A Day in the Life of OCD Relapse

Episode 17: A Day in the Life of OCD Relapse

I know you DON'T want to listen to this one especially if you're feeling good, haha! However, it's so important to know the truth about OCD. We will experience symptoms again. You will be in a position at some point where you will need to remember the tools that work for you and that there is absolutely hope for you to move through symptoms and be better again. Preparing for it seems scary - we'd rather believe OCD is gone for good! So, this episode is here for you when you need reminding 

- You can get through relapse - you can and will be okay!

In this episode, you will hear 3 stories of experienced relapse of OCD symptoms and how each person worked through it and what they learned through the process. You will also get some encouragement and simple tips on what to do to prepare and how to manage when it happens. 

It's also amazing that this episode is dropping right after I published my workbook on relapse preparation! "The OCD Relapse Roadmap: Your Recovery Compass". This is a comprehensive workbook that will walk you through everything you experience OCD and help you prepare when symptoms reoccur. This is the roadmap you will need and want when you are in the dark - it will be the compass to guide you back to the shore. And I'm here with you as you navigate! 
Get your copy at www.amazon.com!

If you are in need of a community of people who can help you feel more accepted, less alone, and more connected to people who understand, please check out my online community for weekly support, monthly classes and events at https://the-ocd-support-community.co.mn

If this podcast inspires, supports, and gives you hope and you'd like to support us monthly or sponsor us, please visit our patreon page and become a member. Your contribution will help us continue the podcast and help us provide even more resources for our community! https://www.patreon.com/intrusivethoughtsunmasked

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:03

Hello and welcome to Intrusive Thoughts Unmasked. I'm actually doing an ad before I start the podcast today, and I will explain why this is so interesting. Today we're doing an episode on what relapse means to me, what it feels like to relapse. This is very serendipitous because I had scheduled out in my mind that this episode would happen during this week, not even realizing that a couple weeks ago, or last week actually, I published my book, which is the OCD relapse roadmap. Now, my friend Natasha would kill me because she's a marketing guru and she would probably say, Why didn't you plan on this? And I don't. I'm horrible at marketing, if any of you have not noticed. But I found that it was very almost serendipitous. It was very strange that this was planned when I was releasing that book. So I am boldly doing an ad before we start. I just published my workbook. I am very excited about this workbook I just published. I've been working on it for a very long time. It's called the OCD Relapse Roadmap, Your Recovery Compass. This has been something I've wanted to do for a very long time, and mainly because I know how much we worry about relapsing. We don't want to relapse. So I also know it's a hard sell. But this is going to help your recovery. Being able to understand your patterns and how OCD shows up is not defeat. It's not surrender. It's information. It is preparing for OCD. So I want to share that with you this week. And thank you for letting me. I'm so excited. You can buy it on Amazon. I'm also going to do workshops where we can do this, we can work through the workbook together. And I'm going to do a course this fall. I don't have time at this point to do it, but where I can, I will work through the workbook and you can do it with me. Because sometimes it's hard to remember this stuff. I wanted to share that with you. If you think that you're in a place where you want to work through a workbook that can help you moving forward when OCD shows up, this is the workbook for you. Find it on Amazon, the OCD Relapse Roadmap, your recovery compass. Welcome to Intrusive Thoughts Unmasked, the podcast where we explore what it's really like to live with intrusions, the emotional landscape that comes with them, and the common experiences so many of us share. I'm Chrissy Hodges. I created this podcast to bring lived experience into the light for those navigating intrusions and mental rituals with OCD. My hope is that here you can finally take off the mask we so often wear to hide this disorder. I want you to feel seen, understood, and accepted. Exactly as you. Welcome to episode 17. Today we're gonna talk about what relapse means to us. I realize this is a scary topic. I know this is something none of us want to think about. You know why? Because we all want to believe that when OCD is not loud and in the brain, that it's gone, but most of us know that living with OCD means that it is going to come back. Relapse is inevitable. Are we prepared? What does it feel like? How do we get through it? What if this is the big one that takes us down? That's why this episode is so important. So you can hear people's lived experience of when relapse happened, how they got through it, and how they maintained hope moving forward in their recovery. I hope you enjoy the episode.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

At this point, I was three, three and a half years into what I now know to be OCD, although I didn't at the time. I just knew that my brain hated me and gave me really scary thoughts. But at this stage, I had managed somehow to kind of ignore these crazy thoughts. They had been along the lines of uh schizophrenia, teamed OCD, self-harm, uh suicidality, things like this throughout the previous years. And somehow, amazingly, I didn't know it was OCD, but I still did the right thing by not reacting to them. I had a family wedding coming up in lovely Spain, and we were going for two weeks, myself and my partner, and it was just going to be this amazing holiday, but it was it was not. So the first one that caught me off my guard was everybody in Spain was wearing bikinis on the beach. Obviously, it's sunny, it's 30 degrees, this is this is normal. But I started to think that I was staring at the women and the women only, and I thought, why why am I doing that? Am I attracted to women? Compared to my previous intrusive thoughts of I'm hallucinating or I'm gonna harm myself. This was I thought pretty mild, quote unquote, but it completely derailed me. I'd never had this thought before, and it felt so real. Of course, in my head, it was real. This wasn't like before. This was this was real, so cue the rumination and ruminate. I did over only three days, maybe. I went from mildly anxious to couldn't get out of bed on the sunny holiday, listening to podcasts going on YouTube as soon as I woke up in the morning, spending all day on Google, begging someone to answer me, tell me the truth. Was I was I gay? So I had this pit in my stomach, and I put that down to a gut instinct, telling me this is this is true, these thoughts are true, and I'm just in denial, and I'm searching for someone online to reassure me that they're not true, but it's it's all futile because deep down I know it is true. That's what this feeling in my stomach was communicating to me, and this naturally sent me much, much further down the spiral. So this was only in a matter of three days. One or two days later, I entered a different set of thoughts. So it transgressed from what if I am gay to what if I want to be a man, and that's why I find women attractive because I'm not who I should be. And every time I looked in the mirror, I would get a thought, you want to be a man, you don't want to be a girl. I was still on holiday and I suddenly felt like I couldn't wear a bikini, I couldn't go to the beach because I would be looking at women, I couldn't go anywhere with my partner because I was feeling insanely guilty just being anywhere near him while thinking these thoughts. Did I ever love him? Have I always lied about being gay? Do I want to be a man? Things got really dark then, probably six to seven days in. When we were at the beach, I'd forced myself, like, we're I'm trying to have my holiday, I'm going to the beach in the sun. Every everyone was at the beach, so you know, men and women and children. And my thoughts went to a place that I never expected, which was if you're in denial about liking and being attracted to women, maybe you're also in denial about being attracted to children. So there was obviously children on the beach, and suddenly when I had this thought, I could see them everywhere. And the thoughts were like, Why are you checking out the children on the beach? I broke down and I went back to the apartment and I virtually stayed there until we flew home. And when I got home, it was probably only a month later that I had to go to AE and beg for help because I was going to take my own life. A month and a half prior to this, I was perfect. I was like living my life. I was fine, and I had been for many, many, many months. And I thought that whatever was going on with my brain, I had kind of handled it. I'd managed to get to a point where I thought, okay, I don't really know why I have these thoughts, but I know that if I just don't give them a reaction, that eventually they will go away. So I had this kind of knowledge, and yet just the introduction of a new type of thought, a new theme, just completely brought me down, made me forget all of that knowledge or not be able to apply it and end up at breaking point in a couple of weeks. I remember sitting in the hospital and crying and asking myself, how on earth did I let this happen to me again? I had been there before with the schizophrenia and the different kinds of harmful themes to myself. And I thought I outsmarted it or I knew better, and yet there I was again. And I was so angry at myself, so disappointed at myself, and so fed up with this spiral. I thought, how many more times in my life is this gonna happen? Does me trying even matter? Does it just take one thought to bring me right back down here? Is this just how my brain is? It's just is this just who I am? It brought me into a really dark place. In hindsight, it was just a relapse. Just is a quote-unquote word, because it obviously was very, very, very scary at the time and life ruining. But in hindsight, I made it seem much more than it was. I looked at it as a fault of my own or a weakness of mine that landed me there. When really it was just I thought I knew as much as I needed to know, but I didn't because at that stage I still didn't know it was OCD, and there was a lot I still didn't know about how the spiral worked and how to get out of it. So I tried my best, but it still happened because I had OCD. And this just happened to be quite a bad episode for me. But I stayed mad at myself for a long time. It's only looking back now that I've put in so much work in terms of really, really learning about OCD in general and how it works, but also the way that I find it manifests with me and the way that I have a knee-jerk reaction to it and kind of trying to stop the spiral as much as I can before it starts. And most of the time that works. But sometimes if I'm having a bad day, I might end up in the spiral for a couple of minutes, a couple of hours, a couple of days before I realize, oh, get out. What am I doing here? Get out, get out, stop entertaining this. And it took seven years to get to that point, and yet I still relapse every so often. I'm better at noticing it, perhaps, but it still happens. And while I was so mad at myself before, I'm not mad at myself now when it happens because OCD is very tricky, it's very particular, it's a really sneaky, intelligent, if you want to personify it, which I sometimes do, disorder. Uh, there's a reason it causes so much distress, so much turmoil, and so much confusion and doubt is because it does feel that real. All of the thoughts, like intrusive thoughts, your conscious thoughts, like they're all residing in your brain. It's very hard to discern the difference. It's not easy by any means. And putting this standard on ourselves that we should know. Sometimes it's not possible to know in the heat of the moment when we're feeling anxious, when we're having a bad day, we're feeling low or we're sick, or we've got external factors, anything at all, um, could trigger us or make us more susceptible to a relapse. And we shouldn't blame ourselves. That doesn't mean we're weak or we've forgotten everything or we're going backwards. It doesn't mean any of that. Knowledge is power with OCD, and that knowledge doesn't diminish if you fall into a little relapse. It's just OCD is that good, it's that real, it's that believable, uh, it's that sneaky, and it's that relentless. So it's opportunistic and it will pounce. That's not our fault. If we're in a relapse and realize we're in it, my reaction used to be, for God's sake, Lucy, why can't you do this? After a lot of work, I've reframed that to okay. Hello, OCG. Goodbye, OCG. Step out of the spiral, and it's not my fault, it's just a little little crosswires um in terms of how my brain functions, and that's okay. It's nothing to do with me as a person, it's nothing to do with you as a person. It's important to realize that OCD is classified as chronic. So, to a degree, it can pop in and out at various points in our lives, but that doesn't mean that it's going to be as bad as it was when it was bad, particularly when you gather up knowledge and awareness, uh, which is what I've found, has been the biggest, um, the biggest factor for steady-ish recovery for me is learning all about it and understanding it. And then therefore seeing it play out in real time in my mind. It gives me the the kind of strength or the the tools to step out of it, but only when I'm clear, it's by no means perfect every time. And again, external factors will impact how quickly I can see it happening or how susceptible I am. Anytime I had a relapse, particularly this relapse on the holiday from hell, I thought, oh, this is it. This is it now. I'm I am stuck like this now. I think that's the ultimate fear with relapsing is oh god, we're not getting out of this one. But you will, absolutely you will, and you will come out of it not to romanticize the relapse because it is is awful, and I don't want to undermine my my relapse, your relapse. There's there's no part of it that's enjoyable, that's that's for sure. But coming out of an episode, which you will come out of it, you have a little bit more knowledge and uh ammunition in your arsenal for the next time. So the next time OCD tries to creep in, you've got that little bit more awareness and that little bit more know-all. Yes, relapse in the future is possible, but it doesn't mean it's going to look like it did in the past, it's not going to be as bad as it was in the past, and it's not as if your life is just going to look like normal relapse, normal relapse, and then relapse forever. Relapse is terrifying. It is, it was the most terrifying time of my life. That holiday from hell and everything that came afterwards. Yes, because of the it types of intrusive thoughts I was having, but almost more so because of this impending doom I felt of I'm stuck like this now. There's no escaping this experience no matter what I do. And that's that's how it can feel, and that's why it's so so scary. Remember that every experience is transitory, including your relapse. You are not stuck in relapse no more than you're stuck experiencing the best day of your life. Although we'd wish that would last forever, it won't, and neither will your relapse. You will learn through this relapse, you will come out of this relapse, and you will you will have more armor and means of defending yourself for the next one. So I know that there are more in the future, but I'm almost certain that I will be able to handle them better than my previous ones. And I truly believe that for every person with OCD. So while they are still frightening when they happen, they are absolutely not a sign of weakness or a sign of going backwards. It's just part of the OCD life lifespan, uh, peaks and traughs, but I like to think each peak is a little higher and each traugh is a little bit less slow, and we're climbing all the time into recovery.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

Hey everyone, it's Stuart here from the OCD Stories podcast. I'm also a psychotherapist and person with lived experience. So Chrissy invited me to talk about relapse, and it's something that I never really given a lot of thought to, aside from my clinical work. Um, at least personally, I had not given it a lot of thought because I hadn't really experienced what I would call a relapse. I would say I had many lapses, which might just be, in my opinion, momentary um blips on my kind of OCD radar where it flares up a bit, and you know, I still have those fairly frequently, and when they happen, I don't panic, I deal with it, I know the plan, I know the drill, and I know what to kind of do to make sure it doesn't become a relapse or anything bad, and I get back um to living my life in alignment with my values. So I probably will talk in a bit about relapse and how I view it with my clients, but I think maybe it's useful for me just to talk from my own experience um of what I would call my sort of main relapse. So in 20, probably late 20, no, I'd say it's probably early 2022. I would say I had my first sort of relapse. And I wouldn't say it was clear-cut OCD, but it was heavy on the anxiety side. It was it was while I was doing therapy, you know, I would I would just before seeing a client, I would start to get I guess you'd call them intrusive thoughts, real worries that I was gonna have a migraine. And I sometimes get migraines, not that often, but I was starting to worry, get really hypervigilant, anxious that I would have a migraine in session and I wouldn't know what to do or what to say to my client. Now I know that if that was the case, I'd just be like, look, I'm having a migraine, I'm sorry, we've got to end the session, you know. Can I reschedule with you? Whatever it is. Right, that's by the time I didn't I didn't figure that obvious thing out or thought that it was okay for me to say that to my client. Um, so I would get really anxious before each session. I was gonna have a migraine session. I'd almost start to feel that I was my left eye was going, which sometimes it does in uh when I get a migraine, you know, whether it goes a bit blurry. I can't remember the name of it. So what I would start to do, I started taking you know paracetamols, not not more than what was um written on the back of the box, but I would start taking paracetamols or preempting uh a full-on headache or migraine. Um, I now see that those taking the paracetamals was a compulsion or safety behavior. I would, you know, compulsively drink water. Um, what else did I do? Uh I really got on top of my sleep, tried my best to stay on top of my stress levels, all the things that may um trigger a migraine potentially. So I was getting really rigid and compulsive around that stuff. But at the time, I wasn't aware that this was potentially falling into OCD or anxiety disorder territory. Um, I just thought it was a very real concern that I was under a lot of stress at the time. I wasn't sleeping that much because I, you know, was a relatively new father at that point. So in my mind, it went under the radar and I was like, no, this is a real concern. Um, I didn't see it as OCD, and that led me to do like a month's worth of compulsions quite intensely, and then I would say it just I after about a month, I I clocked on. Uh, I I knew what was happening, and it dawned on me that it had now blown into something quite large. And it was at that point, it stopped being, you know, I might have a migraine, and it morphed into just I'm gonna have a panic attack in front of my clients, and that's gonna be deeply embarrassing. I fought deeply unprofessional, of course. No, it's not, we're all human, and as therapists are human too. Um so that that was my worry. So uh it was no longer about migraines, and it was yeah, just about having a panic attack. And I I remember pretty much every session for about six months. I'd say actually about eight percent of sessions, I would sit in session with my client, and before I before I was I would be pacing before my client came in, trying to stay on top of my anxiety. I was at like an eight continuously in session, I would go up to a nine, sometimes a ten. My brain was sort of screaming at me, you need to get out of here, you're about to have a panic attack. You can't have a panic attack in front of your client. And I would I would my brain would be trying to think about all the ways I could just run out of the room, and I didn't, which was I think a saving grace for me, because that would that would have been a massive compulsion. Only one time, about three months or two months into this, maybe my anxiety was so high throughout the day seeing the my clients that uh I think it was the last client of the day. I just called the the mum before the session because it was a young person and said, Oh, something's come up at home, I know I have to, you know, I made some lie, some excuse. And I remember just feeling like such a failure at that point because I'd given in uh because I knew what it was at this point. Um, and I that was just a real low point for me, and I just remember sort of really crying, and I I don't cry often because I have anything wrong with it, it just I don't know, it just doesn't happen anyway. I just remember really being quite devastated. I think I have to do something about this, and and then I you know I put a plan in place. I started thinking, okay, what's going on? What do I need to do? I was in therapy at the time, I wasn't actually in OCD therapy, and in hindsight, I wish I had found someone to work with from an OCD anxiety lens just to get on top of this and and help coach me with the plan that I'd put in place. But anyway, my therapist at the time was very loving and supportive and helped me a lot anyway. And yeah, so I had this plan, you know, it was basically revisiting what what helped me in the first place when I was dealing with anxiety and OCD in a big way, and I guess just to give it a bit more colour, yeah. I mean, it would the anxiety was just so high, like arguably to the point I'd never experienced it in my life. Uh, and I just remember doing ERP with a client one day, a slightly older client, and I said to them, Um, you know, where are you right now on that suds, you know, 0 to 10 scale of distress? Where are you? And she said she was like seven, and in my hand, I'm thinking I'm a nine right now, I'm about to run out of this room, I'm that anxious. Obviously, I didn't say any of that, but that's what was going through my head. Just to give you an idea of I'm doing ERP with these people who were very anxious, and my anxiety was above theirs often. It was horrible, it was horrible to try and be present for my clients. Um, I did my best to really be there and present. I think I did a good job with my clients despite that high level of anxiety because that was my value, right? To serve my clients to be there for them to help them. So that was also a big anchor in my recovery. So, so yeah, I would say it took me about a year to really get past this, but it took me about six months to get it to a point I wasn't absolutely hating my job and career because that's what it felt like. I wanted to quit. I want you know, I love anyone who listens to podcasts knows how much I'm dedicated to this, and and it got to me to the point of I just wanted to quit because I just couldn't stomach that that high level of anxiety anymore. Um so a few things, you know. I did the usual, like, I know I can't leave the room. If I leave the room, that's a big old compulsion. Um, so I kind of forced myself to stay in. At times it would, you know, I would self-talk of you know, brain, do what you need to do. I am not leaving this chair. I'm focusing back on the client, I am not. If you need me to have a panic attack right now, go ahead. But I'm not leaving this chair. It was that element of determination and I guess acceptance that that I think really started to help my brain. And I would start to ride these waves, and after about 20 minutes and session, my anxiety would plummet, and then it might spike in the next session, but it wasn't going the whole day anymore. It was starting to go like 20 minutes at the beginning of each session. Um, and then it reduced over time. Another thing, I might just be using my senses, so like gripping my chair, noticing what it not gripping it, but noticing what it feels like, whether it's warm, cold, rough, smooth, really paying attention to the stitching, and that allowed to anchor me in the here and now, and then I'll be like, All right, focus back in on your client. What are they saying? What's next for us to do? And keep focusing back in on them. You know, remember my values, it's about them, it's about helping them. And and I would remind myself I this is a wave. I need to ride out this wave, it will pass. My job right now is just to be here, you know, support myself. I would bring in self-compassion, you know. I might say, It's okay, you're human, this is this sucks, but it will pass, stay with it, focus on your client, all of that stuff. Um, that really helped me too. And then a big thing I realized, like I said, I was a relatively new dad, I wasn't sleeping much. Um, just lots of stress naturally, sometimes of being a parent, the stress of being early in my career, um, managing the financial side of it, you know, everything basically. I'd also moved like the year before, so there was also lots to do with that still. You name it, it was in a new area, there was just you know, copious amounts of things, and what I hadn't neglected was my self-care. And I think sometimes we look down on self-care. Um, I say we, you know, you might see people like, oh, people telling me to take a bubble bath. Like, how's that gonna help? And and I'm not necessarily saying that, although that could be that, but you know, I hadn't uh I'd stopped exercising. Exercising would have been always been quite important for me. Um, I wasn't eating that healthy. Um obviously I wasn't sleeping because of because of my kids, and then I was probably watching too much TV on the time I should have been sleeping. I wasn't doing things uh for enjoyment purposes, you know, I was too focused on my career at that point. Um all stuff like that. And what I realized was I was burning out and I didn't know it. And then this relapse came. I think it's my brain's way of saying you need to chill out. So I started putting things in place. Now I did all I do all those therapy things when I was going through it in the in the session um and had my own therapist at the time. I you know, I I would try and go for walks in nature sometimes between sessions. I started listening to all the Harry Potter audiobooks because all I was listening to was like psychology podcasts or audiobooks and stuff like that, and that was stressing me out. So I started listening to Harry Potter audiobooks uh just so my brain had a chance to unwind and I could enter some sort of fantasy land. Um else did I do? I started meditating every day, that was really helpful for me. Helped me connect with you know my brain and see that I'm just buying too much into these worries and these thoughts and learning to just witness them a bit more. Um I went back to the gym, I think it was twice a week. Uh I think I started running again. Uh I tried to prioritize sleep where I could a bit more, going to bed a bit earlier, and started eating a bit healthier, uh all of this stuff. And and I think that in combination with the therapy elements really helped me get back on track. But it wasn't a quick fix, you know. It took it took a year of dedication to get back to a pretty good place. And prior to this relapse, I'd say I'd had about five years of like I had some symptoms, but OCD wasn't bothering me barely at all. So um yeah, but I so I guess you know, a a lesson there is sometimes it takes time, but have a plan, stick to it, fine-tune it if you need, um, but keep keep going at it. Change it doesn't happen overnight, but it does happen. Okay, you know, if we do things, you know, over and over again, at least the right things. You know, don't downplay self-care. Self-care is important, it's something I've kept up to this day now. You know, um, I don't want to neglect that personally ever again. So, yeah, so you know, with my clients, um, I will the first thing I'll do is if they're having a relapse is one empathy, all of that stuff, but then remind them that you know, what did you do in the first place? Or rem if I would work with them previously, remember what we did in the first place that got you better. Have you been doing that since we you know last spoke? Sometimes the answer is no, it's okay, fine. So let's get back on the horse, let's start implementing the things you know how to do that you did that worked before, and let's go again. Uh and sometimes new things might need to be brought in, and that's okay. But initially it's it's what helped you in the first place? Can we get back on that? Can we do that? And I think it's just reminding them, supporting them that you know, as I said, change happens, takes time, but it will happen. Let's have a plan, let's execute the plan, uh, give it time, and and things will change. And then while you're executing the plan, what how do you want to be living life right now? What do you want to be doing? What matters to you? You know, the values-based stuff. Can we take action in that direction, even if you're having a relapse? Because life doesn't need to stop because your brain is firing on all cylinders, giving you like endless amounts of anxiety or worries. It it will feel like that, you know, you have to stop, but you know, that's sometimes a compulsion because then we start avoiding life and we don't want to do that. So, um, if you are going for a relapse, I'm really sorry. But it will get better in time, have a plan, stick to it, um, reach out to people, get support, you know. Um wishing you all the best with it. And thank you for listening.

SPEAKER_02 34:03

So this was around 2023, I believe. I was walking my dogs. I live on a mountain in Colorado. I mean, seriously, my cabin is on the side of a huge mountain, uh, very rocky terrain, and there are a lot of predators uh around my house: bears, mountain lions, cougars, all kinds of things. I was walking my dogs around 5 p.m. on a trail behind my house, and I see my neighbor coming up, and he's holding, he's carrying a little small cage with something in it. So I say, Hey Tim, what what's going on? And he said, Oh, I shoot off this mom raccoon that was in my attic and didn't realize that there were baby raccoons in there. And I just happened to catch this one raccoon and now I'm gonna release it. And I looked at the raccoon, and this raccoon was no bigger than a hamster. And I said, Oh, no, you're not. He would put that raccoon out, and within 30 minutes, that poor thing would be ripped to shreds by a mountain lion or something, a fox, something. So I said, give it to me. I've never had a wild animal in my house. I don't know what to do with a raccoon, but I just in my conscious thought I can't have this happen. You know, I really love animals. And so, kind of the values-based decision was I will take this raccoon and figure out what to do with it. So bring this raccoon into my house and put it down in the basement in a huge crate, and I will figure out over the next couple of days how to get it to a raccoon rehabilitator. Yes, they exist. And what they do is they take in raccoons just like this, and they wait until the raccoon is rehabilitated or big enough to go back into the wild. So then they're released. So I thought it's gonna take me a while to probably find one. So in the meantime, I'll just do what I can do to keep this raccoon safe and healthy. It is a felony to have raccoons as pets. So I wanted to keep that in mind. Now, Tim called me a couple of days later and said, Hey, I found another baby raccoon. Do you want to take it? Or I'm gonna put it out in the wild. And I'll be like, of course, bring them to me. Now, this raccoon was not well and it was not nice. But I had a second big crate, so I put it down in the second crate, and I could just tell it was very sickly. It had been in that attic for days, probably extremely dehydrated. So it was exhibiting signs of being sick. The other raccoon did not exhibit any signs. It was eating well, it was going to the bathroom kind of regularly and it looked fine. Um, it was not very friendly. So I could get near it with gloves and like from behind, I could pet it. But if I got kind of front facing and reached down, it would hiss at me and try to bite me. Now, the other one, I don't know. I just had a weird feeling. I was kind of scared of it. Uh, and in my brain, I thought, I wonder if it has a disease. Now, and I also thought logically, no, this poor baby raccoon has been in this hot attic for how long without its mom and maybe without food. So I did my best over the next couple days to feed it and try to get it back up to health. And I just couldn't do it. At the time, I had two dogs. I still have two dogs. And the dogs knew there was some animal downstairs. And so, in order to just kind of keep everybody informed in the house, what I would do is when I would change out kind of the blankets or the towels for the raccoons, I would come upstairs and let the dogs smell the towels so they could see, yes, we know that there's something down there. I would not absolutely not let them be exposed to the raccoons. I did not want them to get bit, or I didn't want them to go after the raccoons. So I would just let them sniff the towels and the blankets before I would put it in the washing machine. No big deal, right? But as the days went on and this one raccoon just was not getting better, was not able to eat, and was just having kind of diarrhea, I made the biggest mistake ever, the cardinal rule of what not to do. And I Googled, what diseases can raccoons have? Y'all, you know where this is going. Now, of course, we know that raccoons can have rabies. And but that wasn't a concern of mine because it was not exhibiting any sort of behaviors that look like rabies. And the other one, it wasn't exhibiting anything that looked like any sort of sickness. But raccoons can have distemper, which dogs can have. Now, I have that my dogs are fully vaccinated, so they're not gonna get distemper, even if the and and how did that and that baby get distemper? It's so stupid in my mind. So I saw that and I went, huh. And then my dumbass Googled, can vaccinated dogs with distemper still get it? Oh my gosh. What do you think came up? Yes, they can still get it if exposed. And I had that moment where the world stopped. It's like everything was in slow motion, and I felt it from the top of my head all the way to the bottom of my feet, the deep, terrifying doom, and I thought, oh my gosh, my dogs are gonna die because I am so selfish, I am so stupid, I am so irresponsible. But of course, my brain was, why did you Google it? If only I could go back. There was this moment of my entire life just changed because I opened Google and now it will never be the same. I can never go back, I can never unsee what I read. So the panic ensued, and it was horrible. I had not been triggered like this in years, where it was so acute that it felt life-changing. All I knew is that I had just endangered my animals, and it what for what? Because I'm a selfish idiot. So naturally, I went directly for reassurance. I am on a text basis with my vet. This is probably OCD. So hopefully he doesn't listen to my podcast and stops that. I text him, of course, and I am I explain the situation probably frantically. And I'm pacing around the house. Hours pass. You know, I'm continuing to Google. I am, I have that, that, that hyper panic where I can barely breathe. I am, I am just, you know, I can't even think about work. I can't think about my life. I can't think about how I'm going to move on from this. And hours and hours pass. And at one point, I found myself downstairs, hyperventilating, sitting in between the two cages of the raccoons, panicking, crying. I can never leave this house again. And I called my friend and she said, What are you doing? And I said, I'm just sitting here and I'm hysterically crying. And I'm sitting here in between, and I'm telling her what happened and how my dogs probably have distemper now and it's my fault. And she just said, This is your OCD. And I said, It may be OCD, but this is also a real fear. And she said, I need you to get up and I need you to get out of the house. And I need you to figure out what to do with these raccoons. I was able to follow her advice. I got up, I got in the car, I ended up just taking the dogs on a small hike. And during that time, I heard back from my vet. And he thinks I'm nuts. He literally literally said, I have no idea why you're writing this to me. Your dogs are vaccinated. There's no way they're getting December. That was enough reassurance. And in combination with me getting outside to help me move through this. But I did think to myself, okay, let's let's figure out what to do with these animals. I ended up talking to or contacting a raccoon rehabilitator. And she was saying that the one that was really dehydrated is is, you know, might not make it, but it just depends. Well, I was really worried about that one. And I I did think to myself, the last thing I want is for this one to die while it's in my care and for it to suffer. So I took that raccoon down to animal control. I didn't know what they were going to do with the raccoon and I felt terrible. I didn't, I don't, you know, I didn't know if they were going to put it down or if they would help it, but I did think this one is kind of out of my scope of being able to help. So I took it down and then let them know I'm taking the other one to a raccoon rehabilitator the following day. Now, when I got home, I ended up talking on the phone with her about the one that I had, and he is totally healthy. And she said, Look, sometimes people kind of bond with the raccoons. So keep It for as long as you'd like before you bring it over. Uh, you know, I'll take it whenever you're ready. Well, I had kind of bonded with it. It was so sweet. And, you know, at night I would put toys up and I would give it this food and they're nocturnal. And so I would go to bed and like had set up the whole cage, and then I would hear it downstairs like partying, and then I would come down the next morning and it was tired and there'd be toys everywhere. And like it rip stuff up and it just was hilarious, you know. And then I could pick it up, of course, with gloves on. Um, but it I had to be really careful because it if if I startled it, it would hiss and stuff like that. And so there was this moment where it was out of the cage and I needed to get it back into the cage for some reason. And so when I went to pick it up, I forgot that I didn't have gloves on and it turned and it bit me. Now it didn't break the skin, it just was like a little blood blister. You know how sometimes you'll you'll get like a little red mark. And so it, I mean, I saw it and initially I was like, oh, ouch, that hurt. But yeah, it didn't even break the skin, no big deal. Because otherwise I would have gone and put a band-aid on it or whatever. But I ended up getting the raccoon in the cage and went and looked at it and I was like, oh, that's no big deal. Now it crossed my mind, you just got bit by a raccoon. You could get rabies. But then I was like, no, it didn't even break the skin. And by the way, I'd had this raccoon at this point for over 10 days. No signs of any illness. If it had rabies, yeah, I would have known it by now. So I just went about the time with the raccoon. I had such a blast. It was one of the most unique experiences of my life. When I took it to the raccoon rehabilitator, I cried the whole way home. I'd really bonded with this cute little raccoon. It was just hard to let it go. So I come back to the house, and you know, it takes me a couple of days to kind of clean up everything in the room, and I'm very sad. It was sad to have to give the animal up. But, you know, I started to get this nagging feeling. Well, what if the raccoon actually did have rabies and it just was dormant and then it developed rabies once the rehabilitator got the raccoon? I mean, I can't see the raccoon anymore, so I don't know. So of course I start the first compulsion. I text the rehabilitator. Hey, how's my raccoon doing? Well, she doesn't answer. And I'm like, oh no. I text again later on that evening, nothing. And so I think, oh my God, this animal has rabies. And now she's pissed at me because I gave her a rabid raccoon and probably all of them have it now. And so I finally texted again the next morning and she answered. And she said, Oh, I'm sorry, yada, yada, yada. Yeah, your raccoon's doing fine. It took him a while to integrate with the others. He was a little combative, but now he's good. And of course, when I heard he's combative, I'm like, oh my God, that's rabies. So what did I do? I Googled rabies like a moron. And I said, you know, what are the symptoms of rabies in in raccoons? And y'all, I mean, again with the gut bomb. First of all, I found out, which most people know and I did not know at that point, that rabies is 100% fatal. And second, I found out that you can develop rabies up to two years after being bitten from it. And I was like, what the hell? The degree to which I felt trapped and terrified, no words can explain it. Now I don't have this raccoon in my possession, so I can't watch it to see if it's gonna develop rapies. Am I gonna have to bug the rehabilitator? But what if the what if she lets the raccoon go in three months and then it develops it and it's some dormant thing and I have it in my bludge? This was all consuming. Now, simultaneously, because I've done such so much work on my trauma, like childhood trauma, and also in working through my core fears, while I was experiencing these symptoms, these acute, heightened, terrifying symptoms of OCD, I also had this feeling of there were these reels turning in the back of my head. It felt like the reels were like a crank that was churning out the OCD. And I was like, what is going on in my brain? And the reels were saying all these horrible things to me. You're irresponsible. You're a stupid idiot. You you make really poor decisions. You don't know how to make decisions. All these negative, critical self-talk that to me was like, wow, these are the messages that I send to myself. These are the messages I've heard that I've internalized. And also, it was like my core fear, knowing that my core fears being trapped, I thought to myself, this is the perfect OCD storm. Now I'm trapped for two years on whether or not I'm gonna develop OCD. But also I have these reels turning in the back of my head of you're gonna be exposed as this irresponsible person. I always have this when OCD hits really hard and acute like this, I always have this fear that I'm gonna be exploited for making stupid decisions and people are gonna find out who I really am. I don't, I mean, I don't even know what that means. But then I always say to myself, you're gonna die. I I started saying to myself, you're gonna die of rabies. The daily news is going to say this stupid girl took in raccoons, got bit, her dogs are dead from December, and now she's dying from rabies. And then the the international press is gonna pick it up, and it's gonna be splashed across the news in every country. So, of course, I'm having the, I'm having those are the reels that are turning in the back of my head. And it was weird. I could I could sit in the fear and feel the OCD, but I could also see those things and go, wow, look at these things working simultaneously and collectively keeping me stuck. It was the first time I'd ever been able to see the internal dialogue and critic fueling my core fear and the OCD. And they just were working in tandem to make me miserable. After a couple weeks of just being saturated with not only this internal dialogue experience of thinking I'm a moron and and and I'm irresponsible and I do stupid things, but my OCD telling me I'm gonna be dying of rabies in two years from now, I said, okay, I can't live like this. Is it a real threat? Maybe. I'm not sure. But you know, maybe it pierced the skin a little and I wasn't able to see it, and it's gonna take two years to get to my brain and I'm gonna and I'm gonna die. But I can't live this way. Being able to recognize the reels in my brain and seeing how they were turning and also fueling the OCD helped me to see this is what happens with your OCD, and I need to have some self-compassion. My in my inner critic was not giving me any self-compassion, but I did think to myself, I could counter it with, look, you took these raccoons in because you wanted to save these animals. And you did save one, and maybe I saved the other. I don't know what animal control did with it, but I did the best I could. I was living by my values. If I die by rabies and I'm exploited as this irresponsible, stupid human, then fine. But at least I did something good for an animal. And in between now and when I develop rabies and have to be hospitalized, I'm gonna do my best to live my life. And I'm gonna have compassion for myself. And let's do some ERP. It felt so serious. It was hard for me to see how I was gonna do ERP, but I had to bring some humor into it. So of course, some of the symptoms of rabies are you can't swallow, you're foaming at the mouth, you know, there's a lot of anger and irritation. I'm like, well, that's you know, every time I would get irritated, I'd be like, here come rabies. So I did some ERP around it, some imaginary stuff, you know, dealing with a lot of the feelings. And then finally, I had kind of like the final push. And y'all don't judge me for this, but I thought to myself, okay, this is what I'm gonna do. If I develop rabies, at the first signs, I'm gonna get on a plane and everybody that's done me wrong, I'm gonna show up at their house and I'm gonna bite them. So I like created a rabies hit list. Would I really go and bite people? No. But it brought so much humor, like thinking about how I was gonna get to these places and bite people that it really did help me dispel the severity of the symptoms. Uh, that was kind of the final thing, and it was so hilarious to me, but it did help push me uh past uh really the worst of it. And I was able to recover and kind of move forward. Now, I will tell you, there was a date in mind, a two-year date that I'd hit. It was June 2025. I thought if I could get through June 2025, I'll be in the clear. Now, who knows? Maybe I'm gonna be the one person that it takes four years for rabies to hit. It did come up for me. Every once in a while, that panic would come back. And I would think, oh my gosh, I still could develop rabies. But I would think, I would think about the rabies hit list and I would laugh. So it was a very tough relapse. One of the reasons I feel like it was tough. Well, a couple of the reasons is it came on so suddenly. Now we all know that feeling of doom, that feeling of if only I could go back. It also was something I brought on myself and it was real. I brought these raccoons into my house. Was it was it irresponsible and dangerous? Maybe, but would I do it again? Yes, I would. It was a unique experience, and it was so meaningful and fun. And I was able to save an animal, and that's part of my values. And I refused to let OCD take that from me. When I think back on this when that happened, sure I remember OCD being part of it, but uh, I don't let OCD taint that memory. I remember having that sweet little raccoon and you know, being able to feed it, you know, whatever food and it would party at night, and I got it all kinds of toys, then I would pet it and it would purr. I mean, I remember that. And I think sometimes relapse can be so scary because it can get so dark. And as I just displayed, it can happen so fast and we can feel trapped so quickly. But I learned so much from that relapse, I'm that I'm so glad that it happened. I learned that there is an inner dialogue with my symptoms that if I can recognize that and also recognize the correlation of my core fear, that I can I can have self-compassion for what's going on. I also can recognize the absurdity of the OCD based on the reels that are fueling it. And that stuff has little to do with OCD and more internalized signals that I have received throughout my life. That plus the OCD work hand in hand to keep me stuck. So moving forward, every time I've had a relapse, I look for the reels. I look for the things that are turning in the back of my head in order to see what's fueling what. And I attack both of those things with ERP, with defending myself against my inner critic, with mindfulness, and and being able to prevent the compulsions that are fueling the reels, and vice versa. I always say this relapse is a huge teacher. When we go through relapse, we learn we have the opportunity to learn how to recognize OCD, how OCD can show up differently, and how we can act faster in order to move through it. But I am not gonna tell you that it can't be or isn't terrifying. Remembering rock bottom, remembering feeling trapped in the doom is scary. We don't want to go back there. Suffering is not something that we just wanna put on the table and be like, oh yeah, let's let's hope this happens today. Suffering is something we try to avoid. But we can't avoid OCD resurgence. We can't. It is going to happen. I wish I had the key. I wish I had something I could give you, or some sort of advice that's happened to me where it would never happen again. But we both know that's not the truth. What I can tell you is that you will get through it. What I can tell you is that if you recognize it's OCD, or even if you can't recognize it's OCD, you're worried it's not this time, treat it like it's OCD. Remember what has worked for you before and implement it. Don't wait. You deserve to get through it. You deserve to get better. No matter what OCD is telling you, no matter what reels are turning in your head, and no matter what core fear is activated for you, you can do it. Even if you're in the dark, you can do this and you can move through it. I don't welcome relapse, but I know it's going to happen. And each time I've been through it, whether it's been acute or whether it's it's a slow burn, I've learned things and it makes me more confident moving forward to know that when OCD shows up, when it gets loud, I am capable. And I'm also worthy of doing the work and showing up for myself in order to be better at managing OCD in my recovery for life. Thank you so much for being here and for unmasking with me today. I hope that this episode resonated with you about relapse. This is unfortunately what almost all of us are gonna face at some point or another. And I also know how dark it can get. And you've heard in the stories that were shared today just how scary and tormenting it can be. The one thing that I do know is knowing that I'm not alone and knowing that I will get through it can absolutely help me with the fears of relapse and also my experience. So I hope that this episode will help you. If you have the experience moving forward, and whatever your experience is content to know. So many of us have gone through it and will go through it, and we will be okay, and so will you. If this podcast supports you, inspires you, or helps you to feel a little less alone, I'd love for you to consider supporting it on Patreon. Your monthly pledge helps me to keep these conversations going and create even more resources for this wonderful community. You can join us at patreon.com slash intrusive thoughts and masks. And remember, when you are here, you do not have to wear the mask. You're seen, you're understood, and accepted exactly as you are. See you next week.