. It then causes questioning of that choice from the point of view of the option not chosen.
3. It then questions the answers to those questions from the other point of view, causing a vicious circle of question, answer, doubt and frustration.

As you can imagine, it's not much fun.

The worse bit is that when looking for help with this kind of religious comparison is that is wealth of for and against information out there and believers in either will inevitably promote their chosen faith, always with good intentions.

My scrupulosity means that even trying to find some stablility as an agnostic is really difficult.

And so it goes on.

Yesterday I thought I had go through my last bout but it's still here.

I get frustrated that it keeps happening, I wish I could find a way of beating it for good, which I will.

I am doing well with all the other aspects of my OCD, I WILL get this sorted one day.
I hope it's soon.

I've written this post more for me that anyone else.
I hope that maybe it might help someone in the same position to feel not so alone with it.
I'm lucky, my wife is such wonderful support that I do wonder how I'd cope on my own.

Until next time, take care out there people and be excellent to each other!

The time is now!

The tragic death of Gary Speed, like Terry Newton and thousands of other people, has once again brought mental health to the fore.

Now I have long been quite a low key advocate for talking about Mental Health and fighting the stigma that exists around it. Those that know me, know that I am happy to talk about my own mental health conditions and how we can change the way that mental health is dealt within society.
I believe that via education we can make a massive positive difference to the world.

Today's news has made my mind up to try and make more of a difference.

At this point I'd like to say that I live with OCD and Anxiety and fight an on/off battle with depression. I am by no means perfect and I have my bad days as well as my good.
I have no qualifications other than having lived with this for most of my life.

I am willing to stand in front of any size group of people and talk about my experiences and share what I have learned in therapy, in the form of tools, that may help them.

If I can help with something you are planning then drop me a line.

I'm going to try and blog some more about mental health related stuff and will end this with one thing.......

There is ALWAYS hope, talk to someone (anyone) and please don't give up.

The rub of things - part 2

When I posted last night I never intended there to be a part 2.
I was sure.
I felt I had to do it.
I felt I had to do it to stop my anxiety.

I was wrong.
I was the anxiety that drove that post, not my true intent.
My anxiety was driven by my OCD.

It's happened before, and it may happen again.
The difference?
That now when it happens I can, within 23-48hrs, spot that it has happened and correct my mistakes.
I can tell, in retrospect, what it my OCD and what is my anxiety driven reactionism, where I've lurched from one extreme to another.
One day I WILL be able to to spot it as it happens and prevent nights like last night's events ever happening in the first place.

Until that day all I can do is ask for your understanding, dear reader.

Despite what I wrote last night I will not be turning my back on writing about what I care about and what I believe.

The thought occurred to me today - why would I stop doing something that I enjoy?

So please bear with me whilst I resume "normal" service.

\m/

The rub of things.

This blog post has been coming for a while.
I'm not really sure how to put this into words but I'll do my best.

Basically, due to on of the forms that my OCD can take (called Scrupulosity) I am going to have to take a step back from writing about religious things. I know that this blog has never been overly religious but I have discussed Pagan issues and topics on here because they are something I care about. Unfortunately I have found writing about them has caused me problems that I could not have predicted, and I am going to have to change the direction of my writing for my own benefit.

I want to make it clear that my personal spiritually-agnostic-pagan-mish-mash of beliefs have not and will not change.

I want to apologise to anyone who feels let down by this, it is not my intent to disappoint you and I hope you can  understand why I must take this open ended hiatus.

I will continue to post here - the topics will still be those that matter to me and spirituality will still feature when it feels right.

\m/

When my OCD attacks......

As some of you may know, I've been quite under the weather in the last few days. This has meant me being off work and having time on my hands but unable to do what I normally would because I've been leveled.

As someone with a history of OCD I know that time like this can be dangerous.
I've found, over time, that time such as this are when I am most likely to have any lapses in my mental health.
My idle mind does wander, not always to negative places but wander it does.
I always get big feelings of redundancy, insecurity and depression when I'm not physically well, and unfortunately this time was no different.
These feelings can lead me to fall back into my "old ways" and not always make decisions that are conducive to my good mental health. (Believe me, there's been a lot of lists written and checks made over the last few days).
This had lead to a few dark days.

Fortunately for me, I have the tools to deal with this. Thanks to the help of my therapists in the past and the skills I learned in group therapy I can handle my dark days, perhaps more retrospectively than I would choose, and get myself back on track.

Along with those things, the love and support of my family and friends has once again been invaluable and I cannot thank you all enough.

Update on the thing in my head.

So as part of the ongoing management of my OCD, my Therapist has encouraged me to conduct regular reviews of "life" to see how I'm doing and help me get a clear picture of the flow of things.

Now as something of list maker this has never been a problem for me and whilst doing my regular monthly checks today it occurred to me that I've not blogged about how I'm doing with my condition.

Those who know me know that the last 5 years, since being formally diagnosed, have been a trial for me, and those around me.

There have been times where I've been going backwards rather than forward, where the darkness just wouldn't give way to even a shimmer of light and when the hill seemed too steep to climb.

Conversely there have also been times of unbridled triumph , where I basked in the light that sent to shadows scattering and when I've done nothing but gained momentum on my way down the other side of the hill.

Anyway today proved something of a milestone.

I had to attend quite a serious meeting at work today which involved me, several members of senior management and quite a large does of anxiety.

Now anxiety is something that I suffer with really bad. In the past it has been one of the main triggers for some of my worst episodes and up-turns in compulsive behavior(repetitive list writing, agonising over choices to name just two symptoms).

Anyway, over the last few days my daily anxiety levels have risen as the meeting approached but I've managed to keep it at bay. Yay! Even in the final hours leading up to the meeting I managed to keep my marbles in their bag, as it where.

How?

• by monitoring my behaviour and not allowing the beginnings of "faulty thinking" to bloom into full blown all encompassing internal crisis's.
• by remembering to breath......slowly. Simple but easy to forget when flapping.
• practicing mindfulness.

I want to talk a little bit about mindfulness, as it's been something of a revelation for me. At first I didn't get it. When I was first introduced to it a few years ago at group therapy I couldn't get a working mental image to allow me to remove me from my thoughts and view the process from a position of calm detachment. Then,about 18 months ago, I was having a series of sessions with a student therapist called Madelaine. The subject of mindfulness, and my struggle with it, came up and she suggested a simple mental image to use that, for one reason or another, has worked for me. The image is this:

Before you is a series of boxes. In to each box goes a thought as it occurs to you, without you analysing it - just recognising it was a thought and putting it in the box. Once a box has a thought in it, it goes on to a conveyor belt. The conveyor belt winds its way to a hatch at the far end of the space before you. Once the box containing the thought goes through the hatch it is gone, it cannot come back. Other thoughts upon the same subject or emotion may occur, they may be identical but they are new thoughts.

Using this scenario/mechanism/ritual/strategy (call it what you will) it is amazing how quickly I can "get a grip" and calm down, effectively clearing my head and then "starting again" from a mindset I choose rather than the one created by reaction to my faulty thoughts.

It's worth mentioning at this point that there are as many of these scenario's as there are people, anything that works for the individual is fine - but the one above works for me. :)

Anyway back to today. The meeting went well and resulted in a positive outcome which I didn't fully believe it would but it did. Thank the Gods. :)

Not so long ago a meeting like this would have caused panic attacks and days (and sleepless nights) of obsessively compulsive acts.

I would like to think that this may help another who, reading this at a dark time, may see that there is hope of getting on top of things.

So in terms of review, things are going well. Not every day is easy and not every day do I succeed. But the difference between a lapse and a relapse are huge and a lapse can be coped with. Using the above methods I have found a way of living my life the way I want to, not the way that my OCD drives me to live.

There is hope.

You can win.

\m/