Kick-Start at the Bungalow

[Content Warning added 20Jan2014 for use of ableist slurs and thoughts of self-harm.]

Wow. Haven’t been on here in a while.

Truth is, I’m not doing so great. I mean, compare myself to a year ago, yes, progress has been made. But compare myself to eight months ago – I’ve slid backwards. Especially right now; I have a faceful of scabs that I don’t seem quite able to leave alone. At my desk at work. On the bus. Habit-zones I thought I’d cracked. And so now my hands are back all over me like I never trained them to leave it alone.

I’ve sort of been dimly aware of this for a while, but it’s become less and less ignorable over the last few days and now I’ve hit crunch point. I helps, I think, that Caleb knows. I’m seeing him this evening, and he won’t say anything, but he’ll know that I’ve been major picky, and I’ll know that he knows. That helps to keep me self-aware of when I’m doing badly, and not just push it to the back of my mind.

I’ve just moved into my parents’ house for a fortnight, to feed their cats while they’re on holiday. The change feels kind of inspirational I guess. I’m here on my own and I can set up the house my own way, without having to worry about housemates asking me where the bathroom mirror’s disappeared to. The mirrors here are sorted; that was the first thing I did as soon as Mum and Dad left. I’m not doing stickers because I’m too much of a perfectionist – if I miss just one, I feel like the perfection is totally ruined and there’s no point anymore. I thought about doing my arm again as a kick-start back into being strict with myself, but I’m not single anymore, and Caleb would notice. I’m not sure he’d understand that, and even if he did, I’m pretty sure he still wouldn’t like it. I don’t want to look like an emotard, and I don’t want to upset him. So: cutting = no.

Been back on the SPOM board for the first time in months, feel I might read the book again too. So long as I was doing well and not really thinking about it, it felt best to steer clear of obsessing about the issue by browsing forums etc, and just let the issue fade into the background of my life. Yes, I still picked occasionally, but overall I was doing really well, and I felt like obsessing over every tiny slip would be the opposite of helpful. That was a good place to be inside my head.

Trouble was, because I was focussing on other things and not obsessing, I guess I didn’t notice when I gradually started to pick more often again. Telling myself to let the little slip-ups go and not stress myself out and make myself worse. It happened slowly. I hardly noticed. And then a couple days ago I looked in the mirror – properly looked, not just glancing to check my hair or blindly picking – and I thought, “Holy crap. Where did all that come from? I’m a mess!”

Lots of new people and topics on SPOM since I was there last. This post intrigued me particularly,

http://www.stoppickingonme.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=4302

because of the link to personality disorders. The poster wrote, “My mother has OCPD (not OCD)” and I wondered what the difference was between the two. So I clicked the handy link and looked up OCPD.

It was pretty spooky.

http://www.ptypes.com/obsessive-compd.html

I don’t want to be some jumped-up hypochondriac who runs round the internet self-diagnosing all kinds of weird and random stuff. I’m not going to say “Ohmigod that’s me, I have that disorder” because I don’t particularly believe in labelling people’s oddities and making them diseases, making them something that's ‘wrong’. I don’t like the idea of that.

…But then, an aversion to ‘wrong’ is listed as a symptom of OCPD! So, catch twenty-two much.

The need to be ‘right’. Yup. Ever since I was a little kid at the top of my class, looking down my nose at all the other kids for getting things wrong. I rarely got into trouble at school, and when I did, I cried buckets. I couldn’t help it. I hated being in the wrong. I guess I wasn’t used to it because it didn’t happen much. I was very good at pleasing the adults. I remember it seemed like the most important thing in the world – to be right, and to have an adult tell you so.

Perfectionism that interferes with task completion. This is why I take so long on jobs at work. I get so caught up in doing things the ‘right’ way, following the ‘right’ routine and process, I lose focus of what it is I’m trying to achieve. I spend ages picking apart little numerical differences (I’m an accountant) that shouldn’t matter, but do, because they’re not quite ‘right’. By about three pence. The half hour I spend finding that three pence will cost the client twelve pounds. And then I need to make sure all the page margins and column widths are correct, and that all the numbers are to the right number of decimal places, and that the zoom factor is set to the largest it can be without cutting information out on each page… Needless. Pointless. And yet I waste time on it, over and over, every day. I tell myself I’m not going to do it, it’s not important, that I’ll just sort out all the column widths on the page in one go, at the end, save time. But as I’m inputting on the spreadsheet, that columns that are wider than they need to be niggle me relentlessly until I just fix it, to stop it annoying me. And then it’s the same for the next column I create. And the next. One by one, wasting so much fucking time.

Morally inflexible. Well, naturally. Otherwise I’d be doing something wrong, wouldn’t I? Can’t have that. I’m an absolute dragon over ethics, and poor Caleb is bearing the brunt of it at the moment. I’m starting to wonder if I’m really in the right on that one. He’s going to be poor, and it’s going to be my fault. Is it really as much of a big deal as I’m making out?

Adopts a miserly spending style. Ohmifuckinggod I damn near had a panic attack when I got my backpay in November. I had twice my usual pay in my bank account and my brain just screamed. I didn’t know what to do with it. In the end I drew it all out and hid it in my room. What sense does it make to be afraid of having money? No, not of having it. Of spending it.

Blah. This is descending into a general emo rant of epic proportions. Jesus, I want to go cut myself now! :s Butno. For that is silliness. Well, I guess I’m done here. Conclusion: I’m a neurotic freak, and I think too much.

Peace, out.