Was Enjoying My ' I Graduated From Therapy' High Last Week. Then This Week Started Happening. Nose Dive.

It’s Tuesday and my thrill of the week: watching the garbage men pick up my trash AND watching the neighbors put their trash cans away- arrived.  I  registered it in my brain with a: "lets not let KD go over there until tomorrow and they’ve had a chance to shower/ wash up". 

 Then Bruce comes home and tells me how this same neighbor’s garage door opener doesn’t work and he promised to go over there and try to fix it.  Sounds down right neighbourly except he doesn’t know much about fixing garage door openers either.

 Anyway I tell him bye and over he goes.  Not til he’s back do I remember the garbage- can- put- into- the- garage-,then- they- touched- the- garage- door problem.  So I told Bruce to wash, but my Dread is still here.  After all he had to touch at least 2 door handles- the garage door to open and close it, and the basement door, same thing.  And knowing Bruce, he probably touched the hand rail all the way up the stairs.  And I cleaned some of that stuff yesterday.  So now i have a choice...well supposedly i have a choice.  I can get upset (done, check) and plan how i'm going to clean the door handles or get Bruce to clean them, or i can feel Dread and decide that since there's probably no VISIBLE dirt on the door handles, i should then change my beliefs to 'oh, that's ocd.  It's not a real dirt problem'.  I guess Suzanne would call that catch it, check it, change it.   

The spike of EWWW has gone down, so i can think rationally- or more rationally.  I REALLY WANT to let it go, but i don't want anyone touching the door handles either.  Why can't i have my cake and eat it too? 

 I'm now trying a visualization: I'm imagining people going down the stairs getting their hands all full of railing-cooties and then adding a few more from touching the doors and then touching my car.  Oh no!!! And now I have to get in the car.  Not a pleasant visualization.  And i'll probably have to redo it a few times before it feels even some-what ok. 

It would just be so EASY to take a paper towel and some windex and FIX the problem.   Rationally I guess I could say that it's pretty cold out, so germy cooties woud just die AND the neighbors don't work at a toxic waste plant, so their garbage is probably benign and even IF the garbage man touched their garbage can after touching all the other people's on the street, those people's garbage cans were probably just as benign (unless they have mice or mold and i woudn't know about any of that since i'm not doing a neighborhood survey to find this out) so it's probably ok ....and it's not really convincing me....

That wasn't a good thot-path to go down. 

 Back to: noone around here works at a toxic waste plant because as far as i know there's none in the city so regular household garbage is probably benign.

To distract myself:  Last Monday was my last therapy appointment with Suzanne.  I now have all the tools and meds necessary to function  or at least to 'look like' i'm fuctioning.  So I was flying high and whenever ocd reared its ugly head i could beat it down just by telling myself " i'm a GRADUATE, now, na, na, na na na."  Kind of like how Harry Potter couldn't be touched by the  depression Dementors on the way out of the woods because he was feeling so good inside (not saying anymore in case you haven't read the books yet).  

It's been a week tho, and my euphoria has settled down to a feeling of loss.  Sometimes I couldn't wait for a week to pass to see Suzanne, now i have a whole LIFETIME left without therapy.  Maybe that fear is what ocd is riding on and coming back into my head by.  Cause yest. I didn't do the garbage all that well, meaning i had to clean lots more than i was planning to after taking it out to the street and putting it in a can.  I guess a grade of 70 isnt' what I want.  I want 90 - 100% ALL THE TIME.  And that is not happening.  Well, there's always next week to get a better score.  Since garbage day never goes permanently away.

Well, i don't feel sooo bad about the garbage can cooties on the door. 

 I don't have a ' someone's gonna get sick from this'  problem, but a 'ew, now my house will be dirty from people touching the garage door and then other stuff in the house ' problem.  Breathe,... visualize, ...breathe,  I understand that the brain doesn't know the difference between a visualized action and a real one, so i can flood my mind with the situation BEFORE anyone actually creates it for real.  This way I can somewhat deal with it without yelling at my family.

ok:  IF there was something yucky on the garbage man's hand and he got it on their garbage can, and they got it on their garage door and then Bruce got it on his hand, by the time Bruce got home, it would be soooo diluted (or whatever the word is for solids) that there isn't any dirt left.  And I bet this train of thot works even better for imaginary cootie ocd dirt.  :) AND it will get all cleaned off next Monday anyway, unless i forget.

Well, now i'm exhausted and need to take a break from ocd thots and go read little house in the big woods to my daughter before she falls asleep.