Miscalculation of Risk

I am a massive coward. The thing is, I don't think that I was always like this...well...at least I don't think I have been an enormous coward all my life, maybe a partial coward. OCD does bring with it a large amount of anxiety but I have really struggled to fully understand why I have been unable to perform even the simplest tasks over the past few years due to disabling fear of ab-so-lute-ly everything.

Several years ago I had the bravery (or sheer insanity I suppose depending on your point of view - I had torn ligaments in my ankle and was on crutches) to abseil down the Forth Rail Bridge - oh yes, there's pictures of it and everything somewhere - without having too much of a nervous breakdown. I remember being fairly worried but the fear was not debilitating and I did it with relative ease. In retrospect I am perhaps romanticising my descent, I believe that I yelled and screamed with fear most, if not all, of the way from the top to the bottom as one of my friends can definitely confirm as he shouted at me as he dangled above me on the other side of the bridge.

The point is that I did it, I faced my fears and won...well...for one day on one thing that is. I did chain smoke furiously pretty much the moment my feet touched the sand and I further embarrassed myself in a bar shortly afterwards asking for a Rum and Lemonade (Which is very nice, it doesn't have to go with Cola) at around 10am. The bemused barman pointed out the time, I had gotten up at about 5am to get psyched up for the abseil so to me it was afternoon.

When you compare this to the past few years where I haven't been able to do so much as put toothpaste on my toothbrush without having a panic attack and it does seem very confusing to me. There was no specific trigger for my OCD that overwhelmed me this time - I have been successfully, to a point, managing my OCD since I was around 8 years old so it does feel heartbreaking for me that it has managed to completely envelop me to such a degree that I have only actually socialised around about 5 times in the past year and only went out alone about once every two months on average.

When my OCD started to get worse it was at a point where I finally had a great life - a husband with whom I am very much in love, a great job that I thoroughly enjoyed, finally getting on top of my debts and being financially sensible for once in my life, great friends and all the gadgets I could listen/watch/play with.

Oddly, there is a possibility that this could have been the trigger for my anxiety - suddenly I had pretty much everything I had ever really wanted and, terrifyingly, so much to lose if I made the wrong decisions or did/said something wrong. I don't think I ever really considered it consciously but the fear of losing everything, being rejected, losing my friends, losing my job that I adored became so overwhelming that my anxiety was phenomenal and with this anxiety followed my old enemy OCD.

It's all about risk and my overestimation of danger is often completely off the scale - when it comes to everything. For example, the risk of being killed by a meteorite is tiny - I haven't exactly researched it but rationally as I have never heard or read of anyone being killed by a falling meteorite I can only assume that it happens extremely rarely. You see that's the thing, rationally I know that it is unlikely but there is a section of my brain that tells me that it is unlikely but still possible and so everytime I am outside I can 100% guarantee you that at some point I will look up at the sky and worry that a meteorite will fall and kill me. I also worry that it will happen to members of my friends and family so not only do I worry about my own well being regarding this, I worry about everyone elses too.

You see, for me the probability of anything bad occuring is 1. There is a completely rational part of my brain that tells me how silly I am being as the risks are low but there is conversely another part of my mind, another voice in a way, that says 'They say that the probability of winning large amounts of money on the lottery is mind-blowingly large but you still know people who have won large amounts on the lottery'. My mind is a constant battleground for the rational and the irrational.

I've tried to win the battle with my irrationality, I really have, I tell myself forcibly that it is ok to go outside and that nothing bad will happen but then I go outside and see someone almost get their bag snatched and I am right back to cowering in my bed. The odd thing is that when it comes to making a journey anywhere, if the bus is late or the train is cancelled I just shrug it off and I'm generally quite sanguine. Some things I can cope with completely, generally if there is a massive crisis I am usually brave enough to deal with it but when it comes to preparation for disaster I become so terrified that I can barely function as a human being.

When I am struggling to believe that a cup I have in my hand is the same cup I have been drinking from for half an hour and I ask someone, they look at me as if I am completely mad. The thing is that, I worry when I am drinking or eating anything that I will pick up the wrong thing and drink or eat something that will be dangerous to me (the risk) so I check the thing that I have in my hand - a cup for example. The more I check the cup is there, the more I start to think that maybe I am not seeing the cup correctly and that perhaps my eyes and mind are deceiving me and that what I actually have in my hand is something different. At that point, even though I am telling myself (sometimes loudly and often in public) that the item in my hand is a cup from which it is safe to drink there is an insidious part of me that is telling me that my brain and eyes are confused and that what I have in my hand will endanger my life. Sometimes it goes one step further than that and tells me that if I proceed and drink the liquid, if it is dangerous and I kiss my husband that he may get ill as well and it will be all my fault. These thoughts are often so pervasive that I can do nothing else but put the cup down on the table and not drink from it - the compulsion to give in to the irrational thoughts is so strong. It's so difficult to explain to people that when I am looking at something, even though I can see it and it looks real - the nagging thoughts at the back of my brain are telling me other things. It is extraordinarily difficult to explain it to people that haven't experienced it as telling someone that you are not sure what you have in your hand does tend to raise a few eyebrows. I usually end up in philosophical discussions about the nature of perception.

It's difficult to function when you think about all the risks of everything and what could happen. For absolutely everything and anything at any given time I can list a huge amount of possibilities of bad things happening. People say, if you never take a chance you will never do anything and unfortunately over the past year or so I have literally done pretty much nothing for fear of failure. My life has been very unrisky but ultimately my not being able to do anything for fear has led to me becoming obsese which in turn leaves me vulnerable for many more health risks. My anxiety has also caused me to lose touch with a lot of my friends and this has left me feeling often lonely and useless which in turn makes me more scared. My lack of activity seems to have also made me unfit and my joints are incredibly sore. The sheer amount of anxiety has caused lots of health problems for me and I have even found that my brain seems to be misinterpreting messages and sensations in my body that should generally be normal are misinterpreted by my brain as pain or discomfort.

What I am trying to say is that my fear of taking risks has led to me being at risk for a great many more problems. It's not something that I can fix immediately, even though I know what the problem is, but I am working on it. Taking little risks at first, edging forward until I will be back to my old self. I have been existing but not really living and I want to change that. As the great Kylie Minogue says in her new song "What's the point in living if you don't take a chance?", she also says "What's the point in living if you don't wanna dance" and so with that in mind I will be attempting to follow both bits of advice and as well as continuing with my Cognitive Behavioural Therapy I'm going to be using the XBox Kinect to dance myself back into shape :)

Wish me luck :)